Porn Is Bad for the Kids but May Be Worse for You

Pornography addiction was once seen as a problem for adolescents, and it was only cyber nannies aimed at the young that screened out “adult” content. The sites also usually require customers to prove their age. But is porn just a danger to children? Experts say no.

One of the worst aspects of porn addiction is that it can discourage the normal sexual relationship between couples. Prof. Kim Sung of Korea Bible University, a counselor at the Center for Internet Addiction Prevention and Counseling, said, “The porn addiction cycle gets shorter and shorter as addicts look for ever stronger thrills. Inevitably they become numb in normal relationships.”

Porn addiction can also damage your health. For many it is difficult to watch porn in the daytime when other family members are around, so people usually watch it in a dark room late at night, and as a result suffer from lack of sleep, fatigue and deteriorating eyesight.

If addiction becomes serious and leads to paraphilias like voyeurism and exhibitionism, it can result in legal punishment or require psychiatric treatment. It also makes it difficult for the addict to live a normal social life at school or work. The images linger in the mind and often distract addicts from concentrating on work. They sometimes leave the office to go to adult-only cyber cafés, and some serious addicts turn to sexual violence in trying to imitate what they have seen.

There is no official definition of porn addiction as research in the field is scarce, but it is mostly seen as a behavioral addiction, like gambling. Behavioral addictions hinder sufferers from leading a normal life because they are obsessions with one particular behavior. Prof. Shin Young-chul at the Department of Psychiatry at Kangbuk Samsung Medical Center says when a person becomes behaviorally addicted, they lose the ability to control themselves and remain trapped in the addiction even if they want to stop. “This leads to feelings of insecurity and a quest for stronger stimuli,” he adds.

Prof. Lee Young-sik at Chung-Ang University Medical Center, says porn addiction, though widely regarded as a men’s issue, is slowly becoming a problem among women as well. “Housewives suffering from depression who come to the hospital with feelings of extreme guilt and humiliation often came across a porn site and got hooked,” Lee says.

Like many other addictions, porn addiction is not easy to cure. The most widely accepted treatment is telephone counseling, often accompanied by cognitive behavioral therapy. For example, doctors create an unpleasant atmosphere around the experience, such as making the patients smell garbage or giving them mild electric shocks while watching porn. This is intended to program their brains to remember watching porn as a negative experience. Diverting the patients’ attention to other things such as sports and music also helps.

Sometimes, medication is needed. Dopamine, the hormone and neurotransmitter, plays an important role in making us feel pleasure and in general those with high dopamine levels of are more prone to addiction. Doctors therefore prescribe medication to lower dopamine levels or testosterone, the hormone related to sexual desire. “To get out of porn addiction, it is important that patients receive treatment with their partner. Two or three months of treatment with partner has helped 70 to 80 percent of patients break out of the addiction,” Kim says.

(englishnews@chosun.com )

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