Hello, Alex.

I am struggling with an addiction to porn as well, and I have also often wondered whether or not it is better for me to masturbate with or without porn (or if it's just as bad).

One of the worst side effects of watching so much porn that I've experienced is that it's given me an association between physical stimulation and looking at women's bodies on the internet, which makes everything else in my life less sexual. This is bad because even if I have good chemistry with a girl I am attracted to it's not as sexually charged as I would like it to be because I've dedicated so much of my sexuality to pornography. I've even had one experience where I was very close to having sex with a girl I liked a lot and couldn't do it because I truly believed that I would have felt more excited about watching porn and masturbating while watching it. It was miserable.

As a result, there are some times where I feel I would be better off if I masturbated without watching porn, because it would be less of associating physical stimulation with seeing someone else's body and more of me playing with myself and enjoying my own body (something I think is healthy). However, my addiction to pornography is very strong, and I've found that whenever I try to masturbate without watching porn that I just end up imagining some of the pornography that I've previously seen while I do it, which is not healthy because it enforces that association I want to get rid of.

Ultimately, I'd love to be at a point where I can masturbate for the purpose of enjoying/exploring my own body because I think that's a really healthy and enjoyable thing to do, but at this point in my life I feel like my dependence on pornography is too strong to be able to do that, and I need to spend some time clearing my own mental state before I can try to do that again.

My advice to you would be to stop watching pornography and to stop masturbating for a significant amount of time, because it WILL clear your mental state and give you the time to reflect on why you were doing those things in the first place, and maybe you will discover that masturbating is not an unhealthy thing for you to do (or maybe you'll discover quite the opposite). I wish you the best in your recovery.

90 days is generally the advice given by CSATS
no porn or masturbation for 90 days will help. This is also suggested to people in marriages or relationships

I think that what you think about...what you do...and what you see while masturbating becomes engrained and attached to your sexuality. So, say it's porn, you become conditioned to those kinds of images with no smidgeon of interconnection, or intimacy with another person at all. So, most often, when you do try, if you try, to engage in intimate sexual situations you are likely to find that over time you cannot perform. So, I think the question might well be, where are you attaching your sexual functions, and, is that where you want it to be?

If you are questioning if you are addicted to something, do an experiment. Try giving it up. If it is not a struggle to give it up for 100 days, the you probably aren't a full addict. Doesn't mean you won't become one later!

there is also the online test for sexual addiction aka porn among other issues you may wish to take http://www.recoveryzone.com/tests/sex-addiction/SAST/index.php

I know I am addicted, but not to porn. I am addicted to sex. I know this doesn't sound like a major problem, but it is. I have become addicted to the chase. This has the potential to disrupt my relationship and physically get someone hurt because of my boyfriend. I guess I try to make it better by being honest with the men I find myself with, but I don't think that is enough.

I am addicted to taking men's hearts just for the sake of the chase/hunt. And I can't stop.