Unlike other addictions, pornography addiction is relatively easy to hide.

Research indicates that pornography can be extremely addictive. Pornography conditions a person to respond emotionally and sexually to a self-centered, artificial world. Many online relationships are similar to pornography in that they are not based in reality: what individuals read and see about people, relationships, and sex is distorted.

Viewing pornography can distort realistic views of healthy sexuality, lead to the objectification of women, and promote sexual gratification as a top emotional priority.

Every person finds ways to deal with the stress, anxiety, fear, boredom, and insecurity in their life. An addict is a person who has used addictive activities or substances as a way to deal with these things. Because pornography is readily accessible and can serve as a way to cope with anxiety, fear, boredom, etc., it often is used. This use can easily escalate into addiction.

The alternative
to pornography
is not always easy.

Intimacy, having a good relationship, loving your children, involves work.

Pornography is fantasy in the place of reality. But it is just that -- fantasy. Pornography is not real, and the only thing human beings get nourishment from is reality, from real relationships.

Addiction progression

1. Addiction
   • The person finds he compulsively views pornography.
      
2. Escalation
   • The addicted person seeks progressively harder core pornography to get the same effect.
      
3. Desensitization
   • Tolerance increases to progressively explicit material.
      
4. Acting Out Sexually
   • The person seeks to act out fantasies viewed in the pornography (prostitution, adultery, etc.).

Here are some resources you may find helpful:

Candeo

SA Lifeline

Cure the Craving

LDS Hope and Recovery

Out in the Light

Recovery Nation

Safe Famillies

SRI

Combating Pornography

Pornography distorts healthy emotions

Pornography is often used as a way to deal with negative emotions and to cope with life’s problems, just as alcohol or illicit drugs might be abused.

It conditions the participant into having a sexual deviancy and/or disturbing a bonded relationship with a spouse or girlfriend.

A frequent side effect is that it also dramatically reduces the capacity to love, have friendship, affection, caring, and other normal healthy emotions and traits. Their sexual side becomes in a sense dehumanized. Many develop an “alien ego state” (or dark side), whose core is antisocial lust, devoid of most values. In time, the “high”” obtained from pornography becomes more important than real life relationships.

Lust is the opposite of human intimacy; it’s a self-indulgent fantasy which separates the sex from emotional connection. It is always insatiably ‘hungry’ and the addict will risk family, job, and church to indulge in this hunger.

Pornography is extremely addictive. Regularly viewing pornography can destroy the ability to experience healthy and empathic relationships with others. It almost always leads to couple/marital disharmony, sometimes divorce or the breaking up of other intimate relationships.

Because pornography involves emotional, chemical, and physical stimulation, it can reset the brain in such a way that normal, healthy sexual experiences become unsatisfying and unfulfilling. Increasingly extreme or deviant sexual acts are often required to bring about sexual satisfaction. As a result, pornography addiction frequently destroys healthy marital relationships and can lead to sexual acting out with self and others or other immoral behavior.

Pornography as a drug

While many individuals initially seek pornography out of a desire for excitement, anticipation, and pleasure, pornography is also often used as a way to escape from or cope with feelings of anxiety, fear, anger, stress, frustration, boredom, restlessness, loneliness, and insecurity. In this way, pornography becomes a drug used to cope with life problems, just as alcohol or illicit drugs might be used.

Pornography addiction is progressive.

It typically starts out with occasionally looking at pictures of scantily dressed people and then progresses from soft-core to hard-core pornography. This progression can lead to acting out behaviors such as online and in-person emotional and sexual affairs, visiting strip clubs, soliciting prostitutes, child pornography, sexual abuse of self or others, exhibitionism, voyeurism, rape, and sex in the context of violence.

Women for Decency © 2012 All rights reserved