Do any of you have some helpful advice? I don’t know where else to turn. I feel so alone and depressed… Please help me?
Thank you for your honesty. Where to begin?..
I was addicted to masturbating for the longest time. I started when I was 4… that’s right, 4… and didn’t learn it was a sin until I was 13. Some of what you wrote parallels my experiences exactly. Even as a young child, I would have guilt and feel bad afterwards, and I didn’t understand why. I knew that it was something I had to hide… my mother had scolded me as a child for doing it, but I liked the way it felt.
It took me the next 12 years to stop… and those were some incredibly painful years of addiction and self-hatred. And boy did I feel alone and still do. It’s been 5-6 years since I have stopped, but I still am tempted from time to time. But, I want you to know that it IS possible to stop, and the road is different for everyone.
First - stop the beating yourself up afterwards. This is definitely a temptation of the devil. He tempts you to do it, and then tempts you with self-hatred afterwards. He wants to destroy you in any way he can, so he goes at it from both ends.
The biological urge for sex is powerful. Once aroused, it is REALLY hard to use self control. Hard - but not impossible. The feelings you experience are “normal.” Those “good” feelings are “supposed” to be there. It is quite understandable that a person gives in and masturbates to relieve this urge. But here’s the catch, (at least from my experience), the more I gave in, the more powerful the urge was the next time, and the next time, and the next time. Those feelings need to be stopped in the beginning before they grow! Masturbating destroys what sex was made for. The pleasure is supposed to be there. God wants you to have great sex… but in the context of marriage only. Masturbating slowly destroys this. But the good news is… what we have broken, God can not only fix it, but He can make it even better than it was before. God loves to fix our brokenness. So there is always HOPE!
I came to realize that the biggest weakness for masturbating came when I was by myself. I was by myself quite frequently, and loneliness leads us to turn inwards. The devil wants to isolate us because we are weaker when we are alone. (Isolation is different than solitude, btw) So, the first step you can make towards trying to stop is to try and busy yourself and be around people as much as you can. Also - STOP THE TEMPTATION AS SOON AS IT STARTS! Cut it off from the get-go. It’s the easiest time to resist. Because once the temptation starts to grow, it can become really strong very quickly.
Yes, people will say that masturbating is “normal,” and it is true that most people have done it at some point, if not on a regular basis. But just because “most” people have done it doesn’t make it okay or right. Everyone has sinned. It may be the norm to sin, but that doesn’t make it okay.
We are human, and we are weak. In a way, this is a huge grace. I realized that in my human weakness, by myself, I am powerless to resist my human biological urges to have sex. This is where God and the intercession of the saints come in. God is always trying to direct us back towards Him - to depend entirely on Him. If we were 100% strong in and of ourselves, think about how easy it would be to forget God. God loves us so much that He allows us to sin, in the hopes that we will realize how much we need Him. Imagine that! God loves us so much that He would allow us to hurt Him, just so we can realize how much He loves us. That’s exactly what the Cross is.
God’s not looking down at you and saying, “you horrible, weak creature of mine! How dare you do such an abominable thing!” No. He’s allowed you (us) to experience this weakness, at His own expense and hurt, in order that we might realize that yes, in fact, God loves us infinitely.
I feel a lot better, and I definitely realize masturbation only contributed to my depression. My head is a lot clearer now, and I never want to masturbate again. Like I said before, I hated the act. It was only used as a stress reliever, but it was very shortlived, and the stress would always come back worse. So, thank you for all the suggestions.
Whenever something pleasant happens, I pray to God and thank him. Oh, and something cool happened last week when I was feeling really hopeless. I looked out the window and saw a shooting star! 
I felt like that was God’s way of telling me, “Everything will be better soon. Just hold on.” :hug3:
Obviously, I have more important things to attend to. I don’t think that makes me a troll…