Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?
I regret hearing the lies spoken during sex education when I was in fifth grade in 1987. The public school I was forced to attend brought in a sociologist to do the damage. She told us that we had to release our libido energy regularly - either by having sexual relations with another person or by masturbation, and that this was okay and healthy. Self control and abstinence were presented as being unrealistic.<p>This provided me with moral license from an expert (and indirectly from my parents, who had to sign the permission form to attend the lecture). One thing led to another, and it undoubtedly resulted in addiction; the endorphins and oxytocin produced by the human body and released during orgasm are worse than heroin. Bad habits form easily, and it&#x27;s scary when you can&#x27;t stop doing something that you believed would be just an experiment at age ten. The shame &#x2F; guilt was hell.<p>If I could change anything anything about my past it would be to erase the immersion into that addiction at such an early, formative age. All other attachments of spirit have been easy to deal with - this one has not.