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The following are tough questions men ask about Internet pornography addiction:
What is Cybersex?
A quick survey of Internet sites pertaining to cybersex wil reveal that there is no single, universally accepted definition of this phenomenon. The broadest definition of cybersex is that it is any activity online that causes sexual stimulation. Viewing pornography online or engaging in sexual chat acitivities on the Internet for the purpose of creating sexual arousal would be included in this definition. For all intents and purposes, sexual chat activities are substantially similar to phone sex in which words or word pictures are used to cause vicarious sexual stimulation. Cybersex frequently includes masturbation at the time pornographic images are viewed or suggestive words are exchanged, or later. It can be a solo activity or engaged in by two or more people simultaneously in an interactive mode. Cybersex sometimes, but not always, leads to phone sex and/or in-person sex. For those hooked on cybersex, the Internet provides a fascinating new venue for experiencing sex. A poll of 9,000 respondents conducted in 1998 by Dr. Al Cooper, a California sex researcher, revealed that while a growing number of women are turning the Internet to explore their sexuality, men generally outnumer women on cybersex sites by five to one. He stated, "I call it the 'triple A' of the Internet - access, affordability, and anonymity. It is a great place to go to try different things, where you can feel safe."
Is cybersex really addictive?
Researchers of Internet pornography addiction believe that the primary reinforcement of online activity is the stimulation of the limbic system or "pleasure center" of the brain. During the process of mastubation, neurochemicals such as phenylethylamine (PEA) - also known as "the love molecule" - are released which reinforce the urge or compulsion to experience the feeling of ecstasy again. Pornography provides the catalyst and visual stimuli that trigger this neurochemical activity in the brain. The habit of masturbation is strengthened and maintained as the need to feed the addiction to pornography is increased. Not only is pornography physiologically addictive, it also has a psycho-emotiomal component as well. When a male is feeling depressed, anxious, lonely, guilty, or bored, he can use Internet pornography as drug to "medicate" his bad feelings. The "high" provides an emotional or mental escape or an altered state of reality. Sexual addiction experts are now referring to cybersex pornography as the "the drug for the new millennium," and the "crack cocaine of sexual addiction." They believe that the brain of a cybersex addict craves the experience of sex just like any drug addict craves the next high of a drug.
If cybersex is addictive, can a person actually go through withdrawal?
Yes. Cybersexual addiction can best be understood by comparing it to other types of addictions. Individuals addicted to alcohol or other drugs, for example, develop a relationship with their "drug of choice" - a relationship that takes precedence over any and all other aspects of their lives. Addicts find that they need their drug of choice merely to feel normal. In sexual addiction, a parallel situation exists. Sex, like drugs, provides the "high" to which the addict becomes dependent. When there is deprivation of the stimulation that causes the release of the neurochemicals that create a sense of pleasure, the addict begins to go through withdrawal. The body responds with symptoms such as irritability, dizziness, body aches, headaches, sleeplessness, restlessness, anxiety, mood swings, and depression. Many who have recovered from drug addiction commonly report that withdrwal from a sexual addiction is more prolonged and painful.
What do you mean by addiction?
Addiction may be defined as any behavior that is used to produce gratification, escape from internal discomfort, and/or engaged in compulsively. There are three basic characteristics of sexual addiction:
- Compulsivity or the loss of the ability to choose freely whether to stop or to continue;
- Continuation of the behavior despite adverse consequences, such as compromised relationships with significant others, poor work performance, financial, legal, and health consequences, and emotional problems;
- Obsession with the sexual activity to the point that other areas of life are neglected. If a person repeatedly spends more time on cybersex activities than they intended, continue despite significant negative consequences, and if they are obsessed or preoccupied with these activities when they should be focused on other aspects of their life, then they are likely a cybersex addict.
I’ve heard that cyberporn addiction tends to be progressive. What does that mean?
The experience of sexual arousal can be intense when viewing pornography, and like any high our body will crave another hit. The result is a pattern of addiction and escalation. Soft-core pictures of women in lingerie will soon become boring prompting us to seek full nudity. As that loses its novelty we will look for something more enticing. Dr. Victor Cline of the University of Utah has studied this process of escalation and reports that it proceeds through four steps:
- Addiction - We keep coming back to porn. It becomes a regular part of our life. We’re hooked and can’t quit.
- Escalation - We start to look for more graphic pornography and begin seeking material that was previously considered extreme and disgusting.
- Desensitization - We begin feeling numb toward the images we see. Even the most graphic porn is no longer arousing. We become desperate to feel the same thrill again, but can’t find it.
- Acting-out - This is the point that we make a critical jump and start acting-out the images we have seen and rehearsed in our minds.
How much time online do cybersex addicts spend?
Research suggests that cybersex addicts spend at least 11 or 12 hours a week on the Internet, and often it is double or triple that amount of time.
What are the cybersex activities most sexual addicts engaged in?
Compulsive masturbation with or without pornography and compulsive viewing of porn with or without masturbation are the long-standing activities of most cybersex addicts.
What's wrong with looking at pornography? No one gets hurt.
The idea that viewing pornography is harmless fun is erroneous. There are many serious consequences that result from Internet pornography: For those in marital relationships, there is a feeling of betrayal and emotional abandonment by their spouse’s online sexual activities, even if a real-life affair has not occurred. Rebuilding trust takes months if not years in most marital relationships. Pornography has the tendency to remove any prospect of natural emotional bonding. It causes people to have a purely physical, one-sided fantasy-based relationship. In other words, they expect reality to be like fantasy which typically leads to a sense of dissatisfaction, disappointment, and disillusionment. The time and energy that is required to build a healthy, satisfying relationship is squandered on compulsive masturbation and escaping into fantasy. True intimacy is compromised and eventually lost by cybersex.
Research has demonstrated that cyberporn masturbation causes males to either treat their partner as a sex object to act-out their sexual fantasies or to become significantly less interested in them sexually. The latter is due to the fact that normal sexual relations cannot compare to the high intensity of sexual excitement associated with novel sexual stimuli. Cyberpron masturbation causes a male’s body to become sexually responsive to masturbation instead of the heterosexual stimulation of "normal" sex. This change in sexual responsiveness affects his ability to be sexually excited by his partner, gain and maintain an erection, and/or restrain himself during sex so his wife can reach orgasm. He is likely to be so "tuned-in" to himself sexually that he is unable to give sexual expression to her in a loving way. His sexual actions become totally focused on self-gratification. Pornography further complicates the problem because sexual activity ususally elicits memories of cyberporn depictions he has found stimulating. He may find himself having to think about these images in order to be satisfied during sex. If his wife does not look as good as the porn stars, or does not want to engage in what he has fantasized through porn, he will find himself angry and disappointed. The couples sex life will be severely damaged.
Compulsive sexual thoughts and/or behavior leads to increasingly serious consequences, in both the addict’s internal and external worlds. The consequences may include severe depression, often with suicidal ideation, low self-esteem, shame, self-hatred, hoplelessness, despair, helplessness, intense anxety, loneliness, moral conflict, contradictions between ethical values an behaviors, fear of abandonment, spiritual bankruptcy, distorted thinking, remorse, and self-deceit. Research reveals that about 70-75% of sexual addicts have thought about suicide.
What’s wrong with cyberporn masturbation?
Secular society promotes the message that masturbation is little more than a healthy release of sexual energy; a sensible alternative to premarital or extramarital sex; a harmless activity that provides intense pleasure without hurting anyone. Those who have been ensnared by this habit would argue differently. Masturbation can easily become an enslaving, compulsive behavior that brings a person into bondage. It can foster a lust-filled thought life that leads to guilt, shame, secrecy, and self-condemnation. Sex addiction expert Dr. Patrick Carnes has written that masturbation often becomes so compulsive that 45% of males and 33% of females will engage in the practice to the point of physical injury. The Bible makes it clear that lust drives masturbation and lust is sin. Jesus said, "But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart." (Matthew 5:28). It is impossible to separate masturbation from lust. When a man fills his mind with sexual images and fantasizes about having sex with that person vicariously, he has committed sin in God’s eyes.
Another point to ponder is that for many, masturbation creates a tolerance effect. This simply means that a greater frequency and/or intensity of behavior is required over time to obtain a desired effect. An alcoholic knows, for example, that when he first started drinking, one drink might have been enough to cause a drunken state. After weeks, months or even years, much more alcohol is needed to reach the same level of inebriation. Cyberporn accompanied by masturbation acts to stimulate the "pleasure center" in the brain that causes neurochemicals to be released which generate an intense feeling of pleasure. Over time the brain becomes addicted to these chemicals just as it would to the man-made drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and amphetamines. Eventually a tolerance effect begins to develop which creates a demand for more frequent masturbation and intense sexual fantasy. This explains why many cyberporn addicts can compulsively masturbate multiple times during the day. The envelope of sexual fantasy is also pushed to be more exciting, more provocative, and/or more dangerous in an effort to capture the previous level of pleasure. The friction of using one’s own hand or some other aid to achieve an intense orgasm may also condition the person to that level of stimulation. This kind of conditioning may make it less likely that a man will be stimulated by vaginal intercourse.
I've tried support groups, 12 step programs, read books, and listened to tapes but nothing has helped. I am hopelessly hooked on cyberporn?
Support groups have their place in the process of recovery for cyberporn addicts. Twelve step programs can have a positive result if they are based upon the central truth that only God can renew the mind of a sexually addicted person. No external program, however, can help until the heart of the addict has changed to the extent that he will do whatever it takes to be healed. No lasting benefit will be realized until a hardened heart becomes a new, repentant heart. Repentance is much more than simply saying, "I’m sorry, God." For the cyberporn addict it is the complete and intentional turning from a life of selfish, perverted behavior to one of purity and right-standing before God. In fact, God grants repentance to us "...in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will." (II Timothy 2:25-26).
When I masturbate while looking at cyberporn, I feel like I have been with a prostitute.
Interestingly, the word "pornography" comes from two Greek words, porno meaning prostitute (i.e., literally, "one exposed for sale") and graph meaning record. When a man masturbates while looking at pornography, the visual cortex of his brain makes no distinction between an imagined prostitute and a live person. The mind interprets the experience as a real interaction with a prostitute, a woman you have paid for the right to see naked. This is precisely why most wives feel betrayed when they discover their husbands have a cyberporn addiction.
How is "sobriety" for a cyberporn addict defined?
Sobriety for cybersex addicts does not mean avoiding sex altogether. It consists of avoiding the sexual and cybersexual activities that cause the addict to feel shameful, guilty, hold secrets, or which are illegal and abusive. Cybersex addicts may also have to avoid nonsexual activities such as surfing the web or spending excessive amounts of time on the computer which can lead them back to cybersex activities.
What if I think I am addicted to cyberporn?
You can either continue on with your addictive behavior and try to live with it or you can seek help. Your worst alternative is to do nothing. Because sexual addictions tend to be progressive in nature, you should expect that the problem will only get worse. You are not a lost cause nor is your situation hopeless. Be honest with yourself. The self-help approach you have taken has not worked. It’s like anything else in life, if you set a goal and don’t achieve it then you either change your approach or give up the goal. Giving up the goal of being free from the addiction, however, is no longer an option. Feeling helpless, out of control, and depressed is an unacceptable way to live. You do not have to spend the rest of your life caught in sexual addiction. What you need is a new approach that works. I want to strongly encourage you to do two things: Carefully review the material in the ‘Resources for Sexual Addiction and Recovery’ article then go to the Setting Captives Free website (www.settingcaptivesfree.com). Setting Captives Free offers a free 60 day online/e-mail course to help both men and women gain freedom from pornography addiction. It has a proven track history that works. Whatever you do, don’t give up. God is faithful and still in the business of working miracles every day!
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