Pornozavisimosti: Pathology or habit
"ATTENTION: Don Juan's Passions" can be a serious trigger. for people with sex and porn addiction. If you are undergoing a course of getting rid of sex and porn addiction, you should view the viewing with caution. After viewing, it is recommended to call a sponsor or another person who supports your struggle with addiction. ”With such a warning, the Psych Central Mental Health Infoblog begins the analysis of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s film“ The Passion of Don Juan, ”in which the addiction to watching online porn poisons life the main character.
This behavior or disease
Detailed notification is probably best illustrated by the attitude to the phenomenon of porn addiction. Its scale is not easy to assess, but it is obvious that the era of the Internet and almost unlimited access to any kind of pornography has become a magnifying glass, which has made the problem much more visible - and more serious. They strongly warn about painful porn addiction, they research it, consult it, try to cure it. There are lines of urgent psychological assistance for porn-dependent and support groups, including those created in the image of anonymous alcoholics and based on programs from N steps. Porno dependence is discussed in public speaking, documentaries and artistic culture (the same "Passions of Don Juan").
Doctors are still not in a hurry to classify porn addiction as pathology: there is no addiction in official documents such as the International Classification of Diseases or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). However, psychologists recognize that the irresistible craving for pornography can cause discomfort both to the addict himself and to those around him.
While experts are limited to the term "compulsive behavior" and separately highlight "problematic viewing of Internet pornography." But what does this mean in practice? And where does the passion for pornography, in relation to which public morality has softened much in recent years, end and problem behavior that destroys personal life and really affects the psyche begins?
Much is how much?
A survey conducted ten years ago in the United States revealed that every fifth American between the ages of 18 and 24 watches porn every day or every other day. Since then, this percentage has hardly decreased (rather the opposite), and pornography itself has ceased to be something uniquely taboo. So where is the line beyond which the habit turns into dependence?
There is no "safe norm" for the consumption of pornography (hereinafter, we will primarily mean online porn, as the most accessible), of course, does not exist. Addiction is determined not so much by the frequency of viewing or the time that the user spends in pornogs, but by individual psychological effects, and the main “red light” among them is the loss of self-control. If you experience “breaking up” without porn and are ready to watch it in completely inappropriate conditions (for example, in a house full of people, or in transport), you can almost certainly talk about dependence.
Among other signs and stages of diving into pornaddiction, the compilers of the checklist point out: tolerance and loss of sensitivity (a person needs more and more porn in order to get excited - or it should be much more naturalistic and tough); falling self-esteem and growing dissatisfaction with real sex (which is starting to sound like "bad porn"); the need to copy what is seen on the screen (including domination, turning into violence); the need to lie to others (the person promises to quit watching porn, but does not do it or breaks down time after time); general psychological stress (viewing does not give relief, but, on the contrary, makes a person even more nervous), anxiety and self-isolation.
Does porn destroy family
Diagnosis of porn addiction is complicated by the fact that it is not always possible to select it in a pure, pure form. The irresistible craving for porn and its signs in themselves can be the consequences and symptoms of other, deeper psychological problems, including sex addiction, depression and dissatisfaction with personal life.
Statistics collected back in 2003, claimed that half a million families in the United States fall apart because of viewing pornography, but experts question this data: saying, "We parted because he (a) constantly watched (a) pornography," interviewed Often they confuse cause and effect or consciously replace them. Of course, in the question "Can I watch porn while in a relationship?" not everyone shows liberal views. But when discussing the correlation between drunken porn views and divorces, one must keep in mind the obvious thing: no relationship exactly serves the purpose of strengthening relationships.
How porn affects the psyche
"Watching porn turns people into rapists!" - Another thesis, popular among those who insist on tightening control over network pornography. Although it looks like a city horror story, eagerly replicated by puritans (the same that show the unequivocal connection between listening to gangsta rap and rising crime), there’s really some truth in it: among the notorious serial killers like Ted Bundy and Edmund Kemper for those who, for various reasons and at different ages, have developed porn addiction. According to Neal Malamute of the University of California, pornography can "add fuel to the fire" and increase a person's predisposition to violence. This is not a reason for generalizations, but also not a reason to turn a blind eye to possible side effects - less odious, but much more common.
The main risk group, if we talk about addiction to porn, are teenagers. If you believe the data of Dr. Carolyn Ross, the first acquaintance with the sex video of a modern child often occurs already in elementary grades, at the age of 8-9 years. Such an early threshold of entry terrifies family psychologists and parental committees, and indeed, the habit of watching porn, developed between the ages of 14-15, can seriously distort the adolescent's ideas about real, non-stopping sex (especially when there is no one to explain to him that "adult films" are it's still a fantasy, no matter how realistic it looks) and in the future will develop depending (although it excites researchers much less than other consequences, like propaganda of unprotected sex, which the vast majority of rnorolikov somehow helps).
Nevertheless, convincing evidence of the destructive impact of pornography on the psyche of adolescents, again, was not found. The “unsafe” Internet alone is not enough to grow a monster - or at least a porn-dependent person. The lack of timely sexual distribution in this sense can do much more harm.
Treatment for porn addiction
Overcoming porn addiction can be a long and difficult process, fraught with constant breakdowns. Treatment most often involves group therapy and a program that more or less resembles the “twelve steps” for people with alcohol or drug addiction. Separate groups for porn addicts are still relatively rare - they are most often combined with people who are addicted to sex, meaning that one subset is in the second. The porn-addiction treatment courses were held by comedian Chris Rock and actor from the Brooklyn 9-9 series, a former footballer Terry Crews.
Various content filters are also used, which reject web pages, where a banner trigger capable of provoking a breakdown can be caught by a person who is getting rid of dependence. Drug treatment of porn addiction is questionable, although ten years ago it was reported about its successful use.
It is worth remembering that porn addiction is still in the field of self-diagnosis (frontman of the Red Hot Chili Peppers group Anthony Kiedis admitted that at some point he began to feel his passion for porn as a drug addiction). But people who call themselves porn addicts are not always true. And yet if you went through the dependency checklist and found in it not one, but several matches, consult a psychiatrist.
