Alright, so I'll start with a brief breakdown of my life and personal things I'd like to share, I suppose. Firstly, I'm a 19 year-old college student, and I'm trying to quit hentai to improve my overall well-being, improve concentration, and save time spent on this habit. This story intimately describes my slow desensitization to life, as my taste for porn increases.
Discovery I first got into porn when I was around 11 or 12. I got some cousins into this stuff, and some showed me new stuff as well. I was really just, you know, turned on by it. It was occasionally on TV on certain channels, and I'd come up with different ways to get off on it. I had this stuffed animal I'd hump. I'd get to a sort of orgasm-esque state, where I'd feel the throbbing and climax sensation, but I couldn't really ejaculate yet. When I eventually could cum from watching porn, that's when it started getting more serious. I had a laptop and knew about porn. Back then, I would often watch the same videos, and everything was good. It was still an occasional ritual at the time.
Expansion Then, I started increasing my variety a bit, and turning to other sources. When I was around 12 or 13, I started finding out about "Hentai," or Japanese animated porn. I found random clips of hentai through a website, and I would download and watch them. They were each 30-60 seconds long, but they were pretty amazing. I eventually found a website that had full hentai videos on Megaupload, and holy shit, I had hit the jackpot. Midnight Sleazy Train was one of the first titles, and I've probably fapped to it at least 100 times. At this point, I'm still into a select number of hentai.
Later, I realized that there was hentai based on anime and cartoon series I had already seen. At the same time, I'm progressing with my real porn watching, and my technological know-how. I had a program that I used to download the videos. At this point, I'm downloading hundreds of my favorite porn videos from websites, and I shuffled through them. I'm developing tastes for similar sorts of women. I'm really into light-skinned girls with black-hair or blonde hair, but I was a bit lenient even then. I was turned off by certain types of girls that I would more recently be really into or fine with. Now, I'm starting to build a porn stash, and I start finding picture websites for hentai based on my favorite series. It's mostly Pokemon, Naruto, Bleach, Mario, Zelda, Sonic (Not into furry, I just liked female characteristics of some characters), DBZ (Kamehasutra and the other random pics were a godsend at the time). I'm still basically finding pornographic versions of my childhood shows, and sticking to the same types of women at this point.
Sorta Life Change Now, fast forward a bunch. Now, I start getting into anime in 2012. I quit playing 12 hours of League of Legends a day to pursue a new hobby that I feel much better about. I also expand my hentai stash. By now, I've looked through 1000+ hentai series and stored favorites. I'm also into a bunch of more anime, so I find that there are a ton of doujins (basically hentai comics) based on those series. I'm still not branching out with my porn too much, despite all this. My hentai video taste isn't varied in art style.
Later, I start expanding my anime taste, and start looking for anime that are different from the norm. I develop a sense of elitism and boredom for shows that feel similar to each other, and I argue about these things a lot, and the state of the anime industry and its lack of creativity. I discover that there are a bunch of nice niche anime, but I feel like I eventually depleted my shows. I go on to watch movies and other things just to keep from watching stale anime. I also find a new medium, Visual Novels, which is absolutely incredible and I'd highly recommend you go to
visualnovels and learn about them if you want a beautiful and emotional experience. Protip: Little Busters is a fun start. Visual Novels are also part of my reason for learning Japanese, which is part of why I want to quit my hentai and fapping habit.
I'm reaching this peak of searching for originality and elitism. I start branching out and finding new types of porn. I'm going on the top 720p videos on kat.ph, looking through screenshots, starting to give new hair colors, skin colors, and ethnicities and try. I'm torrenting a ton of videos. I'm doing the same for hentai, too. Now, I'm going on 4chan's hentai board and finding out about new artists and fetishes. I'm always finding new crazy things to search for on Exhentai, and I'm saving the doujins in huge folder. I even go and find new hentai videos that I previously wasn't into, so I had to go and look through lists all over again with my newfound, more open-minded taste. My doujins are now mostly of random series and original series (i.e. not based on any anime or manga), and they're by a bunch of different artists, with a variety of fetishes that some people will find insane, like Futanari, Beastiality, Lolicon, Toddlercon. (google those if you want, maybe don't google image search them)
Desensitization? Now I'm reaching the point where all I care about is getting off. Some of the hentai I was first into were really intimate and loving. Visual novels have sex scenes in them that are pretty embrasive and intimate, and I enjoy those. Character relationships in that are really close in less sexual ways, and it's giving me these feelings I've never had before. I'm developing this sort of sensitive side alongside my view of women and drawn female characters as sexual objects. I'm starting to become more interested in real girls, while still maintaining this side part of my life, my (primarily) hentai fantasies. I take pride in being a Hentai connoseur, being able to recommend great material to people. I feel like I have so much experience, and can contribute to threads, make hentai recommendations for people, upload an image gallery of quality material, and get a ton of views and internet epeen when I occasionally do it. Its become almost a collection, and I almost stop thinking about it in certain ways. The scenarios don't always matter to me, and it's more about how sexily drawn everything is to me, as my taste in hentai art approaches a level of elitism akin to my anime taste.
Alright, time for a bit of real-life stuff. So, at my dorm last year, I meet this nice girl. She's actually into anime and manga, and even wants to get into visual novels through my help. I had an hour long conversation with her, and really, this is probably the longest real conversation I've enjoyed with a girl in my entire life. We talked about life goal and our interests. But damn, I look her up on Facebook and she has a boyfriend. I started actually getting really upset over the fact that she was already taken. The thoughts I had about her have always been more intimate thoughts. I want to value her as a person first, and have someone I can hug and comfort, and be comforted by. A female companion, not a sex partneobject. She's actual single now this year, but I'm not sure if I'm going to try and build a relationship with her. I feel like she might just have a lot of close male friends she's met through her hobbies, conventions, and other events in her life, and I'm just this guy on the side. I don't really know how to approach this situation. I wish I could just know if a relationship is possible without being straightforward and asking. She lives in my dorm like a floor below me, and I gave her my number and asked to text whenever. She's always excited to talk, but I feel like it's just her personality, and I'm reading too much into things with how she talks to me, just like how I thought she was single a year ago and she wasn't. Ok, so what's the issue? I mean, I'm a sort of privileged college student with good taste in hentai, and I have a girl I can talk to and maybe get a relationship.
My problems: I've been having issues concentrating and issues sleeping. It feels like some days I can get to sleep quickly, and other I spend hours in bed, sleepless. Sometimes I can concentrate well, but I really want be more consistent. Japanese is a hard as fuck language that I want to learn, and it requires a bunch of concentration. I'm having issues, where I just sort of blank out after small amounts of reading or studying. Like, my capacity just feels really low for whatever reason. I keep doing minimum work in my classes, and it might bite me in the ass if I have to retake another one of my classes this year. I always thought I was smart, and I've even been paying a good amount of attention to my classes, but I'm still having issues keeping up. I actually feel below average, but not because I'm not trying. When I did crappy sometimes in high school, it was because I was lazy, didn't pay attention, and didn't study enough, but I reshaped that and started working harder and pulled a 4.0 GPA. Now in college, it feels like even if I try, I just can't concentrate or retain enough of anything to do well. I can do the 1.5 hours of reading in 3 hours the night before for a quiz the next morning, and not remember a fucking thing I read, even while taking notes, highlighting, and looking over them before the quiz. It's like I'm having good days and bad days with my levels of concentration. It even applies to this game I play competitively, a mod of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Project M. Some days I can play really crispily, even with a bit less sleep than usual, and other days I just play on autopilot and physically can't play really well. My playing Smash Bros. is a whole different issue. I play it for fun with friends, mostly, and don't play it much at my dorm. They come out to our college game room and we have a blast, and it's like my recreational thing to do up to a few times a week. I quit my addiction to hugely time-consuming games like WoW, League of Legends, other MMOs in the past, and don't really game a lot, despite having a gaming PC. (Sorry PC gaming master race, I let you down)
So, I have a bunch of issues, mostly with concentration and I think they're due to a bunch of reasons.
- Maybe caffeine. I tried to quit coffee, but eventually was just like eh, and didn't. I may consider switching over to Black Tea completely, or just waking up to drinking water in the morning. I dunno, I can't really determine how much of an issue caffeine is for me, or whether it causes some of these issues I have.
- Diet and Exercise - ok, so I definitely need to do some more walking/jogging again. I lost a ton of weight from being obese before high school, and I felt really good around that time. I always felt really good when I ate healthily, and didn't feel as groggy and inconsistent. I'm not trying to get too into weight lifting, but I'll try and do some pushups to build some upper body strength. I gotta lay off the sugar and bad carbs more to keep from having blood sugar spikes. I'm improving this by making some better choices with picking better food. I also plan to get rid of my Meal Plan on campus, and use the money to buy my own groceries and eat a lot healthier.
- My fapping and hentai/porn habit. I did back up all my stuff to a Google Drive, because I don't want my progress totally gone and removed. I'd like to look back on it years from now and say that I've overcome it. I deleted all my porn and hentai from my computer and other devices, though, and removed the addon to access Exhentai. (it requires an addon to log onto it, and it's the quintessential hentai doujin website). Loss of time and bad sleep patterns may be attributed to this. See video way down below.
- My Super Smash Bros. habit. Yeah, so I basically got into this about 5 months ago, now, and I've been playing it on and off. It used to suck up a lot more of my time, but now I mostly just try and play with friends when they come around. We can say that this is subdued and a social thing that feels like less of an addiction for me, as I won't try and constantly look up Smash-related info as I used to, and constantly try and improve at the game on my own.
More Info: My Schoolwork and Life Goals Ok, so I'm in the computer science major, and it feels like a pretty tough, though high-paying, field. I can't slack off, and I need to be able to more consistent and concentrate. I feel like programming can often be really rewarding when I complete tasks and learn new concepts, but my hentai habits have sometimes caused me to feel depressed and desensitized. I vented recently in an essay to my English teacher about how I had issues following my life goals in spite of my procrastination and love for Smash Bros. With Smash Bros. subdued, I find that I sometimes waste entire days shuffling between fapping -> looking up new hentai -> fapping -> reading h-related news articles, browsing hentai/porn subreddits -> talking nonsense on Skype to procrastinate because I feel like doing nothing -> fapping some more, etc. Entire days go wasted when all I want to feel is pleasure. Sometimes I really just wish I could man up to my work and goals, and some days I feel like I can conquer the world. Other days, I feel overpowered by my work, and really just wish I can get hugs and pats on the head to tell me that it's not so bad. Other times, I just waste away my free time in the ways I mentioned earlier. I feel constantly in a cycle of struggling to concentrate and get work done, and wasting my free time. Like, life isn't as lenient as before. My grade school and high school GPA don't matter for shit compared to what I'm doing now, and I could afford to slack off back then. Now, when I have these real long-term and life-related goals, I can't even do them.
My Revelation I came across a TED Talk video, and it basically described a lot of the issues I was having.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU I think this video is awesome, maybe even worth of a sticky on here, or at least definitely worth a watch. It may give you some inspiration. Also this one is interesting, more about how we become desensitized and lose a sense of passion and love when it comes to sex -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRJ_QfP2mhU So yeah, I just wanted to share my story. Maybe other people interested in hentai, anime, Japanese, etc., will enjoy my story or find it when they search hentai on this subreddit.
TLDRecap: I feel like hentai has caused a lot of issues with how I perceive my own goals, and I've become a really inconsistent person. Diet and exercise might not be able to help it, but maybe quitting fapping can. I recommend watching the video a few paragraphs up. I might be overreacting, but I think there's a real issue I'm having, and I want to wake up and enjoy life again. I know my story is colossal, and quitting fapping is hard. I think it just takes a realization of the side effects of something in order to make a change in one's life.