Jamie would do it meticulously plan your days to make time alone to watch porn and masturbate – often up to five times a day.
The 32-year-old Michigan engineer, who didn’t want to employ his real name for privacy reasons, first watched porn at age 12 but didn’t realize he had a problem until his father’s funeral three years ago.
“I didn’t shed a single tear,” he says. “I didn’t know how to react to anything, happy or sad.” That’s when his porn consumption skyrocketed – coupled with stress, anxiety and depression – and he locked himself in his room “for the day.” He recalls that the only thing that felt material was the “dopamine rush” triggered by an intense session of watching hardcore porn. But for Jamie, who is a Christian, these fleeting moments of porn-fueled transcendence were followed by much deeper lows, including suicidal thoughts.
Jamie claims that in March last year his partner angrily confronted him about his compulsive porn viewing, accusing him of lying and adultery.
Jamie’s “whole world collapsed.” He admitted that he felt he was addicted, begged her for forgiveness, temporarily moved in with his mother and swore off porn. That’s when he found it Relayan app created by a pair of Mormon students that claims it can aid people “take back control of pornography overnight.” Jamie promised his partner he would never watch porn again, and she gave him one chance.
The app provides a comprehensive plan to stop watching porn, including therapist videos, daily journal prompts, live group sharing sessions, and a solemn needs response feature. Users even track their porn-free streaks with a “Live Milestone” bar. It’s all about helping customers who pay $149 a year for full access untangle underlying issues like loneliness and trauma to prevent relapse. The app has been downloaded more than 110,000 times, and company data shows that 89 percent of its users are men.
This month, Relay partnered with anti-pornography nonprofit Fight the Novel Drug for its “November Project,” a up-to-date initiative to encourage people to refrain from watching porn, with 28,000 people signed up so far.
The scale of pornography employ is a “modern-day epidemic,” says Relay CEO Chandler Rogers. The 27-year-old was inspired to start the app in August 2021 to give his Gen Z peers the opportunity to stop watching porn. This was the result of his self-described long-standing addiction to explicit content. Rogers, who attended Brigham Juvenile University in Utah, where he met both his co-founder and chief of staff, says he tried quitting “at least 100 times and could never go more than a week without returning to pornography.”