Jamie would meticulously schedule his days round discovering time alone to observe porn and masturbate—typically as much as 5 instances a day.
The 32-year-old Michigan engineer, who didn’t wish to use his actual identify on account of privateness considerations, first watched porn on the impressionable age of 12, however by no means realized he had an issue till simply after his father’s funeral three years in the past.
“I did not shed a single tear,” he says. “I did not know learn how to react fortunately or sadly to something.” That’s when his porn consumption spiraled—mixed with stress, nervousness, and despair—and he locked himself in his room “all day.” The one factor that appeared palpable, he recollects, “was that rush of dopamine” delivered by an intense session of hardcore porn viewing. However for Jamie, who’s Christian, these fleeting moments of porn-fueled transcendance had been adopted by far deeper lows, together with suicidal ideations.
This previous March, Jamie says his companion angrily confronted him over his compulsive porn consumption, accusing him of mendacity and committing adultery.
Jamie’s “complete world got here down.” He admitted he felt that he was addicted, begged for her forgiveness, quickly moved again in along with his mom, and renounced porn. That’s when he discovered Relay, an app created by a pair of Mormon school college students that claims it will probably assist individuals “take again management from porn, in the future at a time.” Jamie promised his companion he would by no means watch porn once more—and she or he gave him one likelihood.
The app supplies a complete plan to cease watching porn, with movies by therapists, day by day journal prompts, stay group sharing classes, and a operate to deal with severe urges. Customers even preserve observe of one another’s porn-free streaks, with a “Reside Milestone” ticker. That is all in an effort to assist prospects, who pay $149 per 12 months for full entry, unpack their underlying points like loneliness and trauma to assist stop relapse. The app has been downloaded over 110,000 instances, with firm information exhibiting that 89 % of its customers are male.
This month, Relay has partnered with anti-porn advocacy nonprofit Battle the New Drug for “the November Challenge”—a brand new initiative to encourage individuals to abstain from porn—with 28,000 sign-ups to date.
The size of pornography use represents “a contemporary epidemic,” claims Relay’s CEO, Chandler Rogers. The 27-year-old was impressed to cofound the app in August 2021 to supply his Gen Z friends a path to cease watching porn. It adopted his personal self-described yearslong habit to express content material. Rogers, who attended Brigham Younger College in Utah the place he met each his cofounder and chief of employees, says he tried to cease “not less than 100 instances, and will by no means go greater than every week with out turning again to pornography.”
