Page 66 - AVN October 2016

by DR. MARTYKLEIN
‘Addiction’ then just means repeating a bad choice,
or making a stupid decision you later wish you hadn’t,
or making the same mistake over and over. ...
If you call these experiences addiction, every person
on earth is addicted.
FEATURE
Debunking ‘Porn Addiction’
family therapist and certified sex
I’ve been a licensed marriage and
therapist for 34 years. That’s some
35,000 sessions with men, women,
and couples—a ringside seat at the
human circus.
Since the day I opened my practice,
I’ve seen patients who go to massage
parlors, strip clubs, and prostitutes. I’m
always working with several men and
women having affairs, or dealing with
the aftermath of one. And every few
months someone brings in their mate
because their constant flirting is way,
way over the top.
But until about ten years ago no
one ever came in claiming to be a porn
addict, or saying that his partner told
him he was one. The number of these
people has grown tremendously. Not the
number of people acting out sexually—
just the number of people using the
magic words “porn addict” or “porn
addiction.”
Let’s start with “addiction.”
“I keep doing stupid things” is not an
addiction.
“I swore to myself I wouldn’t do it, but
I did it” is not an addiction.
“Wow, the results of doing that were
just as bad as everyone predicted” is not
an addiction.
“I guess I didn’t learn my lesson from
doing it those other times” is not an
addiction.
“I kept telling myself, ‘don’t do it,
you’ll regret it’ and I did it anyway” is
not an addiction.
“When I abstain from doing it, I feel
deprived, crabby, and bored” is not an
addiction.
Doing it, experiencing negative
consequences, and doing it again is not
an addiction.
If these things do, in fact, describe
addiction, then the word “addiction”
has lost its value. “Addiction” then just
means repeating a bad choice, or making
a stupid decision you later wish you
hadn’t, or making the same mistake
over and over, or impulsively pursuing
something now, and regretting the
consequences later.
If you call these experiences addiction,
every person on earth is addicted. And
yes, if these are your definitions of
addiction, millions of Americans are
afflicted with porn addiction.
Here are some problems with the
disease of “porn addiction” (which was invented in the late 1990s as cybersex addiction):
• It pathologizes behavior that is often harmless—but which upsets someone other than the porn consumer himself.
• It is moralism pretending to be science. There is no consensus on what defines “porn addiction,” nor on how to treat
it, nor on what constitutes a successful cure. No porn? Some porn (how much?)? Only certain kinds of porn? Increased
desire for one’s partner?
• It is contemptuous of masturbation; porn addicts are typically told they have to stop masturbating.
• It honors “addicts” and their partners as the most knowledgeable people about the condition, reducing science to just
another opinion. We don’t do this with real diseases like diabetes or heart disease.
• There are no withdrawal symptoms when someone discontinues using porn. They might be crabby (especially if
they’ve given up masturbation), but their body doesn’t shake, sweat, or get clammy, they don’t suffer muscle aches, loss of
appetite, nausea, or vomiting, and they don’t experience nightmares, paranoia, or crying spells. That’s what withdrawal is
like from any real addiction.
• If porn consumers/addicts really needed to increase their dose over time (the classical definition of addiction), they’d
all quit their school/jobs and spend all their time masturbating to porn, which is clearly not true.
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The porn addiction gravy train has been slowed down a bit by losing the struggle for inclusion in the DSM 5, the
diagnostic manual of the mental health profession updated in 2013. How was the decision to exclude it made? Or put
another way, why did the most prestigious body of psychiatrists in the world decide that neither “sex addiction” nor “porn
addiction” were fit to include in the worldwide manual of mental disorders? After sifting through mountains of data,
knowledgeable opinions, and clinical charts, the review panel of experts decided that “there is insufficient peer-reviewed
evidence to establish the diagnostic criteria and course descriptions needed” to include sex addiction or porn addiction as
actual disorders.
The simplistic argument that porn is like drugs and therefore works like drugs is just silly. An analogy is not evidence.
Flour looks like cocaine, but they work differently. Jogging and talking to the police both make you sweat, but the activities
are very different, and your body even experiences them differently.
Do some consumers have a problem with porn? Of course. But “problematic” is not the same as “addictive”; since these
are treated quite differently, we shouldn’t mistake the first for the second. And if the porn addiction movement is using
“porn addiction” metaphorically, they should either put the phrase in quotes or stop using it.
As befits a “PornPanic,” the new concept of porn as toxic substance contains no model of healthy porn use. Porn addicts
are encouraged to get and stay “sober” forever—hardly the “teach a man to fish” routine we hear so much about.
The PornPanic enterprise most certainly makes our lives worse. As I said almost ten years ago in America’s War on Sex,
there’s an unlimited amount of money and power to be gained by scaring the hell out of Americans about sex. This is true
regarding porn. And with the transition from the criticism of porn as an “immorality” problem to porn as a “public health/
danger” problem, more and more groups are jumping on the anti-porn bandwagon, making the PornPanic louder than ever.
By preventing research on the actual effects of porn, and endlessly repeating Big Lies about porn’s effects, and
simultaneously opposing sex education that addresses pornography, the PornPanic perpetuates the problems America fears
so much. Since our society doesn’t properly sex educate our kids, doesn’t train mental health professionals in porn and
how it’s used, and doesn’t have honest discussions about the uses of sexuality in advertising and the arts, too many people
get to blame porn for a lot—and solve nothing.
The best approach to America’s destructive PornPanic is honest talk about sex. And lots of it.
The above is an excerpt from Dr. Marty Klein’s newest book, His Porn, Her Pain: Healing America’s Pornography Obsession
With Honest Talk About Sex. Klein, a licensed therapist and seasoned speaker on the topics of sexuality and relationships, also wrote
America’s War on Sex (Praeger, 2012). His Porn, Her Pain is now available from SexEd.org or Amazon.com.