So… this is an awkward article for me to write, yet it’s necessary. Some time ago I used to fiercely believe in porn addiction and believe that I used to have it. I felt so strongly about the existence of porn addiction and the harms of porn that I wrote a seven thousand word essay about it. I was wrong. This article is both an explanation of why someone could falsely believe porn addiction exists and also an apology for me being wrong before.
Porn addiction or porn dependency? Are they the same thing?
“Addiction” is a term that implies medical acceptance and while it might be tempting to simplify things and say “I had a porn addiction”, what I really should be saying is that I had a dependency on it once upon a time.
The critical difference between the two words “addiction” and “dependency” (as far as I’m concerned) is that having a dependency on something doesn’t mean that thing is inherently harmful.
At Psychology Today even professional psychologists contradict one another on the topic. Qualified writer and author David J Ley has written several articles denying that porn addiction exists, even openly disagreeing with famed psychologist Dr Zimbardo. Psychologist Grant Hilary Brenner (on the same website) leans towards pornography being potentially addictive.
Experts agree that even if porn use is not a clinical disorder, an individual’s use is a problem if he or she believes it to be one.
Psychology Today
Just because I believe porn isn’t inherently harmful, doesn’t mean I don’t think it can do harm. I know that porn can do harm, purely because it did me harm for a very long time. The truth is though, my problems were already within me before I became reliant on porn.
Why I falsely believed I had a porn addiction
Sometimes, it’s easier to believe that something external is bad, rather than accept that one has been vulnerable. Fighting against perceived “bad things” can give one a sense of purpose and belonging.
I haven’t suffered any real traumas in life, nothing objectively horrendous has ever happened to me. Nowadays I also consider myself mentally strong. Like many people though, I’ve still been prone to bouts of loneliness and self-doubt (particularly in my teenage years).
The truth is that isolation and teenage lack of confidence caused me to become dependent on porn. Later on in my life, bad relationships made me even more reliant. My over-reliance on porn caused me to temporarily find real sex a bit plain, so that also caused me some sexual issues (delayed ejaculation / occasional ED).
When I initially “cured” myself with talk therapy and avoiding porn for some time, a sexologist phrased something badly. The sexologist I saw didn’t speak English well and mentioned to me that “porn can cause some of these problems”. The same person also insisted that my history of bad relationships meant that I couldn’t be adequately aroused. What I think he meant is that my bad relationships were causing some of my problems but that my excessive use of porn definitely wasn’t helping either. The mistake I made was to put more emphasis on what he said about porn.
Accepting that porn was bad gave me a tangible reason for my previous problems. The further I looked into “porn addiction”, the further I became falsely convinced that porn was at the root of all my problems. Joining the “porn is bad” club meant that I had people who understood me and supported me. By writing a big essay on the subject of my perceived porn addiction, that game me some sense of belonging.
In a nutshell, those are all the reasons that I falsely believed that I was addicted to porn.
What didn’t cause me problems: Shame
Early on in my life, there wasn’t any excessive shame towards the use of porn.
My father definitely wasn’t against porn and used to keep it himself. When he found out I use porn too, he mainly told me to keep it private and not to do it where people could see me. My father was actually terrible at hiding his own porn. I used to find it and even steal it sometimes. So in my case, there wasn’t really a problem with shame around porn when I was young (no more than for anyone else anyway).
Later on in my life, a bad relationship caused me to have more shame around porn. An ex partner was very against me using porn and so I had to hide it from her. Whenever she would find out I’d been watching it, she’d yell and scream. The ironic thing is, the relationship was so unhealthy that I had to depend on porn to stick at it.
Shame has never been a huge problem for me, regardless of jealous partners and friends making jokes. The one thing I did become a bit ashamed of later on in my life was the amount of time I used to spend on porn, because that was genuinely excessive. I also felt shame about some of the problems that I had, though it’s disputable to say that the shame was inherently linked to the simple idea of me using porn. I used it too much and that’s the real thing I felt bad about.
Real sexual problems
The final personal reason for me incorrectly believing in porn addiction is that I genuinely suffered sexual problems as a result of using it too much. Fundamentally, it was very difficult for one person to satisfy me in plan vanilla sex while I was at the same time spending far too long consuming specific and fetishistic kinds of porn.
My mind wasn’t working in my favour back then. I obsessed over specific body parts, situations, colours, clothing and I had several fetishes. There are some obsessions I would have had regardless of my porn use. Yet many fixations I have had were the direct result of repeated exposure to that kind of porn.
Using porn too much for me meant, desensitisation of my mind and penis. Death grip and speedy hand caused me to find real sex too subtle in sensation and seeing so much porn all the time made real life plain. What that caused in practice is delayed ejaculation and occasionally erectile dysfunction. It took me some time to realise that these two sexual issues were psychological in cause rather than physical. Even after I discovered that the issues were psychological, I continued incorrectly believing that porn was the origin of the problem.
Porn isn’t inherently harmful
I use porn sometimes and it doesn’t harm me anymore. The problem before was that I consumed porn far too much and as we know, too much of anything can be a bad thing.
Nowadays I do my best to consume more ethical porn than I used to. There are great new companies out there like Beautiful Agony and XConfessions (Erika Lust), as well as others. I admit that I don’t always use those when I do watch porn, however I choose them more often than not.
“Ethical porn” probably means different things to different people. To me it means avoiding the circulation of harmful sexual messages, avoiding discrimination, paying performers fairly and treating performers with dignity.
In addition to ethical porn, I believe we should speak more about moderating porn usage rather than stopping it entirely. I used to believe I couldn’t control my overuse of porn, yet now years after it no longer being a problem, I have been proven incorrect. I can moderate myself because now I’m happy, healthy and don’t need it. The trick is to avoid exclusively masturbating to porn. So long as I can still masturbate without it, I feel totally fine and it no longer causes me issues.
So what to do about the overuse of porn?
Porn shouldn’t be banned, however there is a problem with some of it. For a starter, it’s far too easy for children to access it. I discovered hardcore porn when I was too young in my opinion. I distinguish between hardcore porn and nudity because I don’t consider it to be an issue. Parents now have better tools than ever to control internet access, however there are still some issues. Young people don’t have the life experience to understand the problems that overuse of porn can cause, they also don’t have the experience to know what they see on screen can’t always happen in real life.
As an adult, I believe the trick to the overuse of porn is to simply take a good long break from it. Rather than saying “never again”, I encourage simple moderation when people inevitably start looking at it again.
Should porn be free?
Free porn is a controversial topic because so many people enjoy accessing it for free. I’m not sure where I stand on the issue myself for the moment. I recognise the problems of porn being free but so far I haven’t heard of any satisfactory solutions.
The problem with asking people to give credit card details to access porn (even if they aren’t charged) is that it opens up a lot of opportunity for scams and privacy violations. Locking porn away won’t work either because if a young person wants to access it enough, they’ll find a way in.
Porn will be free for as long as people are willing to watch it. If there was a movement away from mainstream porn to alternative paid options, the problem of free porn might diminish somewhat. The likelihood of people abandoning free porn in mass seems unlikely to me however, so I guess it’s a problem we’re going to have to live with and attempt to mitigate individually.
The language and themes in porn
One question that is not being asked: What is porn doing to us and are we OK with that?
Philip Zimbardo
Us sex bloggers hold each other and Sex Toy companies to account for their language and marketing choices. Discrimination in the Sex Toy industry doesn’t often pass without being called out by important influencers. In porn, there isn’t the same level of expectation.
In porn, companies, writers and performers are free to present things as they like. If they want to be racist, discriminative or spread harmful messages, they can. There are few influential people legitimately criticising porn producers for the language and themes in their work. The main influential people calling out specific porn companies are religious people with an agenda and of course… they aren’t welcome in this debate.
What we need, are people who enjoy porn and like using porn to start holding producers to account, just like Sex Toy reviewers hold Sex Toy companies to account. The only people that can affect the themes and language used in porn are those consuming it.
Don’t trust TraffickingHub or Fight The New Drug
Unfortunately, there are organisations out there that want to abolish pornography for their own religious agenda.
TraffickingHub is the worst offender of all. They are part of a group called ExodusCry, an extreme evangelical Christian group. ExodusCry is against homosexuality, sex workers and they are now using sexual abuse survivors to further their agenda.
When I first discovered TraffickingHub I was impressed with their information, evidence and the video they made. They totally hid the fact that they were part of an extreme Christian group. After I found out about the religious agenda, I felt betrayed and angry.
TraffickingHub has done a lot of harm to the legitimate criticism of pornography.
Fight The New Drug is another organisation that claims to be non-religious. Unfortunately they can’t be fully trusted either because that organisation too was founded by members of the Mormon Church (including the leader).
Religion has no part to play in discussions on pornography.
The “porn can be harmful” studies
On the behavioural level, patients were slowed down by pornographic material depending on their pornography consumption in the last week.
Science Direct
In 2020, a scientific study showed that pornographic pictures can negatively affect working memory and decrease brain performance. Another discovery often talked about from this same study is that the patient group remembered pornographic images more vividly than non-pornographic images. Healthy test subjects remembered pornographic images no better than non-pornographic images.
I dispute the meanings that are extracted from tests like this. Some people are just more sexual and so of course they would remember pornographic images more vividly. I’m sure I would remember a pornographic image more than a normal one… sex and nudity is interesting.
Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder is characterized by a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges resulting in repetitive sexual behaviour and psychological strain.
Science Direct
Compulsions are complicated and the reasons for repeating an activity is too. My sexual behaviour was certainly compulsive and intense when it came to porn, yet I believe the origins of my distress lay elsewhere. Porn was simply the thing I turned to for comfort and release… my comfort food.
Reviewing this data in the context of current usage patterns is particularly concerning; 87% of college age men view pornography, 50% weekly and 20 daily or every other day, with 31% of women viewing as well. The predictive effect of pornography on sexual behavior in adolescents has also been demonstrated.
Donald L. Hilton, Jr and Clark Watts
Extracts like this can be interpreted one way or another depending on the agenda of the person using it. Using porn too often clearly causes problems and it is obvious that there are some problems with the quantity and frequency with which it is being used. It makes sense to me that the overuse of porn can lead to predictive problems. However to suggest that this means “porn is bad” is a step too far for me.
There are too many variables at play when it comes to studies like this. How many of these people are introverts vs extroverts? How many live in cities? How many feel isolated, misunderstood or under-confident? How many are repressed? How many are in bad relationships? How many are studying or working so much that they don’t have time for real relationships? In my opinion, to give the data any meaning, these other factors are some of the things that we need to know.
Modern life is busy, stressful and unnatural. We are social animals and weren’t designed to live as we do now. Desmond Morris once observed that if animals were packed together as closely as humans are, they’d go crazy. While we might not describe ourselves as crazy, many of us have issues. My point is that the dependence on porn we can observe could be the unnatural result of an unnatural and distressing situation that we all share – modern life.
How I lied to myself about porn holding back my Sex Life
Again, it’s sometimes easier to lie to ourselves than to accept difficult truths with painful consequences.
Being a teenager with no girlfriend, I didn’t once think about moderating my porn use. Nobody ever told me that porn use needs to be moderated. I knew not to eat too much sugar, knew not to watch too much television… but somehow I let myself believe that porn was an exception to the rule. By the time I finally got a girlfriend I had a warped idea of what it meant to be intimate with someone.
My porn consumption dropped when I first started pursuing girls. Yet when I started having sex, I couldn’t climax or enjoy it. Even though my enjoyment of sex remained low, my need for companionship was high. As my sex life evolved, I became good at hiding my climax problems. I faked orgasms and found ways to distract my partner sexually while I brought myself to orgasm. Sometimes I would even go to the bathroom after sex to bring myself to climax there.
While my initial use of porn caused me to have unrealistic expectations, I was also in bad relationships for a very long time. My partners weren’t right for me and some of the relationships were toxic. Instead of admitting that, I found ways to hide the fact from myself. Porn was just one of those ways.
Things that may help people who believe they have a dependency on porn
As I’ve mentioned and suggested several times, I no longer have a dependency on porn. I don’t believe it was an addiction, I believe it was a dependence caused by other things. Whenever I do use porn now, I do so in moderation. Here are some tips for those who want to reduce their reliance on porn.
Don’t obsessively collect porn
If you ever find yourself obsessively collecting porn, stop. A big part of my dependency became curating the collection of porn I kept. Collecting and categorising porn was like comfort eating. It made me feel good while I did it and caused me trouble when I wasn’t. I hid porn in many places so occasionally I still stumble upon it. Yet deleting my main porn collection was one of the best steps I took towards reducing my reliance on porn.
Try masturbating without porn occasionally
When I first began trying to masturbate without porn, I found the experience boring and frustrating. I kept trying though and now I don’t need porn at all. My own fantasies are strong enough without visual material and I also don’t always need fantasy. Sometimes enjoying the pleasure coming from my own body is enough. My advice is to keep trying to masturbate without porn, because for me it helped make things better with sex.
Actually research sex
Mainstream porn only ever teaches us warped sexuality. By researching sex, you will not only gain knowledge but also confidence. Books like “She Comes First”, “Mating in Captivity”, “Come as you are”, books from the School of Life and of course Nancy Friday’s books have all been a massive help to me. That’s not to mention the huge amount of information online.
Researching things that can make you better at sex is a GREAT way to replace time spent watching porn.
Stop using ‘death grip’
I used to use ‘death grip’ a lot while masturbating. For me it meant that penis in vagina sex didn’t stimulate me enough. I became too accustomed to my own forceful grip and speed. One way of recovering from death grip is to use a good masturbator instead, such as a Fleshlight (you can’t squeeze them).
Experiment with sex toys
I’ve already mentioned Fleshlights. Look into other sex toys too. If you’ve been reliant on porn, you may have also been reliant on the sensation of your own hand. By experimenting with different sex toys, my body became used to a far wider range of sensations which in turn improved sex for me.
Get help from a professional sexologist or psychologist
I release it’s expensive but speaking to a professional was one of the best things I ever did. I strongly encourage you to go to see a professional psychologist / sexologist if you believe you are reliant on porn. With an objective point of view, a professional may be able to shed new light on your problem.
Conclusion on my experiences with “porn addiction”
Thousands of people read my original essay on porn addiction in both English and French. It gave me pleasure at the time to think that these people were “being helped” by my experiences and opinions. I researched my porn addiction essay a lot. I read books (including Gary Wilson’s), looked through studies, read the opinions of qualified psychologists and read other people’s experiences. I put a great amount of effort and time into that essay, plus the French translation – however I’ve now deleted them both from this website – that’s’ how strongly I’ve changed my mind.
In my opinion, porn addiction doesn’t exist. I’ve read the books, I’ve looked at the studies, I’ve read other people’s accounts and I even believed in it myself once. I also did “NoFap” and recovered from dependence on porn by quitting it temporarily.
The truth is, porn was only ever a dependency for me. I was too proud to admit that I was vulnerable and that my problems came from within and from staying too long in bad relationships.
This new article hopefully gives some clarity to how someone might falsely believe they have a porn addiction. I’m not a psychologist, sexologist or doctor and I don’t pretend that I can speak for everybody. However I hope that if you believe that you have a porn addiction, you will question yourself for at least a moment. While the symptoms of porn dependency can be distressing… in my opinion you are looking in the wrong place by blaming porn. Consider other possibilities and if you are truly very distressed, see a sexologist or psychologist. Whatever it is that is troubling you, you got this.
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