These are the Signs You Could Be Suffering From a Porn Addiction

There's a saying that idle hands are the devil's workshop. Well, so is a pandemic and unfettered access to computer porn.

Americans worked from home en masse in 2020 and found many social outlets such as bars, restaurants and movie theaters inaccessible. Not surprisingly, a growing number of them turned to their laptops and let their fingers do the walking... to the nearest porn site.

"People may be trying to fulfill what they're not getting in their daily lives and through their daily connections through using pornography," says psychotherapist Brooke Sprowl.

Watching a little porn isn't going to hurt the vast majority of people. Indeed, taken in moderation pornography can actually be therapeutic in that it can encourage sexual health and exploration, release tension and support intimacy with real life partners, says Sprowl. It only becomes a danger when people shut out other avenues of human contact and overindulge... especially those already suffering from high anxiety.

"The relationship between pornography and anxiety is that if people have anxiety that they don't know how to deal with, they may use porn to regulate that anxiety," says Sprowl. "So there's a way in which they've sexualized their anxiety and they may not even realize that their sex impulses and anxiety have become coupled."

One of the tell-tale signs you may have a problem is an increasing tolerance... in that you need more porn to achieve the same effect, much like alcohol.

"Just like with alcohol, people gain a tolerance to the neurophysiological effect. When they use alcohol regularly they need more to achieve intoxication," says Sprowl. "Similarly, with porn addiction you may need more extreme pornography to achieve arousal and you may spend more and more time trying to achieve that arousal."

If you believe you may be suffering from pornography addiction, you can seek help with the National Substance Abuse hotline at 1-800-662-HELP.