Porn Addiction
An Internet porn addiction is one of the most difficult addictions in the world to cure, not because people are obsessed with pornography but because of the chemicals released in the brain when someone views Internet porn. Studies have shown that the neurotransmitter released by the brain while looking at porn is similar to what is experienced by a person when they do cocaine. Breaking an Internet porn habit can be just as tough as kicking a habit to the king of street drugs. What makes matters worse is that different people define a porn addiction in different ways, so what may be unhealthy behavior for one person might be fine for another.
Addiction to pornography predates the Internet by a significant margin, but it is the ease of availability and the sheer volume of porn available through the Internet that has sparked a new type of addiction. It is also important to confront the belief that even in 2009, many people still consider masturbation to be unethical, especially masturbation while you are married. The Catholic Church and many other churches still believe and teach that sex of any kind should only be for procreation. For more well adjusted people, Internet porn addiction is defined as the point where a person begins to let porn take over their life and replace real relationships with real people, both sexual and non-sexual. The same standards can be applied to almost any kind of addiction. Once one thing, in this case porn, supersedes the importance of everything around it and begins to be the utter and complete focus of someone’s life, an addiction has been reached. As with all addictions, the first step in recovery is getting help and realizing that a person has replaced real life relationships with porn.
People may not realize it, but it is possible to be addicted to just about anything. Since porn has an obvious sexual component, and since so many people already have an unhealthy attitude towards sex to begin with, porn addiction is somewhat common. A person can begin to feel isolated and depressed as they force out other forms of stimulation from their lives in favor of what they are addicted to. They will begin to spend more and more time alone and greet any intrusion into that alone time, whether it be from work, kids, their partner, or a visit from the mailman, with huge amounts of anger and emotion. The obvious impact from such an addiction is the rapid loss of your entire support system, from your partner, your family, your friends, your job, and eventually your financial well being. It is entirely possible for a person to end up homeless and penniless, desperate for a quiet place with an Internet connection so they can fulfill their addiction one more time. A porn addiction really isn’t any different than a drug addiction or a food addiction. Whenever one thing begins to completely control your life, you have a serious addiction issue to deal with.
Diagnosing Internet porn addiction isn’t that difficult since the symptoms are fairly easy to identify. If a person has an unreasonable amount of porn stashed away or saved on their hard drive, it could be a sign of a problem. If a person is constantly looking to download more porn even though they have plenty already, it might be a sign that something is wrong. If a person chooses to spend almost all of their free time looking at porn at the expense of the rest of their social life or at the expense of a relationship, they most certainly have an addiction problem.
Like any other kind of addiction, porn addiction can be emotionally and financially devastating. Unless an addicted person is approached and made to recognize that they have a problem, the behavior will likely continue until some major event, such as a divorce, allows the person to see the error of their ways. In extreme cases, even catastrophic events such as a divorce don’t help. Often times, an intervention is needed to help a person see their mis-steps leading to a path of self-destruction. An Internet porn addiction is not something to be taken lightly.
