Struggling with pornography addiction and its impact on mental health.

So I don't know if others know about the controversy pornhub and other adult sites have got themselves into, but it's giving me a lot of mixed signals. More bad than good, and reading about what's been going on makes my skin crawl and it makes me shake. A YouTube channel had uploaded their own commentary on the matter and I couldn't watch it. I went straight for the comments for what people has to say. A lot of them, like people do in society used to watch porn, not being aware of what was behind the scenes including myself. All the video checking these sites have done, with half of them being connected to r#pe, child exploitation, fetishizing groups, raw footage and illegal counterparts getting passed tags were all seriously concerning. Even verified videos didn't provide the fullest of consent with hired actors and actresses. Things like this are why I hate that I was exposed to porn, even hooked on the matter like a drug. There were videos that I've seen that were over the top, exaggerated, taken to extreme measures whether real or animated. At the time of browsing videos like these, my limited knowledge wasn't focused on whether or not the videos had consent or not because I along with many I assume has the impression that they all consented to the actions. Otherwise, why would they be uploaded to legal sites that "care" about the issue..? Hearing that a minor being assaulted with the video being put on these sites without her consent, kidnappings, molestation, or videos that don't even correspond to pornography ending up on these sites is triggering enough. While I don't necessarily blame pornhub entirely for horrible videos like these being posted all around, I do blame them for enabling the factor of hosting it in the first place. I feel sick. I feel dirty. I feel wrong. I feel like I've took part in something that harmed people. I feel like people who unintentionally just wanted to watch what they were attracted to, were unfortunately connected to something deeper than that. Worse than that in a sense. How could I along with many other people enjoy content like this when we are NEVER sure of the people in the videos doing it for fun or being hurt? How will we ever be sure of their ages in the video? How will we ever be sure if it's raw footage or not? I don't think viewers will ever know. But to see that adult sites are being hit with things like this is a form of a win, in the sense that victims need to be protected. This hurts both victims and sex workers of the adult material. And the viewers. I've wanted to cut pornography out of my life completely because I wanted to be lifted from an addiction and better myself. I wanted to go back to reality and not use the internet for erotic thrill. It was one thing to have used this as unsure experience in my adolescence, but it's not something I want to continue with anymore. I feel so disgusted with myself. I feel like I've done something horrible with watching videos like these just because I thought it was something I had to do to fit in and grow up with.

This is all probably tmi, but I’m struggling quite a bit so please bear with me. I recently cut back/quit watching mainstream porn, but the other day I was searching for a certain scene from the movie “X” to use as a… replacement. (Mia Goth is one of my biggest celebrity crushes, and I was just trying to explore alternatives to traditional porn 🤦‍♀️) While looking for this, I stumbled upon an explicit scene of hers from the movie “Nymphomaniac” that I used instead. I’ve never seen this movie, so I was incredibly disgusted when I found out afterward that she was 18/19 when filming this movie and that her character in the movie is SUPPOSED TO BE 15. I’m 24, so needless to say, I was a bit horrified. I had no idea she was so young in this (or that the character she played was underage), and I feel sick that I used this to pleasure myself. None of this crossed my mind beforehand considering it was a pretty explicit scene in a mainstream film. I assumed she was around my age. Even though she was technically an adult while filming this, she was still far to young for me personally and I feel deeply ashamed. This event has triggered memories from the ages 18-22 (I worry even 23) where I would search the “teen” category (18-19) on porn websites. I feel disgusting for looking at this stuff once I got out of my teen years, and even though I stopped, I feel dirty and predatory for doing this in my early 20s. Before I took a hiatus from watching this content this year, I would only watch things where I could tell the actors were my age or older. But the past is haunting me. And I just feel so gross. I should have stuck with the scene from the movie I was searching for (because she was 28/29 in that and I KNEW that), or I shouldn’t have watched anything at all. Hell, typing this out is starting to make me obsess over whether I’m disgusting or not for doing this to something that wasn’t really intended to be “porn”. I feel like I’ve violated this actress by using this film for something it wasn’t really intended for. I know I should quit all of this entirely, but my medication makes it incredibly difficult to “perform”, and imagination alone just doesn’t work for me. I’m just so frustrated and everything I do makes me hate myself more. I’m sorry for the graphic nature of this post. I was just wondering if anyone could relate or give me some advice.

This is about pornography addiction. Back when I was still greatly suffering through it, I remember watching videos I shouldn't have when I was a lot younger. It genuinely did have an effect on my well being and it made me act out in ways no kid should. No kid should be exposed to these things for that matter. I keep focusing on this one time where I made a taboo search about all something and it had the word "lil" in it. After I did this I just started crying badly because of how much of a problem this was for me but now I'm getting thoughts that are saying I did this because I wanted to see kids and that's really scary because I don't want to do that. I really don't want to believe that and I would not want to do that to myself. I didn't see anything inappropriate when that happened from what I remember but I just want stop thinking about these two sides of the event. I think I was around 18 at the time. Something like this also happened when I saw this really disgusting playlist on YouTube that had children in it and creeps saving videos. I couldn't believe it to be true so morbid curiosity came in and when I went through them they were very real and it was very disgusting. I remember freaking out about this so much and I couldn't calm down for that night. It was terrible. I hated that so much. What really scares me about that is before I found this I was watching videos that were fine but just when everything was coming to an end that playlist came up in the midst of it and it made me feel absolutely disgusting. I just hate how much porn messed up my life and I wish I could take it all back. I still get haunting memories of it every single day one way or the other and I'm never at peace with it fully. It always messes with my mind and I can't let it go because of uncertainty. I also hate that through my addiction, I've seen very questionable content without even trying to look for it, which I can't stand. I hate that shit so much. I make specific searches that I find reasonable but even still bad things show up regardless. I just feel disgusting about this completely and it's one of several things that has always kept my self esteem very low. I don't know what to do.