If you’re a regular user of pornography, you may wonder, “Am I addicted to porn?” You might be surprised to learn that pornography addiction is a rising concern. Research shows that about 200,000 Americans have pornography addictions, while 40 million adults in the U.S. say they view pornography regularly.
Since pornography is so easy to access, the number of people who are addicted continues to rise. If you think you may be addicted to porn, there are ways to find out.
What Is Porn Addiction?
Pornography addiction is a compulsive, uncontrollable need to view pornography. It may have begun as viewing porn from time to time, but the behavior increased to the point that it’s impacting your daily responsibilities and relationships. Once you realized it was becoming a problem, you probably tried to stop viewing porn but found you couldn’t, even with repeated attempts to control the behavior.
The inability to stop is because addiction happens in the brain. The brain actually changes the way that it responds to certain stimuli. When you use a particular substance or engage in a behavior, the brain’s reward center is activated more intensely than in someone who doesn’t have an addiction.
Once the reward center is activated, your brain wants to keep feeling this positive release of chemicals, specifically dopamine, that occurs during the process. To get this feeling, the brain encourages you to engage in the behavior that brings about this state of euphoria.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that makes you feel good. The brain releases this chemical during pleasurable activities. When dopamine levels are high for an extended period of time, it can cause you to seek pleasurable sensations.
Over time, pornography will become increasingly important while you push other activities to the side.
Because of the brain’s excessive response to the stimuli, you will feel an overwhelming desire to engage in the addiction, regardless of the negative consequences.
Recognizing Signs of Porn Addiction
People with porn addiction share similar symptoms. Hallmarks of addiction are that it’s harmful to your life, and you can’t stop the behavior, even if you try. Beyond that, consider whether you show these signs of porn addiction.
Signs of porn addiction include:
- Intrusive Thoughts. You think about porn, even when you’re not watching it or you’re trying not to think about it. For example, when you’re trying to focus on work but instead are thinking about how soon you can watch porn.
- Focus. You give up doing other activities you previously enjoyed to view porn instead.
- Secrecy. You try to hide the porn you view from your loved ones, including your partner. You clear your browser history, lie, deny the viewership, or take other actions to avoid getting caught.
- Increased Usage. You spend increasingly more time viewing porn, and you want to spend even more. You even give up other activities or neglect responsibilities to spend more time on porn. For example, your wife wants to attend a weekly dinner with her parents, but you say you don’t feel well, so you can stay home and watch porn.
- Dissatisfaction. You feel unsatisfied until you view porn. You may even feel unsatisfied with your sex life or partner unless porn is involved or you’re acting out a fantasy based on something you’ve seen in pornography.
- Risky Behavior. Porn viewing is resulting in risky behavior. For example, you’re seeking more intense or graphic types of pornography or watching porn in more public places.
- Shame and Guilt. You feel guilt and shame about watching porn, but you continue to do it anyway. Each time you watch porn, you get excited but feel ashamed of yourself when it’s over. You feel like you’ve let yourself and those around you down. You feel out of control of your sexual behaviors and overwhelmed. You may even start questioning whether you’re a good person because of the behavior.
- Disapproval. You continue viewing porn even though your partner doesn’t like the habit and repeatedly asks you to quit.
- Debt. You spend so much money on porn that you put yourself in debt.
- Increased Need. You want to watch increasingly more porn, and what you want to watch is getting more extreme.
- Ignoring Negative Consequences. You ignore the negative consequences of your behavior or justify them. You may pretend your addiction isn’t affecting you or your loved ones, even as you withdraw and live with emotional health issues. You may jeopardize your job or your financial well-being or even deal with physical ailments due to the addiction. Regardless of the specific consequences, you may have a problem if you can’t quit porn but are unwilling to admit it’s a problem.
The Psychological Impact of Porn Addiction
Over time, porn addiction negatively impacts a person’s life, and it grows more damaging if left untreated, just like any other type of addiction or mental health issue. Therefore, it’s essential to understand the dangers of pornography addiction.
Not only does pornography addiction negatively impact your life, but it can also change the way your brain functions. Continuous stimulus from porn hijacks the brain’s reward system, causing it to produce dopamine for extended periods. This process results in the brain’s dopamine receptors shutting down, making it more difficult for the brain to produce dopamine naturally. This suppression reinforces the addiction cycle because you want to improve your mood.
Porn addiction also can reduce the functioning of your frontal cortex, affecting brain functions like willpower and control. It can even cause changes in the brain’s shape, size, and chemical balance.
Further, porn addiction can contribute to the development or worsening of other mental health issues, including depression and anxiety. It also can result in low self-esteem. Not everyone with a pornography addiction will develop additional mental health concerns, but the circumstances surrounding the addiction lead to risks.
Physical and Social Consequences
Beyond your emotional health, pornography addiction also has physical and social consequences.
Porn can become more important than basic care, like hygiene, getting enough sleep or eating. It also can negatively affect your ability to perform sexually, even causing erectile dysfunction in some cases.
Because it can take more to get the same high over time, you may find yourself watching harder pornography or possibly turning to using harmful substances in addition to watching porn.
If you’re spending money to watch pornography, this can quickly escalate, leaving you unable to pay your other financial responsibilities, such as mortgage, utilities, and other bills.
Watching porn can lead to you neglecting your partner. Alternatively, it can damage the relationship you have if you always insist on watching pornography just to have sex, if you consistently expect your partner to fulfill fantasies based on your porn viewing, or if your partner is against pornography in the first place.
As you feel the need to engage with pornography in increasing amounts, this could affect your job as well. You may find that you’re not getting your work done, or you may even lose your job if you’re caught watching porn at work.
Spending more time on pornography can lead you to lose interest in other activities, such as hanging out with friends or even making sure you take a shower. If you continue on this pathway, you could find yourself alone and in debt until you get help for your addiction.
When to Seek Help
If you have to ask, “Am I addicted to porn?” then you may want to speak with a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist like the ones at Begin Again Institute. CSATs will provide a confidential assessment of your situation and make treatment recommendations based on your results. In the meantime, you can take our porn addiction quiz to determine if you’re still uncertain whether there’s a need for concern.
Consider seeing a CSATs if any of the following applies to you:
- You’ve tried to stop viewing pornography but feel you can’t
- You develop mental health problems
- You have other addictions
- You feel guilty about your behavior
- You develop sexual dysfunction with your partner
- It’s affecting your relationship
- It’s interfering with your home, work, school, or social life
- You’re failing to meet your obligations
Treatment Options for Porn Addiction
Many porn addiction treatment methods are effective, so help is available, even if taking control of the addiction feels impossible.
Treatment programs like Begin Again Institute’s 14-Day Men’s Intensive or 14-Day Christian Men’s Intensive help people get a jump start on recovery.
Other recovery methods include:
- Attending individual or couples therapy
- Identifying and avoiding the triggers that make you want to view porn
- Learning relapse signs and having a plan of action when you start them
- Monitoring porn withdrawal symptoms and having a plan to cope with them
- Finding a support group of like-minded people to rely on
Personal Stories: Recovery and Hope
You’re not the first man to experience pornography addiction. Others have been where you are now and have worked their way into recovery through treatment with Begin Again Institute. Alex said BAI changed and saved his life.
Kermit said Boulder Recovery, BAI’s Christian Men’s Intensive, helped him heal from his pornography addiction after many failed attempts to stop.
Support for Partners and Loved Ones
Since pornography addiction also impacts your loved ones, they need help healing, too. Begin Again Institute offers that assistance through our Partner Support Program.
Your partner may experience betrayal trauma as a result of your actions. Betrayal trauma happens when a trusted person you rely on betrays your trust, leaving you emotionally wounded and often questioning your judgment. The closer you are to that person, the more profound the betrayal is.
Betrayal trauma can negatively impact your partner, physically and emotionally. It can cause physical symptoms like headaches or gastrointestinal concerns and can result in depression or anxiety. This trauma can even result in the development of a substance use or eating disorder.
The potentially damaging impact of betrayal is why treating betrayal trauma is integrated into each of our programs at Begin Again Institute. Our team facilitates a virtual support group for partners before, during, and immediately after the men’s treatment programs — at no additional cost.
Help for Pornography Addiction
You don’t have to just learn to live with pornography addiction. Help is available. The first step is determining if you’re addicted to porn. Take our pornography addiction quiz to help discover the truth. Once you receive your results, contact Begin Again Institute. You’re only a conversation away from help healing from pornography addiction.
Having been raised outside the US, Sako knows what it’s like to look at things from a different lens. His Armenian culture has fostered a love of close relationships where the messiness of human beings and all of their “stuff” is considered to be a part of the joy and experience of life. Sako identifies connection, compassion, humor, and growth to be his core values, which he brings into all parts of his life, especially his professional work.
