I hate porn. I hate the time and energy it takes from me. I hate how I can tell it is ruining my ability to properly have and enjoy real sex. I’m less motivated to romance the women in my life. I’m less turned on by the simple joys of the standard sex they usually want.

Porn has driven my standards for arousal crazy. There was a time when any naked woman was amazing, when I could barely keep myself from orgasm just making out with a girl who was into me. Porn has made me “want” so much more. I say “want” in quotes, because it’s just an inflamed appetite, not my heart.

Now I want to have her look like a teen goddess, or to fuck her ass, or have her finger my ass, or a half dozen kinkier things that don’t truly appeal to me so much as they turn me on. Do you get that? The difference between truly finding something pleasurable and merely being aroused by the novelty or perversion of a thing? It is, to me, the difference between a perfect, simple piece of fruit and a sugar-filled, artificial flavour candy. One is natural and beautiful and truly offers as much as it promises. The other is like a drug, it titillates and stimulates and leaves you less than you were when it is done.

That’s porn to me. A drug. An addiction. A thing I don’t truly like but can’t seem to stop consuming. Like candy, it is cheaper, easier, more convenient than real fruit. And it is wrecking my sexuality. It is stealing my ability to taste and appreciate the subtle flavours and sublime joys of real intimacy.

It seemed like an innocent curiosity, a natural thing to want to see nudity, to vicariously join in sex at whim. I would never want it more than the real thing. And in a sense, that is all still true. I don’t really want it more than the real thing. But I want it more often. And the more often I partake of it, the less innocent my curiosities become, the less natural the sex, the less I find myself working for true sexual intimacy. So, it is with all drugs, all lies, all addictions: innocent shortcuts to pleasure are only half the truth. The other half is that our minds, our bodies were not evolved to sustain use of the shortcuts. And in the end, the high hidden cost will be taken whether we like it or not.

The cost of the shortcut is bankrupting my sexuality. And it appears I am far from alone. It looks like more and more men (and women) are realizing that the endless novelty and convenience of porn in the computer age is a raw deal. Impotence and sexual dysfunction, addiction, and endless wasted hours. And worse, much worse, are the stories I hear and read, more and more.

If you read this and are young enough, lucky enough to have avoided forming any sort of porn habit, then please take warning. It is not worth it. With the exception of sexual abuse or prostitution, you have to work incredibly hard to fuck your sexuality up with mere masturbation or sex with real people. Unless, I suppose, those real people are becoming porn-novelty-addicts themselves. Don’t do it. Keep sex and the Internet separate in your life. You are not likely to regret that. But porn is something the overwhelming majority of habitual users will come to regret. I know I have. And now, I don’t even know how to stop.