Are my erection problems even caused by PIED?

OK I am going to try to keep it short, I just tried to include at least in a cursory way most things that are relevant.

I am 25 and basically up to like a couple of months ago I had never had sex before, mostly because I was always very career-focused and sexual urges were just annoyances to get sorted out quickly so I can go back to work. Over the last year I changed job back to something more normal to get my life back again.

When I was about to have sex for the first time 3 months ago I didn't get the erection. At the time I had been taking Sertralin/Zoloft for a couple of months, plus I had a bit of wine, so I put it to that. The thing is, in later attempts over the following three months, I have taken out all the possible external culprits (SSRIs, since I don't really need them anymore, alcohol, ...), and without Viagra/Cialis I would not get an erection good enough for penetration except once.

I went to the doc, they checked my blood, sad all was OK, including my testosterone levels, and gave me some Cialis on the assumption it's probably just performance anxiety and those pills will help me overcome it.

Well the thing is I doubt it's just performance anxiety because having a more detailed think about it I don't really get (erection-wise) aroused in most situations that guys (including me when I was 17-19) would normally get aroused.
And it takes me like 10 minutes of masturbating to get my goods reasonably hard when alone, and it's almost impossible to get off without imagining either a scene from porn (up to 3 months ago) or one of the very few and short successful experiences I've had with one of the girls I've been with (either the short times inside them or just the things we did & their bodies).

So I figured it got to be porn-induced and hence how I end up here. I was watching porn from maybe when I was about 17, but not with the heavy frequency many people describe, and definitely not addicted. Most of the times I would watch it maybe 6 to 7 times a month, and to be honest, another 10 times a month I'd masturbate imagining the scenes I saw (gave me less guilt & saved time).

My question/worry is - do you think my problems with getting an erection are actually porn-induced? I am really not sure because when I read most posts on this forum, as well as most stories on yourbrainonporn.com, people typically mention they masturbate to porn at least once a day, if not more, and after like 3 or 4 days of no porn and no-fap they feel really strong urge to relapse that they have to fight.

I am not at all like that. In the year up to 3 months ago I was watching porn less and less, maybe 2 or 3 times a month at most. 3 months ago after I had my first attempt at real sex I cut the porn off completely, including masturbation to mental images from porn (and up to now I have been masturbating maybe once or twice a week - sometimes still to the mental images from porn, but over time less and less as I replaced them with images of the real girls I've been with).

So now my plan is not to watch any porn ever again and in the next 2 to 3 months no masturbation either. But I really can't identify myself with the stories most people write which include such strong urges to watch porn or at least masturbate after like a day or two. I haven't seen porn for 3 months, don't feel the need to see it, and haven't masturbated by now for a week and only feel a very slight urge to do it, no big raging thing...

 

You might want to research a bit about ED as a side-effect of SSRIs. Just reading wiki, there is a mention of "persisting ED" after discontinuing. Not saying that is your problem, but PIED is sort of the last resort for ED when all physical and mental causes have been ruled out, so that is where I personally would investigate.

Good Luck

 

Well if you never had sex before and watched porn you probably wired your brain to porn. I at least had problems with that.

I had not much problems to kick porn of my life, despite the fact I watched som weird shit, I'm already almost 4 months without porn and I don't miss it.

But my guess is the fact I watched alot of porn before I had real sex my brain was so used to that kind of stimulation that he didn't recognized the real deal, hence ED.

That's my guess.

 

@NickRiviera
Thanks, that might be a cause/contributory factor, since I was on Sertralin/Zoloft for 5 years and only stopped 2 months ago so it's well possible it will take some time to ween off - I hope at least. Lucky I stopped 2 months ago at least.

@barristan
That's what I am thinking as well - watching porn for so long before real sex sounds like the situation generally described here. Good to know you don't miss the porn strongly either. Do you miss the masturbation/orgasm part at all?

I am 10 days since I did the last masturbation and I don't really mind. Maybe a bit of tention when I think about it, but that's about it. No thoughts about porn whatsoever, or the girls I had or tried to have sex with. I will be honest I am really not sure whether whatever ED problems I have are caused by porn or not. I'd rather for that be the case as then it sounds like just doing the no-PMO period would have fixed it...

 

Yeah I miss, not masturbation but orgasms. My libido is growing stronger everyday, I'm getting morning woods everyday too. and I feel like I need to release the stuff lol, nothing out of control but yeah it's getting very intense. I hope I get a wet dream soon enough.

 

OK so since I had real doubts about what causes my erection problems and considering I've seen stuff on of the post-SSRI ED I did the PIED test.

Masturbating without any porn or even mental images of porn or the real girls I have been with, it took me 10 to 15 minutes of constant simulation to get a strong erection and I had to keep masturbating to maintain it before orgasm and it faded away super quick after orgasm. And that's after a week of no masturbation or orgasm.

With porn, first of all I could feel the arousal coming to me, and it took me like 5 to 10 strokes over the course of 2 minutes to get ROCK hard. And then I had to do like 2 strokes per like 2 minutes to keep rock hard.

So I think that pretty much says it all. I guess it shouldn't, but it makes me happy, because I haven't seen porn for more than 4 months so I was having doubts I could even physically get and maintain such strong rock hard erections, or that it's caused by something else than PIED since I didn't crave the porn, and this got even worse after the fails with real girls and then reading about the post-SSRI problems which fortunately now I know I don't have!

I will do the reboot proper now. Looking forward to having trouble keeping it down again...