PornHarms picked up my article on Pornography Addiction

I wrote this article for DeseretConnect's FamilyShare.com in March.

Deseret Digital Media NewsOK publishes content from Deseret Digital Media, which has a network of websites that includes KSL.com, DeseretNews.com and FamilyShare.com

Pornography Harms picked it up.

Pornography Harms

April 25 at 7:00am · Edited · 

The Five Stages of Pornography Addiction

Viewing pornography can lead to addiction. The habit-forming substance is explicit sexual material. There are five stages of pornography addiction. Do you think you, your spouse, or someone you know might be addicted to pornography?

READ ABOUT IT HERE! *

* Deseret Digital Media has since taken down my article due to too much inappropriate content in the comments. The publishers said I did not give enough "self-help" information. However, NewsOK.com picked it up and it sometimes comes through. Try the link above and see what happens.

Luckily, I saved it, so you can read it now below. I promised myself I would not hold back in this blog--no holds barred--when explaining about the nuances of this pernicious evil. I tell it like it is, I give my research, and you decide for yourself.

I, most of all, want women like me--like I was before I did all this research--to understand about the repercussions of pornography in your marriage. Don't be in denial, like I was.

5 stages of pornography addiction

By:  Susan Knight

About one in seven men, and one in three women are addicted to porn. The largest users of online pornography are 12 to 17-year-olds. Teenagers. Fifty-six percent of divorces involve one spouse with a pornography addiction (mind-armor.com). Yes, addiction—not just viewing for recreational pleasure, but viewing it because it becomes a compulsion and the addict can’t think of or do anything else.

Do you think you, your spouse, or someone else you know might be addicted to pornography? Following are the five stages of a pornography addiction:

1. Early exposure. As was stated, the largest users of online porn are children ages twelve to seventeen. Most boys have a curiosity about the opposite sex and, unfortunately, think they can learn more about them on Internet porn sites. They yield to the enticement offered by non-human, unemotional contact. Unless they can navigate away from this temptation, they are seduced. There are new statistics that teenage boys are being diagnosed with erectile dysfunction due to advanced pornography abuse.

2. Addiction. Addiction takes place when the initial naïve curiosity turns into a physical dependence for this degenerate type of sexual arousal. In a pornography addiction, the habit-forming “substance” is explicit sexual material. To satisfy the addiction, the addict relies on the Internet, DVDs, uses his smartphone or looks at magazines or books.

Using porn increases to more than recreational exploit. The addict loses control of his or her thoughts in pursuit of the drug. The images establish themselves in the brain and are hard to shake for visually-wired males. Porn is needed for arousal and is used on a regular basis. Instead of a vein or a lung, the substance is taken in via the eyes directly to the visual cortex in the back of the brain, releasing neurochemicals like dopamine and endorphins, producing a “high.” All addictions share the same brain changes.

"Constant novelty, at the click of a mouse, can cause addiction," said Gary Wilson of TEDx, in "The Great Porn Experiment." Dopamine rewards you for seeking the visual pleasures porn presents. It makes you feel good. The brain chemicals motivate some to repeat this behavior. You keep coming back. You can’t stop. You’re hooked. Because of this chemical release — and the consequences of behavior — pornography addiction is considered to be a form of chemical brain damage. People become dependent on pornography for physical and emotional satisfaction.

3. Desensitization. Just as in any chemical dependency, the amount of pornography the addict previously used is not enough to stimulate these brain chemicals. Dopamine loves novelty. When the reward wears off, the dopamine release declines, therefore pleasure declines, the libido declines, and may cause erectile dysfunction in males. Less gratification leads to the desire for greater amounts of hardcore porn. A vicious cycle reigns. Addicts need to intensify reaching the pleasure points in their brains again, only on a more advanced level.

4. Escalation. The addict desires greater pleasure, expanded novelty, so he or she ups the dose. They pursue pernicious, indecent images from the Internet. Porn has become their drug of choice, and self-medication rises to new levels. Licentious sexual images, urges and fantasies dominate the thoughts. This over-stimulation interferes with the normal balance of the addict's brain chemicals. They now crave extreme novelty. Most viewing is done in secret.

5. Acting out sexually. Acting out is the next stage of escalation. The addict moves from viewing pornography to seeking a real world experience. It leads to risky behaviors, like stealing from joint bank accounts to pay for prostitutes, binge drinking for heightened courage to act out, unexplained anger or promiscuous sex. The latter may, and does, cause STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases). Leaving their boring spouses behind, who long ago failed to fulfill sexual gratification, addicted men and women actively seek other live sex partners. If married, the addict will think nothing of committing adultery to satiate the craving for intense sexual novelty. Men will visit prostitutes; women will pick up men in bars or at the gym, or resort to cyber porn (including email, chat rooms, and social media). Chatting with strangers who vicariously satisfy sexual needs behind closed doors is adultery—ask any spouse who is victim of their partner's porn addiction and has acted out in the cyber world. It's emotional adultery and may lead to acting out with live partners.

Depending on the level of graphic, hardcore porn the addict has viewed in order to spiral to the acting-out level, some escalate to the deviant sexual behaviors and perversions of rape, child molestation, incest and even murder. Pornography could be considered a gateway drug to severe criminal behaviors.

In Ted Bundy’s final interview on the day of his execution, James Dobson uncovered the knowledge that the impetus of this serial killer’s criminal rampage began with an addiction to pornography which escalated to acting out.

A pornography addiction is about selfishness—getting, taking—not giving, as it would be in a normal intimate relationship with a spouse. The addiction makes it impossible for any emotional or marital familiarity, closeness or love.

The admission of addiction and desire to be rid of it is the beginning of recovery. It's the beginning of renewal, mending of self and relationships. In a perfect world, the addict will crave freedom from the addiction and seek help.

For more information about pornography addiction and recovery:

LifeStar therapy

“Taking the power away from porn—for good.”

Fight the new drug

Morality in Media/Porn Harms



I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments section. Even though this is a dirty subject, please keep your comments clean.

Excerpt From My Memoir--Finding the Porn

Spoiler alert--adult content

March 4, 2010

I can’t believe this is happening to me! As if my life couldn’t get any worse . . .

 

With Jerry* out of town on his "mini-vacation," I couldn’t sleep. Thinking he may have taken the money out of our checking account, I got up and searched around in his desk for the check book and couldn’t find it. He moves things around all the time and doesn’t tell me, like it’s none of my business. I was afraid maybe he took it with him. I already felt abandoned.

I looked in all his drawers and couldn’t find it anywhere, so I started looking in the same places all over again. My head was reeling. My thoughts traveled a mile a minute through the past and into the future and back to the present.

His top desk drawer is deep, so I pulled it all the way out and saw some CDs, which distracted me. I wondered if one was the CD I gave him of his family history. I thought I should make copies for the kids.

A DVD in the pile jumped out at me like a poisonous snake. I recoiled as I saw the cover. Pornography.

I let out a short, startled scream, then remembered Leah down the hall in bed. I started breathing so fast I thought I was going to pass out. My heartbeat was deafening.

I looked at the cover for a second and had to look away. It was disgusting. Lewd. I didn’t want to touch it. I can barely write about it.

I took it downstairs to my computer and put it in the DVD drive. The images that popped out at me on the screen made me want to throw-up right there on the spot. I mean, projectile vomit! I couldn’t watch more than two seconds of each segment. I kept hitting the forward button.

Ew. Forward. Ew. Forward. Ew. Forward. There must have been at least a dozen segments. I have no idea how long they are. I kept hitting “forward.” How does one wash out one’s mind with soap?

I am officially humiliated, disgraced,  mortified. Those young women on that DVD didn’t even look as old as his daughters. My lip went up in a snarl and I really hated that man at that minute. If Leah wasn’t asleep in her room, directly above my computer, I would have screamed at the top of my lungs!

And to think I’ve been blaming myself all these years for him not wanting to have sex with me. He would rather sit and watch those girls while – . I mean, I was there, every night, lying next to him in bed, but he would rather – Ew!

* Names are changed

Learning

When I said this blog is one of “self-realization,” as I did in the sidebar, I had a couple meanings in mind for that concept.

 

First, this blog is not a “self-help” blog. In other words, I don't feel like such an expert on getting over this divorce crisis in my life that I can write the “Five Ways to an Amicable Divorce”, or "Ten Steps to Divorce Recovery"—or any number of ways to do anything related to divorce. The process of living through it is sometimes enough to handle without numbering my issues.

 

Second, it is to help me realize what my problems are, to try to overcome them, using blogging as a cathartic process.

But now it seems I can write five ways to do or not to do something, and even put it in a three-part series. It’s a little self-help, so there you have it. Serendipity.

I have told many women going through a crisis they should blog as a journal. Their first reaction is, “I don’t want anybody to read what I write!”

I tell them they can set up a blog so that nobody has access to it. I have one that nobody reads. Yes, as if this blog doesn’t contain enough terrible-awful things, I actually have a blog full of vitriol that no one will ever read. It’s my catharsis, in a twisted way. I can say whatever I want to, without any judgments.

 

My third reason for creating this blog is that it helps others self-actualize, analyze, think twice or three times about a life where divorce is imminent, ongoing, or done with. It’s my wish that, by sharing my experiences, I can show that divorce stinks, but is sometimes necessary, and here are the steps I went through. Maybe you can learn from my marriages mistakes and my divorce discoveries.

I’d like to learn from you, too.

 

 

Are Your Steps Going in the Right Direction?

I found a lovely quote by Henry B. Eyering in Goodreads. I don't know if I'm allowed to use quotes on blogs without asking, but he wrote to the effect, if you are on the right path, it will always be uphill.
How fitting for a blog called "Steps to Climb."

I am reminded of climbing the beautiful mountains surrounding Boulder, Colo. when I lived there in my young adulthood.

At each crevice and plateau, I would pause and look down to see my journey behind me.The trees were smaller--and the people weren't seen at all.
Perspective. Looking down from perches I happened upon on the rocky mounts made me think of my place in a world full of God's children. I am one of them. I know God loves me. I know He is looking out for me.
He knows my pains and sorrows. He knows my joys.
Then I'd look up to see the awe-inspiring journey still needed to reach the top. The glorious and vast heavens above me gave me a challenge. The colorful rock formations beneath my hands and feet gave me a stronghold as I pulled myself upward. Each movement had to be calculated for success.
Being young and stupid, I didn't climb with ropes as they do nowadays. I knew that one false move would be to my detriment, big time.
 Sometimes I feel defeated. I especially felt defeated on that long climb I took, up each vertical step of the divorce process.
 I don't know which step I'm on now because I am trying to find the healing step and the forgiveness step.
Since I am looking up, I must be on the right path.  I hope you are on your right path, too.

What Say Ye?

I started journaling my divorce experience since I first found out about my ex-husband’s affair in 2009. I put it in a password-protected Word document on my computer. I didn’t want anyone to find out about it. I was embarrassed, humiliated, angry. . . if anyone read what I wrote—what would they think of me?

I let it all out during this journaling time. When I got to counseling, the therapist told me I should write it all down and get it all out. I told him I had already begun. It was cathartic. I could say whatever I wanted about my marriage and my (ex) husband and nobody would know about it—well, except God and my guardian angels. Yet, I felt Providence was leading me, guiding me to discovery about the terrible, awful secrets harbored by my spouse. Anything I said in my journal didn’t come close to comparing to what he was doing.

I found the pornography after we were in therapy. A legion of red flags was waving in front of my face. Still, I persisted in counseling and in “working on my marriage,” presumably with my spouse.

Since I moved out west, I have been taking that vitriolic verbiage and editing it into a memoir. I was hoping to publish it someday, but I don’t want my kids to read it. However, I do want others, who are going through the same thing I did, to read it.

Thus, this blog.

I would love to know how others of the same experience dealt with their ordeals. But I understand if you’re too afraid to comment. I urge you to comment anonymously. Whatever you say could be the exact thing another woman needs to hear.

Preface For a Book Perhaps . . .

I kept a journal through my whole divorce process. To say it is vitriolic is an understatement. Those who have been through it will agree it is necessary to get these "feelings" out of your system. You are full of hate and yet want to appear "dignified." It's a dichotomy of thought righteous women go through when bombarded with their husband's indisgressions.

My hope is to write a book about this journaling some day to help other women (and even men) who are going through what I did. I couldn't find a book that applied to me and what I was going through. The content of my book travels the steps from discovery through denial, from fear to finding courage, and up a lot of other steps I didn't see myself ever climbing.

The good new is, I'm divorced. Happily divorced.

Last night I wrote the preface for a tentative book about Divorce and Courage. I don't have a title yet. That will come later, maybe with my readers' help. Some of this copy I've used in the left-hand column of this blog. It might need some tweaking, but below is the rough draft:

When I was experiencing the phases of my divorce, I thought I was the only one going through the events that unfolded.

I was wrong.
There are many women who experienced—and are still experiencing—what I did. Some of us found each other and commiserated, but we had the same questions: Why did this happen to me? How could I have let this happen? Why didn’t I see things clearly? What comes next? How much more do I have to endure?
The precursor to my decision to get a divorce was the Triple A: Abuse, Adultery, Addiction. Sound familiar? As a co-dependent, I kept our family life very well-hidden from the public. My mission was to save face—look good. My husband cooperated very nicely to that effect when in the company of our friends. Everyone thought he was a “really good guy.” Nobody had any idea what our family was going through.
Now I know my mission was to stop the abuse and save myself. I also hope my children, and the generations who come after them, will not cause or succumb to these same offenses.
If this sounds familiar to you, you might like to read this book and find out you are not the only one.
This is not a self-help book. There are no “Steps to a Healthy Divorce” within these pages. It’s a self-realization book that describes the huge steps you will climb during the discovery, denial and divorce processes. Sometimes you will fall down a step or two, but you will keep climbing. You have to—to be a conqueror.
It takes courage to get a divorce. I was the least courageous person you’d ever meet. I lived in fear and denial.
If I did it, anyone can.

 

I hope you never need this book. I hope this preface might entice you read it.

I'd love to hear from anyone who might have similar questions, feelings, or who might be in the very first stages of discovery. By that I mean, finding out about the other woman, pornography, verbal abuse, husband's apathy.

What are you feeling? We can help each other. Count on it.