A retired psychotherapist and minister has launched a website and discussion board aimed at helping people who fear they’ve become addicted to pornography.
Among the 15 questions Noel Douglas, Ph.D. devised to help visitors decide are questions like whether they worry about sexual thoughts or behaviors becoming "obsessive or out of [their] control," whether they think they’re the only one who indulges some sex thoughts or behaviors, whether they miss other commitments or even miss work for porn's sake, and whether they spend more than they can afford surfing for smut.
"This addiction victimizes adults and children, sometimes friends and strangers, as the addict looks for higher thrills in carrying out their sexual fantasies," writes Douglas. "Their thinking has become so warped that they often come to believe that sexual deviance is normal and even healthy."
Douglas believes that at least softcore porn is has become “mainstreamed.” It’s available widely on cable television and the Internet, and people's senses are numbed every day by prominent advertisements for sexual enhancers, he notes
He also calls spouses major victims of porn addiction, saying they’re left to feel inadequate as sex partners and unfairly compared to the images their mates see in pornography. "Many women feel humiliated and debased by the images which appear to be a staple of the dehumanizing aspects of women in pornography," he writes.
Douglas has also been a psychiatric program director for a locked skilled nursing facility and deputy conservator of "a large California county," responsible for investigating conservatorships for the mentally ill who couldn't care for themselves.
"Porn addiction" was most recently the subject of a Capitol Hill hearing at which those who challenge the concept were given either short or no shrift before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space. Among those challengers are the Free Speech Coalition, which features a statement on its website from University of California, Santa Barbara, communications professor Daniel Linz rebuking the idea of porn addiction.
"[B]efore rushing to the judgment that pornography is addicting," Linz wrote, "we must take note of the following: So-called sexual addiction may be nothing more than learned behavior that can be unlearned; labels such as 'sex addict' may tell us more about society’s prejudices and the therapist doing the labeling than the client. Scientists who have undertaken scientifically rigorous studies of exposure to sex materials report that despite high levels of exposure to pornography in venues such as the Internet, few negative effects are observed."
