Imagine scrolling through your favourite social media feed, only to find that you’re caught in a web of endless explicit content a few clicks later.

For many, what starts as casual curiosity can spiral into a struggle with porn addiction, impacting not just personal well-being but also the very relationships we hold dear. While porn addiction is often associated with underlying stress or mental health issues, one can still get support from professional counsellors.

Understanding Porn Addiction

Is my pornography addiction considered a legitimate disorder?

Porn addiction has yet to be officially diagnosed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5). It almost made it to the list as a “hypersexual disorder” but was passed over given the limited amount of scientific research to support that.

While I cannot figure out whether it classifies alongside gambling or shopping, excessive porn continues to destroy relationships, marriage, family, and life. For some, being married feels like living a double life balancing their spouse while compulsively engaging in several other affairs online.

How to Know If Your Porn Watching Is a Problem

• You start losing self-control, feeling a strong urge to watch porn without considering your surroundings or the time of day.
• It becomes difficult to form long-lasting, healthy relationships because you start imagining every woman you see undressed.
• After watching countless porn videos, you begin to view women as sexual objects rather than individuals.
• Repeated exposure to the same content makes you numb to nudity, pushing you toward more extreme or bizarre material.
• What started as simple arousal from nudity and sexual intercourse can quickly escalate into a craving for darker, more extreme content, such as choking or other forms of depravity.

The Impact on Mental Health

A 2013 UK study shows that excessive pornography consumption is a compulsion rather than an addiction. It highlights traits like constantly checking things, being very anxious, and being very careful as signs of high porn use. People with these traits have a higher chance of compulsive personality disorder.

Get the right pornography addiction help

If you have been watching porn for a very long time, the harder it gets to quit. The more you consume it, the more addicted you become, and the harder it is to quit. It’s like quicksand: the more you struggle, the deeper you sink, making it increasingly difficult to escape.

For you to crawl out of the abyss you need to confess that you have an issue. Next is to seek out professional support from qualified counsellors. During your engagements try to be honest without leaving out any extreme or insignificant details. In one way or the other, this information will come out of the process if the person is committed fully to recovery.

Most of the counselling sessions engage in honest conversations and help people feel safe to open up and rebuild trust. For example, a person would confess to the counsellor their full sexual history or porn journey. Once everything is on the table, they can feel free and encouraged to work towards a cleaner slate.

One available treatment is psychotherapy, where one first understands their behaviour and then works on changing it. Other therapy options that help address the shame and guilt that affect relationships are family therapy, psychodynamic therapy, and couples therapy, among other social interventions. Where medication is applied, anxiety inhibitors such as paroxetine and naltrexone are common. However, you should not expect much out of it unless it goes hand in hand with the therapies we talked about earlier.

How to manage the porn addiction

• Get pornography addiction help from an expert counsellor. A licensed therapist approaches the behaviour from its root cause. Once the root of the problem is cured, people stand a better chance of limiting their consumption of pornography.
• Block and delete all porn sites and apps. Start by making all sources, files, directories, and websites out of reach. If you have a computer that drives up the temptation, relocate it to a popular space.
• Hang out with friends. Limit time spent on the internet and involve yourself more with real life. If you can, spend more time in nature or go for a walk with your partner.
• Believe in your reason for quitting. A smarter way of getting the best of your recovery journey is by focusing on the why, rather than resisting the urge.
• Get a hobby. Substitute your free time for an involved hobby that is decent and something you can be proud and confident of. It can be a sport or activity you are good at.
• Be accountable to someone. You can share your intentions with a close friend you trust.
• Enroll in a support group: Today you can find several online and offline self-help groups that help with porn addiction.

Overall

Over the past decade, pornography has become more accessible and affordable and can be viewed anonymously, creating a huge societal challenge. Its bad side has broken relationships, poor intimacy, lost connections, low self-esteem, and depression. While porn has not been classified as a diagnosis, there is still a healthy debate on whether it qualifies as a behavioural addiction or compulsion.

Get expert advice

Back in the day, Australians used to frequent Thailand and Bali for dental work and plastic surgery. Surprisingly, the same places have become the new destination for drug addiction, pornography, and other forms of treatment and rehabilitation. When you compare rehab centers in Bali to private facilities in Australia, the difference is unbelievable. It costs $14,000 the Thailand product as compared to $30,000 in Australia.

If you’re struggling with pornography, further sunk you into drugs and alcoholism as a coping mechanism, do not feel hopeless. In many cases, porn addicts want to reach out for help but wonder how they can get started. Think about contacting drug and addiction centers like Seasons Bali to learn about programs that can help you change your life. While the cost of addiction recovery tends to be high in developed economies, more people are turning to Bali and Thailand for their affordability.