Speaking on ... Pornography addiction
Oct 03, 2010 | 2090 views | 0 0 comments | 14 14 recommendations | email to a friend | print
Sad, but true, pornography continues to be the largest money maker on the Internet.

Unlike earlier times when adolescents and young adults had to face the embarrassment of purchasing pornographic material from a clerk at a store, today pornography is only a few key strokes away in the privacy of one’s home.

This privacy has freed natural inhibitions. By 2010, 25 percent of all Internet traffic found its way to sexually related websites — websites easily accessible even to grade school children.

By early adolescence, more and more teens are finding themselves lured into a desperate addiction early in life, an addiction that can have profound impact upon normal development.

By young adulthood, this addiction finds full expression as the individual may feel as though he is digging a deeper and darker hole.

Older adults may find themselves impulsively and compulsively spending hours every week attempting to satisfy this addiction. The deeper he digs, the darker it becomes, as more and more dirt surrounds him. Once the hole is deep enough, he will find himself struggling with the following issues.

1. Preoccupation: While preforming other necessary tasks at home, work, or school, there is a preoccupation with pornographic thought and images.

2. Repetition: Hours pass as the individual repeatedly views pornographic material, sometimes resulting in a failure to fulfill major role obligations at work, school or home.

3. Humiliation: Even after facing embarrassment and humiliation with family, friends or co-workers, the individual returns to the same patterns of behavior.

4. Deterioration: This obsession with pornography continues despite persistent or recurrent social or interpersonal problems which are exacerbated by the activity.

5. Tolerance: Like any other drug, there is increasing tolerance, meaning that more and more of the drug is needed to produce the same results. Thus, for the pornographic viewer, what once stimulated and satisfied ceases to do so. This results in longer periods of viewing and/or increasingly harder core pornography.

6. Withdrawal: When pornography becomes the drug of choice, it becomes more important than any other aspect of one’s life. This translates into increasing withdrawal and isolation which becomes fertile ground for depression. Depression, in turn, feeds this addiction.

7. Finances: Lured by the enticement of slick web-sites, individuals report spending thousands of dollars in a vain attempt to quench an unquenchable appetite.

8. Control: There is a desire to control this sexual activity and simultaneous failed attempts to do so.

Like any other addiction, admitting to the addiction, being willing to honestly deal with the addiction, finding support from family and friends, and an effective treatment program can help the individual find his way out of his dark hole and back to the light.