Addiction To Pornography
What is "pornography addiction"?
Pornography addiciton is just a variant as I would see it, as sexual addiction it's primarly not with a human being. It's with pictures and images and of course the internet plays a big role in the availability of it and it often involves a great expense. I've worked with people who've spent thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on images. Pornorgraphy of all shapes and sizes. Now there's also subsets of pornography addiction such as, you know... graphic images of children versus graphic images of adults and that is a whole together different sort of domain but there are similarities. But people with pornography addiction do not necessarily do well with a real person. They do well with and objective piece of paper that they can visualize, fantasize about but, they don't have to negotiate all the feelings and thoughts and talk that you might have to do with a real human being.
What are the dangers of pornography addiction?
In the harm reduction model, it is not inappropriate for a pornography addict to look at pornography and spend money on pornography. And the goal would be to spend less and to be involved less. But if someone doesn't really have the skills to interact with another human being, it's, generally speaking, a safe substitute. These people are often lonely, have poor self esteem, can't seem to have the courage to maybe ask a girl to dance or whatever the dynamic is, and this is generally a safe involvement. Now again, it too can get expensive, and spend too much time with that preoccupation, but it's a matter of degree. I don't believe that it needs to be that they don't ever look at another "Playboy" or "Hustler" magazine again.