Porn addiction is just one aspect of sex addiction,
and it particularly applies to people who find that
their use of pornography has got beyond their control.
A porn user is somebody who is only using pornography recreationally.
They probably log on to the internet, for 20 minutes, half an hour at a time.
It's a means to an end, they log off, they go out and do something else.
Someone who's a porn addict, will often find themselves
spending hours and hours and hours sat at the computer,
and actually it becomes a lot less about looking for sex,
as actually a way of of escaping other problems in the world.
I think the most important thing if you're struggling from porn addiction
is first to recognise it
and you kind of have 3 categories:
you've got someone who actually is just a recreational user;
and then you've kinda got that 'at risk' stuff before you become an addict,
and if you actually realise that you're using porn a lot more than you used to,
if you've actually found yourself preferring to stay indoors and log on,
rather than go out with friends,
or if you prefer to actually watch porn than actually have sex
with your very willing, very, very sexy partner,
then you might start thinking that this is a problem,
and start recognising that it's getting out of control.
So if it's beginning to feel out of control,
the first thing is actually to acknowledge that.
Most sex addicts, they're not necessarily ashamed of their behaviour.
They may think there's absolutely nothing wrong with porn,
they have no issues with porn, it's not a moral issue.
What creates the shame in them is knowing that actually,
they'd rather look at porn than go to their child's christening.
The second thing you need to do is
to actually start trying to limit your behaviour,
start looking at what else you can do, in your life,
that can help you to calm down, relax and also to have fun.
If you're struggling to control it yourself,
then see if you can get some counselling to help.
Another useful tip is just to get something like a Nanny Net,
some sort of parental control software on your computer.
Get a mate to have the password, download parental controls,
and actually you'll make it so much harder for yourself.
Many people think that porn addiction,
or what we call 'process addictions',
are very different from chemical addictions,
like drug addiction or alcohol,
but in actual fact, what we realise now
is that the actual dopamine pathways that it works on in the brain
are very, very similar.
So, in all addictions we know that dopamine
is the neurotransmitter that's involved
and when we get into a process addiction,
particularly a sexual addiction, we produce huge amounts of dopamine,
which is our brain's natural high,
and it triggers those chemicals to happen in the same way
as substance abuse can do.
The root causes of porn addiction are quite complex
and there's quite a few things that can lead to it.
Some psychologists will say that it goes right back to birth,
it goes back to the brain chemistry that you were born with.
We know that addiction does run in families,
so some of it may be genetically inherited.
After that, there are lot of other things that can happen in childhood,
that can predispose somebody to an addiction.
For example, if you come from a family that's very controlling,
so you never really learn self-control,
because someone else is always controlling you,
or, the opposite, if you come from a home
where there's absolutely no control,
so you don't learn any kind of boundaries,
then you're more likely to be someone that develops an addiction.
Another very common root cause is people who've never learnt
ways to self-soothe.
All of us have problems in life and we need to find healthy ways
of making ourselves feel better.
What often happens for an addict
is that they haven't found those healthy ways,
so they look to external ways to make themselves feel better,
whether that's sex, alcohol or drug use,
and it's that kind of coping mechanism
that then becomes their primary coping mechanism.
Porn addiction has been around for quite a long time,
but the reason it's escalating so fast at the moment is because of the internet.
Going back, before the internet,
it would've been quite difficult to get hold of pornography,
and because a lot of our sexual behaviour,
we're quite embarrassed about,
it's quite difficult to walk into a shop and buy a magazine for a lot of people.
So it would have been a lot more surreptitious and hidden
and quite hard to get hold of.
Now, of course, you can log on to the internet
from absolutely anywhere, any mobile device, any café,
anywhere in the world,
and you have access to pornography within 2 or 3 clicks,
and the fact that it is so available
is what is making it so tempting at the moment.
In terms of regulating the porn industry,
which I personally would really like to see
and I think as a society it's something we need to look at doing,
could cause an awful lot of problems
because it is such a multi-million pound industry.
One of the biggest myths and problems that we have at the moment
about sex addiction and porn addiction
is going on about the sexual aspect.
The problem is the addiction, not the sex,
and we need to educate people in their usage,
and not pretend that actually it's something
that doesn't cause any problems at all.