Penny Flame Burns Out

 

LOS ANGELES — Penny Flame has snuffed out her porn star career in an effort to reconnect with her former self: Jennie Ketchum. The brunette star of over 400 adult titles, including Not Three’s Company XXX and Penny Flame’s Expert Guide to Rough Sex, posts on her new blog BecomingJennie that she is leaving the industry to deal with issues of intimacy and drug addiction.

“This blog isn’t about quitting porn and renouncing it, or condemning it. It’s a great industry and makes many, many people happy, pays many folks bills, and makes tons of lonely people feel not so alone,” Ketchum writes. “The issue at hand, and with sex addiction, is intimacy. Sex Addiction is an intimacy disorder; a disorder I’ve suffered from since a young age. Sex is simply a means of acting out. I can’t connect with people on an intimate level, regardless of whether or not I am fucking them, and this is a problem.”

Ketchum entered the adult industry as Penny Flame in 2001, while attending San Diego State University. She has gone on to win four AVN Awards, including Best Actress and Best Couples Sex Scene trophies for her work in Vivid’s Layout.

Ketchum’s moment-of-clarity will most likely be seen on VH1’s upcoming reality series “Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew,” premiering this fall.  The program, a spinoff of the network's "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew," will follow Ketchum and a group of Los Angelinos as they receive treatment for sex addiction.

Ketchum recalls Dr. Drew Pinsky referring to her as a “great chick” and a “phenomenal character,” but adds on her blog that “she is just a character, and the movie she starred in has ended.”