I started watching porn at the age of 11. It was vanilla stuff mainly consisting of images and gifs of naked women. I then started watching lesbian porn and then moved to straight porn. I would regularly watch porn more than once a day and I’m sure that all of you can relate to searching for videos more taboo in order to fulfill your desires.
By the age of 17, I had moved onto watching transgender and gay porn. I had never found myself being attracted to guys at all but straight porn just wouldn’t do it for me anymore. It became so severe that I started downloading apps like grindr and visiting websites in the hopes of experiencing the scenarios that I so regularly watched.
I had sexual experiences at gloryholes and also had experiences with crossdressers. Each time I would do this I would immediately regret it and go cold turkey from porn for about a month until relapsing and going back to my old ways. It wasn’t even the sexual experiences that I enjoyed, it was the anticipation of messaging the person and travelling to their place. During the experience I would always immediately regret it.
A few months ago I redownloaded grindr and met up with this transgender woman. She was very beautiful and we ended up having sex but in the heat of the moment, I realised that I was unprotected. I stupidly still persisted and left her apartment feeling the same regret that I always did. A few weeks after my encounter, I developed these mouth sores and also had flu like symptoms. I thought it was covid related but after visiting a doctor, they recommended that I visit a sexual health clinic. I got tested for everything including HIV/AIDS.
Two days ago I got a call at work from the clinic asking if I could come in to discuss my results. My stomach dropped and after travelling to the clinic and speaking with the doctor, I found out that I was positive for HIV-1. I broke down and cried after finding out the news.
I am very fortunate to live in such a medically advanced time where I have ART (antiretroviral therapy) in order to slow the rate that my virus grows. However, I will be stuck with this for life and it will ultimately affect my future relationships. I am still yet to come clean to my family and friends and I have no idea how to do it. I have nobody to turn to. My life has pretty much just begun and it has already been thrown off course by one simple mistake I made.
I contracted this disease as a result of my porn induced fetishes. My mind was obscured by my sexual desires and it ultimately led to me going through with unprotected sex. Each time I relapsed, I knew that I was only getting worse and worse. I firmly believe that porn is the worst drug of all. It feeds off our innate desires to reproduce, it’s accessible from the comfort of your home, and worst of all, it’s completely free.
I want to emphasise that I have no hate towards the transgender community. I accept all sexualities regardless of the struggles with my own. The thing I want all of you to take from this is that porn rots your brain and will continue to do so. You will fall down the rabbit hole of increasing the severity of your content in order to get more of a rush. If you keep this up, you will end up doing something stupid like me. You may lose your friends, your partner, and your job. You may even delve into watching something illegal or participate in unsafe sexual activities. The only thing standing between you and these situations is time. Quit while you have it.If I could go back I would never have watched porn.
– Anonymous
