Hello to everyone. I am 20 m and gay and have been a porn addict at least for the last 6 years. It feels weird to say it so explicitly, but I can't and don't want to avoid that fact anymore: I'm an addict. I started consuming porn when I was very young (Around 8 or 9 but can't really remember exactly), it was my first approach to sex and also allowed me to explore my sexuality. I started to watch different types of porn, but always at a moderate level, around 2-3 videos. Eventually there were periods of time in which I stopped watching because I had been caught (or feared I had been) by my parents. Up to this point everything had been pretty normal and didn not warrant any concern. However porn did became a gateway for me to start having sex, still as a teenager. I was very promiscuous, naive and unexperienced, and a lot of older men took advantage of me, although I had always felt that I was in control of everything. Abut 6 years ago, when all this started, those habits I had led me to be S.A. by someone and that changed drastically the way I relate to sex. I couldn't see myself having sex again (although I did try, but all those experiences were awful), but I still had a very high sex drive. That resulted in me diving directly into porn. My habits became very unhealthy: I would watch around 50 videos to get off (different snips of it, because I needed the stimulus), I would do this several times a day (I would even stay up really late so that I could jack off to porn). Some stranger approached me online and started sending pictures of people I knew and I started getting off to them; in the end I gathered quite a lot. Eventually I started therapy, but I hadn't had the chance to actually get to work on my S.A. (it's a very difficult topic to deal with) and things started to fall apart. I was caught trading nude pictures of people about two years ago and I recieved a lot of backlash (not that I didn't deserve to be called out, but I recieved death threats and people telling I shoud K.M.). My friends learned about this and cut me off and everything else in my life was at risk. I began a new therapeutic process and was able to go through some of the things that affected me from my S.A., but it ultimately was finished (I got therapy from a foundation that provides LGBT+ people with free therapy, but since it's free, the therapists can't work there for long) and I was again on my own. Ever since that moment I've known that I have to cut off my porn consumption if I want to be better, but I always thought it was still something I was choosing to do, that I still had it under control. I tried to quit several times but always relapsed. The longest I've gone without watching any porn or masturbating has been around 2 weeks. I've become more aware, tho and try to limit myself with the way I consume porn: say, I try to watch at most 30 videos instead of 50, or do it for no more than an hour (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't). Nonetheless, the more I consumed the more my brain wanted; regular porn wouldn't suffice anymore and I started watching darker stuff. I think my lowest and what has ultimately brought me here was that i dwelved into taboo stuff, such as incest, which is something that doesn't even really turn me on, but rather it's just dirty enough to get me off, and I found myself sharing spaces with very nasty people. I didn't like being there, when they were talking about their own experiences of abuse in a perverted light I felt dirty and uncomfortable; but what really made me stop was when I got to a picture of a person that I couldn't say if they were of age or not. That was it for me. Was I also gonna become an abuser? Is that what my life was gonna be, someone who hurt other people, who hurt teenagers? What was next? I felt disgusted with myself for reaching those depths. I reported those spaces and got out of them as I never want to be that person. That insensitivity to content (I needed very hardcore material to get off) and the fact that I couldn't even sleep at night if I hadn't jacked off, and I couldn't do that if I didn't watch porn is what made me realize that I was indeed an addict. I've been thinking about how to go about this discovery. I've tried stopping watching before, but I just get an itch inside me to do it again, and I've always felt alone in this process. Of course, I don't talk of this with the people around me as there's a lot of shame involved. But I realize that I can't do this alone. Granted, I have to get out of this for myself to become a better person, to stop the cycle of abuse from happening to other people; but I find myself powerless. I need help, and I need support. I want someone to talk to, when the itch comes back, I want to know that someone understands how I feel and how difficult it is, but that believes I can overcome this. I also am willing to support anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation, as I reckon we can be stronger than this shit together. I'll also try to post my thoughts around this as they come by. Anyone willing to join me in this journey? I will be grateful forever.