Sexually addicted consumers of Internet pornography, adult content providers, and mental health professionals who treat sex addicts would all benefit from cooperation between the adult industry and the mental health community. As long as the porn industry and the mental health community understand each other, the rest is cake.
I recognize the inherent conflict between the needs of sex addicts and the rights of the adult industry. On one hand are free speech and free enterprise issues; on the other hand are issues of mental health. Polarization pushes us to think that one value must prevail utterly over the other. That is usually fruitless. There is a far more fertile middle ground.
Harrah's, the casino gaming company, displays the telephone number of the National Council on Problem Gambling on the homepage of its Website. The National Council's Website, in turn, links to self-help and professional help organizations involved in treating problem gamblers including Gamblers Anonymous, Gam-Anon, the American Board of Certified Interventionists, and others. Seagram, the beverage company, supports and holds a seat on the Board of Directors of the Century Council. The Century Council is funded by the alcoholic beverage industry and "promotes responsible decision-making regarding alcoholic beverage use and fights alcohol abuse." The links on the Century Council's Website include Al-Anon/Alateen, Alcoholics Anonymous, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and many more.
This suggests that the gaming and beverage industries have found it advantageous to take socially responsible positions with respect to the potential abuses of their products and services. They provide us with a model.
It's not likely these actions were due solely to the goodness of their corporate hearts. There are public relations considerations involved, and the gaming and beverage industries believe such moderate steps serve prophylactically to keep the abolitionists at bay. Given that, the adult industry needs to act responsibly. Just as alcoholism and addictive gambling are now formal psychological diagnoses, the day will come fairly soon when sexual addiction will be as well. I salute the efforts the industry has already made by posting links to filtering software on their Websites. That helps to protect children. There are adults who need help, too.
Some people get addicted to sex. Some of those who become addicted specifically get addicted to sex on the Internet - viewing or downloading pornography, spending hour upon hour in chatrooms, etc. People quibble about the adequacy of the addiction model to describe sexual addiction - sometimes called sexual compulsivity. The camps are pounding out the details of that distinction through research and argumentation. That is how science progresses, and the riddle is not yet solved. But it's pretty clear that some people get involved in cybersexual activities in ways that look like an addiction. There are five general qualities that are often applied to determine if a behavior is addictive: the addict can't stop despite negative consequences, mood alteration occurs, the addict is in denial, the behavior is chronic and escalating, and withdrawal symptoms appear when the behavior is stopped. Compulsive sexual behavior involves these five elements:
1. Can't stop despite negative consequences. Sex addicts may suffer the loss of valued relationships, employment, and money, and may even face legal consequences, yet continue to "act out" their addiction.
2. Mood alteration. Sexual excitement and behavior are mood altering. The difference between non-addicts and addicts is that addicts use the mood-alteration to deal with difficult emotions and situations.
3. Denial. Sex addicts rationalize, minimize, and excuse their compulsive behavior; addicts distort reality without realizing it. Denial justifies continuing the behavior.
4. Chronic and escalating acting out. Sex addiction is not a phase; it is chronic. The addict needs increasing "quantity" to fill the need. The increased dose may be achieved by intensified behavior, more frequent behavior, or both.
5. Occurrence of withdrawal symptoms. Research with sex addicts finds that they often have many of the same withdrawal symptoms as alcohol and drug addicts. These include sleeplessness, intrusive dreams, high levels of anxiety, irritability, and roller coaster emotions.
Sexual addiction is hardly a trivial malady or a perversion. It's a progressive and costly disease that destroys lives and strips people of their dignity and integrity. Sexually addictive behaviors take many forms, all of which take up inordinate amounts of time, energy, money, job productivity, and destroy significant relationships.
Consequences include obsessive thinking and compulsive consumption of sexual experiences, guilt, shame, self-loathing, emotional and actual isolation, depression, damaged and broken relationships, financial and even legal problems. Addicts feel driven and unable to stop. They use sex to cope with their feelings, to escape, and to adjust their moods.
We really don't know what percentage of cybersex consumers are or become sexual addicts. Judging by what we are seeing clinically, it's not a negligible proportion. The growth in this particular form of sexual addiction almost certainly involves the privacy and ease of access of cybersexual products. People who may have been too inhibited to buy pornography over the counter, call 900 numbers, visit prostitutes, or frequent adult book stores can now access sexual experiences with far less fear of "discovery." As an apparent result, there has been a skyrocketing of the number of cybersexual addicts.
Some people blame sex addiction on pornography itself. I doubt that. The predisposition to addiction is like an opportunity waiting to happen. I tell addicts (of various sorts) who I work with that I doubt we would find many alcoholics in Saudi Arabia because alcohol is not legal there. But I bet we would find different sorts of addicts. There is probably a sort of generic biological predisposition to addiction, and maybe a specific neurochemical predisposition to sexual addiction. That question has not been answered. It is quite clear there are environmental predictors for the development of sexual addiction, including rigid and detached family systems and histories of abuse. For vulnerable people, contact with mood-altering sexual material may quickly bring the addiction into full bloom.
I am not generally a supporter of pornography, but I am an adamant supporter of the pornographers' right to do what they do and say what they say. If we begin to govern "acceptable" speech, we would be doing violence to the fundamental tenet of our political philosophy (and my psychological philosophy) that all people are inherently and equally valuable. The only workable solution is to let people use the freedom of their speech in whatever way they please and then learn to deal with the consequences. It's not pretty, but freedom of speech is so essential to everything else that I think we cannot tamper with it.
That is not to say that pornography does no damage. I think it does. But so does advertising that propels people into unhealthy dieting, movies that promote violence, campaigns that coax people to buy environmentally corrosive vehicles, and on and on. We do not generally restrict free speech merely because we think it is not healthy speech to hear. At more extreme levels of harm, such as the damage children sustain through early sexual experiences, outright prohibition of certain speech (such as child pornography) does make sense as a protective measure because that is the only way to do it.
I don't think people who work in the Internet sex industry are trying to hurt other people or to create or intensify sexual addiction. People in the industry are trying to make a living, helping to break down puritanical sexual ethics, and practicing the high-handed art of a conservative interpretation of the First Amendment.
I have listened to representatives of the alcohol and gaming industries talk about the problems their products and services help to create in some people. While I know that these are paid spokespeople for these industries, I also think they are sincere, both in their recognition of the problems and their responsibility, and in their compassion for the addicts. And I think their actions do some good. Given a chance, the people in the Internet sex industry would be similarly responsible and compassionate.
It is time to begin a responsible, mature, respectful conversation between those who help addicts and those who work in the adult industry. The time has come to raise the banner of compassion, understanding, and progress.
My idea begins with a rapprochement between the sexual addiction recovery community and the online adult entertainment community. The sexual addiction recovery community needs only to bring the lens of understanding that they bring to other interactions to the adult Internet community; they need only see people in the adult Web community as honest, well-intended people doing what they think is a good thing for themselves and for the spirit of openness. At the same time, the adult Web community needs to recognize their product is harmful to a minority of their customers and that they have a social responsibility to help people in that minority.
So let's stop quarreling about who is right and start talking about how to help the ones who are getting hurt.
A. Michael Johnson, Ph.D is a private practice psychologist in Highland Village, Texas. For more information about sexual addiction, visit his Website at www.michaeljohnsonphd.com, or email him at [email protected].
