Without pornography, the addict does not know how to deal with bad feelings. To him, it is an escape from boredom, loneliness, pain, and stress. Its consequences can be catastrophic for marriage, work, sexual desire, arousal, and psycho-physical health in general.
"I have had clients who divorced because of addiction to pornography, became even more estranged from themselves and others, as well as those for who pornography was a springboard to a higher level of sexual addiction," claims Joseph Fidanovski.
"Addiction to watching hardcore sex, without love and intimacy, is a disease of modern times. New technologies have allowed people to feel an orgasm and change an unlimited number of partners without contact. This has created a new kind of psychopathology, which did not exist before," explains Josif Fidanovski, psychologist and psychosexual therapist.
It's very easy, says our interviewee, to get into pornography. It is most often hooked on people who lack sexual cognition, social intelligence, those who are lonely, but also those who believe that they are not good enough as humans or lovers.
"Pornography is relaxing. There is no other person, and a person can be selfish as much as he wants and do things that he can't in reality. For healthy people, pornography is a way to enjoy a sex life, while for an addict, pornography is survival," Fidanovski points out.
"The only difference between pornography and gambling or drug addiction is that sex is the primary urge. So there are different understandings about how to treat this addiction. You can live without alcohol, gambling, and drugs, but without sex, it is harder. "The therapy is demanding, some doctors advise celibacy for as long as it lasts, while others recommend sex with a partner only," Fidanovski says.
It doesn't matter how much time you spend watching scenes of explicit sex until it starts to disturb your quality of life. When you start neglecting your business and your family, when you don't manage to break that kind of behavior after many attempts, you can talk about pornography addiction.
"Treatment involves a psychotherapy program, individual and group, which is primarily aimed at the spiritual empowerment of addicts. He needs to learn to recognize his weaknesses, to acknowledge them, and to learn to use alternative sources of calm. The goal is for a person to learn to distinguish sexual needs from those who are not," says Joseph Fidanovski, a psychosexual therapist.
