This 22-year-old spent $51,419 on PORN

Over a period of just five years, starting at the age of just 17 when he got his first credit card, one of our users spent over $50,000 on porn. He shared his story on our Reddit-hosted forum after being porn-free for 6 days. His story is in regular font, our comments are in green. Read below:

“I’ve spent a total of $51,419.93 on porn… I know it sounds like too much to be true, I’m still struggling to comprehend the amount.“

I went through my bank statements from the last 5 years and manually added it all up, it took me 2 and a half hours and sure enough, that was the total.

I’m 22 and have been an addict since I was 12, daily fapper. As soon as I got my first credit card I started paying for porn.

NoFap Note: Many people escalate to paying for porn, as seen in this story. This transition to paid porn might occur for various reasons, including wanting to not engage in piracy (a lot of free tube-style sites contain a ton of pirated porn), but most often due to paid-porn generally being higher-resolution video (4K versus a usual maximum of 720p that’s available for free streaming), more quickly accessible than downloading torrents, having a wider selection of high-quality content available, and available for even niche fetishes. He started out with the free porn that’s, unfortunately, currently widely accessible to children and young teens. His porn addiction journey started at only 12-years-old.

I traced it all the way back to that very first transaction of $35.99 and from there the amounts just kept getting higher, I had no idea it would get this far out of control, I knew it was a lot but what the fuck.

I have all the typical symptoms of a porn addict. Never had a girlfriend or much desire for one. I paid for sex once but turns out I have PIED (porn-induced erectile dysfunction) so that didn’t go well. Experience cravings, feel anxious and irritable when I’m unable to access it. I cant imagine how much time I’ve wasted over the years.

NoFap Note: Viewing porn by yourself is a far different experience than having partnered sex. Many porn addicts report that they’re far more interested in porn than people. This is especially true for porn addicts who gained access to unlimited amounts of Internet porn far before they had an opportunity to engage in partnered sexual activity for the first time. With years of porn use under their belts, without any dating experience, many porn addicts find that they’ve “trained” their brains to prefer pornography instead of actual people, which is likely a primary reason why erectile dysfunction rates are skyrocketing around the world. Some porn addicts, instead of full-on porn-induced erectile dysfunction, experience “anorgasmia” or the inability to orgasm during partnered sex, which could be thought of as a “milder” form of PIED.

I fell into a cycle where I would spend a large amount of money, feel guilty, make a half assed attempt to stop and then gradually slip back to the same as before. The biggest problem with trying to quit is that you feel like you’ve made an investment and it will go to waste if you stop now, almost like a gambling addiction.

On one site in particular I had paid for a lifetime membership, that account doesn’t expire until 2052. The last 2 years things have really gotten worse after I discovered the financial domination fetish, I have been so desensitized that “findom” was the only thing getting me off.

NoFap Note: Many porn addicts pledge to quit porn dozens of times before finally kicking the habit for good.

And so last Saturday when I was still on this path of self destruction, I had decided to stay up until 3:30am in a live text chat with a “findom mistress” whilst she encouraged me to buy her videos and send her money. I spent about $4,400 in that one night.

The following day I felt complete shame, regret and anger to the point where I said enough is enough.

For the remainder of that Sunday I went through every single subscription and site I had an account on and changed all the passwords using a random password generator, after that I marked to close my outlook account which all of the sites were linked to. It takes 60 days to close so I also changed its password. So now there is no way to do a ‘forgot your password’ reset through email, which means I cant access any of it even if I tried.

Then I deleted the massive 205GB porn folder saved on my HDD as well as what was saved on my phone. I also cleared all of my browser history to avoid any temptation.

NoFap Note: 205 gigabytes… that’s impressive! Deleting your porn is a great, important step. People can’t expect to quit porn if they hold onto their favorite videos or entire collection that took years of careful curation to amass.

It was a first step to get clean, but obviously the urge to relapse will still be there and there’s no shortage of free porn online so I might look into installing a porn blocker. Any suggestions?

But so far so good, I’ve been completely clean for almost a week now, in the 10 years of my addiction this is the longest I’ve gone without jerking off or viewing porn, I feel furiously determined to not slip back to the way things were.

I don’t think I’ll ever be cured but the plan is to go hard mode and stay clean for 6 months and then maybe look at starting a real relationship so I can move on from this shit. This is my first time trying something like this, so any advice is much appreciated.

None of my friends or family know about any of this and I have no intention of telling them, but I feel like I have to let it out and this seemed like the right place.

Porn addicts aren’t alone.

Thank you for sharing your story! You certainly have come to the right place and are now a part of a support network of hundreds of thousands of porn addicts around the world. Help is available: aside from just using our website, we recommend that people seek out the assistance of a qualified porn addiction therapist in your area, especially if they struggle with shame issues, question their self-worth, have thoughts of self-harm, or have mental health issues unrelated to compulsive porn use.

We also found it interesting that you quantified how much money you spent on porn. Many smoking apps, for example, tally how much money you are saving every day by not smoking. In this case, you might find it motivational to keep a running tally of how much money you’re saving per day. For $10,000 a year, that’s saving about $27.40 per day that you don’t use porn. And that’s not counting the opportunity costs associated with skipping work or academic opportunities to use porn and perhaps the higher earning potential that you may now have after quitting!

While this might be shocking to some readers, his story is, unfortunately, not that unique. Feel free to read our porn addiction recovery forums for more stories from NoFap users.

Disclaimer: When we post stories from our users, we might make some minor edits for grammar or to remove personally identifiable information. We do offer feedback on some user stories based on what we know to work well in our recoveries, but this should not be interpreted as medical advice.