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Addiction to pornography, although often underestimated, is to be one of the most dangerous addictions of modern man - after all, more and more people are using easy access to pornographic content. But does viewing sexually explicit photos and videos amount to porn addiction? How does it work and how can it be cured?

Porn addictionhas been a frequently raised issue in recent years. According to a 2016 report by the research company Gemius, as many as 11.5 million Poles go to "erotic websites", which constitutes 45.9 percent of Internet users. On the other hand, the data of the Institute of Integrated Prevention operating at the Ministry of He alth show that pornography is watched by 66 percent of middle school students and 20 percent of middle school students. Out of this group, 95 percent of boys and 81 percent of girls search for erotic content online. It was the Internet that contributed to the prevalence of this phenomenon - even 20 years ago, in order to have access to pornography, you had to go to a newsstand for a newspaper or borrow a cassette with a film, which for many was associated with too much shame. Today, access to pornography is universal and largely free. So the road to porn addiction seems not that difficult.

Porn addiction - how to recognize it?

Meanwhile, the matter is more complicated. While there is a disease entity such as sex addiction, there is no medical definition of porn addiction - pornography is, along with sexual obsessions and compulsive masturbation, one of the elements of sex addiction. Nevertheless, psychologists try to draw the line between viewing porn simply for pleasure and the addiction it causes.

80 percent of men and 20 percent of women aged 18-30 watch porn at least once a week.

Watching pornography should not arouse anxiety if it is a supplement to sexual life, a form of fun or even inspiration to use the content watched with a partner in real reality. We deal with porn addiction when it begins to interfere with everyday lifefunctioning: contacts with friends, family, and above all a partner - when we prefer to spend time watching pornography on the Internet than having sex with a loved one, and when at all costs - against the will of the partner - we insist that the content of the watched movies be transferred to our own erotic life. The problem also arises when we are not able to get aroused without pornography, when masturbation while watching movies becomes not only a way to release sexual but also emotional tension. Viewing pornographic material will never be effective in this matter, and the constant lack of satisfaction will lead to the feeling of an internal compulsion to watch erotic content during the day, at work. Symptoms of porn addiction not only can lead to problems in professional life (the Gemius study cited above also shows that 791,000 Internet users watch porn at work) - but most of all in private life, which has huge consequences for the person with whom the addict is addicted. relationship. For singles, porn addiction makes it harder to find your "other half".

Stages of porn addiction

Psychologist Victor Cline of the University of Utah has categorized porn addiction into four grades - from least severe to most severe1 :

1. Pleasure seeking phase- start viewing erotic material and return to it in order to achieve sexual arousal. In this phase, the main motives of a porn viewer are: wanting to experiment, experience new sensations, satisfy boredom.

2. Pleasure intoxication phase- increasing the need to watch pornographic materials, including those that contain drastic and deviant content. This is because tolerance to both stimuli and non-standard sexual behavior increases.

We most often watch pornography at home, but already over 5 million Poles play pornographic content on mobile devices: phones and tablets.

3. The pleasure phase as the overarching goal- making you insensitive to materials that initially seemed shocking - at this stage they are not only acceptable but also desirable. Defense mechanisms emerge - denial, rationalization, to help the porn addict convince himself that there is no problem.

4. Pleasure intoxication phase as the norm- Increased desire to try viewed pornographic content in your sex life. A porn addict stays in a circlepleasure-pain. Performed sexual activities related to pornography bring pleasure, what is not related to them is a pain. Other areas of a person's activity become less important, as if they are beyond his consciousness.

Porn addiction - what does science say?

Research on viewing pornography and its impact on the audience of this type of content has been conducted for many years. They show, among other things, that pornography addiction affects the brain in the same way as … cocaine. Dr. Valerie Voon of the University of Cambridge conducted a study2on 19 sex addicted men who had watched pornography from an early age - to see how their brain reacts to the content presented. It turned out that particularly strong reactions were observed at three sites: the ventral striatum, the amygdala, and the anterior cingulate cortex. The ventral part of the striatum is associated with punishment and reward, the anterior cingulate cortex - with the reward itself, while the amygdala is also activated when we use cocaine and heroin. However, the researcher emphasized that sex addiction and drug addiction cannot be compared in any way - the former belongs to behavioral addictions, i.e. addictions not related to the use of psychoactive substances, and these are drugs. So they are different addictions, although the brain reacts similarly to the factor that is their source.

The least numerous group of Poles viewing pornography on the Internet are people aged 55+.

It has also been discovered that the very belief that you are addicted to pornography has a very negative effect on the psyche of the viewer, it is a source of pain for him. In turn, scientists from Case Western Reserve University, Bowling Green State University and Youngstown State University have proved3by studying over 636 students that in the case of pornography it is not the mere fact of watching it, but the sense of addiction higher levels of anxiety and anger among young people. People who perceived themselves as addicted to pornography and were religious at the same time felt more guilty and stressed more than those who claimed to be addicted but not religious. The study included the level of neuroticism, the level of self-control, gender and a tendency towards a positive self-presentation in a given person.

Worth knowing

Porn Addiction Treatment

People addicted to pornography most often seek help during therapy - individual or group. It is worth adding that viewing pornography is often not the casethe cause in itself, and it results from the emotional tension caused by the suppression of fear, sadness, weakness, which the addict tries to discharge through pornography. In the treatment of addiction, the support of a partner is very important. In many cases, therapies are effective and their success depends primarily on the patient himself.

Sources:

1. Access to information on the website: https://pl.scribd.com/document/38709763/Victor-Cline-s-Study-About-Pornography-in-Adults-and-Children

2. Access to research at: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0102419

3. Access to research at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24519108

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Sex problems