A Gay Guy's Journey to Ridding Himself of his Grindr Addiction

I’m a child of the millennium. Thank my baby Jesus smart phones and YouTube came out after I graduated college, otherwise I’d have the IQ of a stuffed turkey. When I set off to start my life as a young adult, I got a little more than I bargained for. The hunt for sex became a part of my daily routine not because I was a “sex addict” (or so I told myself), but because it was so available it soon replaced reading, planning, watching TV, and all the other things a man does when he’s bored.

Mind you, not all gay guys enter this phase. At first, hookup apps like Grindr were purely entertainment, a means to pass the minutes by. In my early-twenties my smart phone was “buhdlooping” all the time. Another man bit the bait. It was fun. But after months and months of it, it began to offset my priorities.

Fast forward two years later, Grindr ruled my life. It was the first thing I’d check in the morning. I’d sneak away at work to check my messages in the bathroom. I’d always be looking for an excuse to take new selfies – sending nude picture became no big deal. I was getting laid more times a week than a Hawaiian airport. My focus was only on sex, and eventually my life mirrored it.

Sex was an every other day, sometimes daily, occurrence. Though many guys might not see anything wrong with this, it was only the beginning towards a deeper soil. I was trapped in an emotional and physical habit. As soon as the sex was over, I was checking my Grindr again for the next encounter. I was like a wild animal continuously hunting for prey. The hunt held me back from all aspects of my life. It never stopped.
It was the hunt which became my whole reason for living. Wake up, hunt, work, hunt, eat, hunt, gym, hunt, hunt, sleep was the routine that ran my life for three years. Through it all I never considered myself an addict. Sex addicts went to sex parties, sex addicts had unprotected sex, sex addicts got off three, four, five times a day. All the excuses became, yet, another excuse of my own denial.

Needless to say, it was just a matter of time before the hunt stopped all productivity towards my goals. The career I had planned, the life I wanted, and the friends I was trying to keep were all slowly disappearing because of my own need for sex. It was my own doing – not Grindr’s, not the internets, nor online sites.

The habit tricked me into thinking I needed sex to be satisfied or content with myself. It acted as fuel for my self-worth. Without it, I wasn’t desirable, attractive, or sexual. The head count of men I slept with became blurry dots in my memory bleeding together in one giant fog. All were unrecognizable, and none were anything else except a body.

It was on my 25^th birthday I decided to throw away my hookup apps. The habit eventually broke after two or three weeks of finding my self-esteem through other means. For many guys in the LGBT community, hookup apps can be a touchy subject. Many of them never become as addicted as I was, but there are still plenty that do.

Now that I have my man, I’ve realized what I was searching for all those years were intimacy and emotional connection. Had I been grinding away still, I might never have met the man of my dreams.


Grindr is like fast food. It’s not that bad for you once in a while, but the more it becomes a part of your life it will eventually become an addiction. One that overpowers your judgment and desensitizes your perspective of what sex is. It’s different for everyone because our addiction gene varies from person to person. But if there’s one thing I know for sure it’s that too much of a good thing will quickly overstay its welcome.

reblogged from gayguys.com