A man has revealed how he accumulated 18 terabytes of porn on his computer and took the bold step of deleting it all to help him overcome his addiction.

To put that into perspective, a terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes, so the man’s 18 terabyte collection is equivalent to 5,400 hours of high quality video or 64.8 million images. At a rate of watching eight hours of video per day, it would have taken him 20 months of daily viewing to get through his entire collection just once.

“I would get a rush downloading all that I could, spending days at a time just downloading video after video, even creating lightweight PHP bots to do it for me the more I did it,” the man wrote on a Reddit forum dedicated to people unhooking themselves from their porn addiction.

However he explained that despite being fit, he lost his erection when having sex with his girlfriend multiple times.

“It's definitely the porn, I know it is,” he wrote. “I don't even look at regular women the same.”

The man admitted that he’d spent five years amassing his porn collection but decided to make the move in a bid to combat his “performance anxiety.”

He also revealed that he’d spent over $550 (£425) on hard-drives to store his collection.

Many people were shocked by just how big the man’s porn collection was, but they all congratulated him on getting rid of it.

“Wow, what a collection you had there!” said one person, who could relate after giving up porn himself.

“18 terabytes of poison,” he wrote. “18 terabytes of lying to yourself, eluding yourself, and deceiving your own brain. 18 terabytes of social awkwardness, lack of confidence, and fear in your heart. 18 terabytes of a fake, digital relationships with paid actors on screen. 18 terabytes of wiring your brain into a dopamine-overloaded junkyard.”

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He said that the day you delete your porn collection is the day you start the rest of your life, adding that it won’t be easy, “but it sure as hell gonna be worth it.”

Many men shared how they too had got as addicted to collecting porn as watching it, and deleting their collection was a big step in getting over the addiction.

According to one man, it’s the “sense of owning and readiness of material. The sensation of [being] able to drag each girl of your preference and categorising them can be addictive.”

The discussion took place in Reddit’s NoFap forum, which is a community of men who have given up masturbation.

However there is also a less extreme PornFree community, which is for men who have given up porn (but not necessarily masturbation).

As increasing numbers of young men seek help for porn addiction and erectile dysfunction, there is growing interest in giving up porn altogether, as it is a huge problem for many.

And various experts have warned that the high numbers of young men watching endless amounts of porn could be leading to a rise in tolerance of violence against women, dangerous notions of consent and erectile dysfunction.

Men have spoken out before about their large porn collections and the latest is not the first to delete a collection of that size.

And some men say they’ve taken inspiration from his huge step of deleting his collection: “Your quitting is a motivation to me. I can do the same now,” wrote one.