Inside The World of Porn Addiction | Men's Health Magazine Australia

Inside The World of Porn Addiction

"The widespread use of internet porn is one of the fastest-moving, most global experiments ever unconsciously conducted."
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“With porn and alcohol and different things like that, people think it’s a willpower issue, but it’s not. It’s literally a lack of information issue. Because the trick is you think it’s great. Everything works for you until it doesn’t, and that was one of the things I really wanted to get out,” Terry Crews told Jimmy Kimmel, referencing his porn addiction.

“I was addicted to pornography since I was 12 years old. Let me tell you. My father was addicted to alcohol and my mother was addicted to religion. So what happens is you had an addictive household.”

The news, which first came out in January 2017, came as a shock to most of the actor’s fans. Infidelity? Sure. Deceit? Got it. But porn addiction? How scandalous.

And while it was so easy to mark the issue as uncommon, it was never going to be the first or last time we heard of it.

In 2002, Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen’s divorce played out while she was pregnant. E! News reported that Denise Richards cited his “habit” when she filed for divorce.

Yet it’s not just men. American singer Andra Day revealed to InStyle, in a profile published on Tuesday, that she too battled with sex and porn addiction in her past.

“I didn’t want any element of sexualization,” the “Rise Up” singer, 36, told the magazine. “I had come out of something in my own life — dealing with porn addiction, sex addiction.”

She added, “I’m being very, very candid with you because I’m not the only one. But I knew I wanted all of that very much gone.”

So isn’t it time we spoke about it? After all, it’s no secret that pornography is playing an increasingly important (and mostly negative) role in sexual education, especially at the rate it is consumed today.

In Australia, and across the globe, pornography still generates more internet traffic than anything else online. Majority of men (84%) and about half of women (54%) reported that they regularly look at pornographic material, with 13 being the average age people watch porn for the first time.

Sure, porn is nothing new, but thanks to high-speed internet, and an ever-growing pool of content, an increasing number of people who grew up with internet porn are calling it a super stimulant they’ve become addicted to, even saying it has the capacity to rewire the brain.

According to a survey of Australian adults, around 4.4% of men and 1.2% of women consider themselves porn addicts, and while that may seem low, you can imagine how many people would chose not to share such information. The statistics also don’t include teenagers, a group increasingly likely to perceive themselves as porn addicts.

“The widespread use of internet porn is one of the fastest-moving, most global experiments ever unconsciously conducted,” retired science teacher Gary Wilson said in his 2012 Ted Talk, The Great Porn Experiment, which has racked up over 13 million views. Wilson, who also runs the Your Brain On Porn website, has been instrumental in promulgating the idea that porn is a public health issue.

Wilson argues, as per cnet, that ‘our hunter-gatherer brain, exposed to hours of pornography each week for years on end, becomes accustomed to super high levels of stimulation and begins to rewire itself, becoming numb to everyday pleasures but keenly receptive to porn. Watching porn, he says, creates a vicious cycle that leads to the erosion of willpower and the formation of an addiction.’

Spend a little time researching and you will come across NoFap: probably the biggest online community that treats porn as addictive (with over 725,000 members on Reddit alone). Started in 2011 as a challenge to see how long men could go without masturbating, NoFap is now a community that warns both men and women about the health risks associated with porn use.

For those who consider themselves addicted, communities like NoFap prescribe a “reboot period” to undo the neurological harm they say is caused by years of pornography abuse. Reboots usually span 90 days, but if symptoms persist, can take over six months.

Online communities have different guidelines for “rebooting.” There are three main variations: No porn; no porn or masturbation; and no porn, masturbation or sex (aka “hard mode”). Though these communities tend to view porn, rather than masturbation, as the problem, they argue that the brain benefits from a deep detox of all porn-related stimuli.

But like any addiction, it’s never going to be that easy. For people like Steve*, it was around the time he tried to pressure his third girlfriend into making porn that he realised he had an issue.

“In all three of my major relationships, girls have felt second to it. Some try to be involved, I guess to connect with me more when they’re feeling neglected,” the 31-year-old told the ABC.

“I would always pressure girls to do things I assume they’d have never even considered.

“It’s hard to tell if they were genuinely into things or if they just put it on.”

“I have always thought I was just addicted to wanking, but I now believe it’s the porn I’m hooked on and masturbation is a side effect,” he said. “I’m actually in the middle of trying to get rid of it completely. It 100 per cent still gives me enjoyment, I just don’t think it’s healthy anymore and I’m trying to stop.”

Steve’s cautionary tale mirrors the message educators are desperately trying to drum into teen boys and girls today: be careful where you take your sexual cues from, and don’t believe everything you see online.

By Nikolina Ilic

Nikolina is the former Digital Editor at Men's Health Australia, responsible for all things social media and .com. A lover of boxing, she has written for Women's Health, esquire, GQ and Vogue magazine.

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