Pop-up porn

WE’RE notorious for alcoholism, but we Irish are also becoming addicted to sex, fuelled primarily by online porn, which is easily accessed by smartphones.

Dublin’s Rutland Centre, Ireland’s largest private addiction rehabilitation facility, has seen a significant rise in the number of clients seeking treatment in the past four years. “Sex addiction is one of the most difficult and isolating addictions that you can experience,” says the centre’s clinical director, Dr Fiona Weldon. Although numbers are still small, they are steadily increasing. Four years ago, sex addicts were less than 1% of the clinic’s patients — now they are 4.5%.

A fixation on sex is not always taken seriously — people often smirk at the problems it caused for celebrities like Tiger Woods, Russell Brand or David Duchovny. “There’s a big stereotype about people having sex addiction,” she says. “I’ve heard phrases like, ‘It’s the best addiction to have, if you have an addiction’.”

It’s difficult to predict if sex addiction will become more commonplace than the ‘big sister’ addictions of alcohol and drugs.

Stephen Rowan, an addiction specialist with The Rise Foundation, which supports family members whose loved ones are in addiction, says: “There’s been a dramatic increase in sexual compulsivity over the last five years. There is no reason to believe this will not continue to be the case. It has become a major issue in the lives of Irish people.”

Sex addiction often happens in combination with an addiction to alcohol and/or cocaine.

“We know people who have lost their jobs because of accessing porn in the workplace,” Rowan says.

The compulsion generally hits bright, well-educated males, often in high-pressure jobs — men are more easily triggered by visual imagery.

“To a lesser extent, it affects some women, particularly a cohort of younger women, but this is predominantly a problem for males.”

Rowan is emphatic that internet porn is driving the problem. “I feel that the access to free porn, via smartphones or other technology, is a potential training ground for problems that will get worse,” he says.

Sex addiction is not necessarily about promiscuity, says Weldon. It’s about having a complex problem with sexual behaviour.

“The fantasies, and the length of time the person is engaging in sexual behaviour, is significant. Someone could be engaging in sex fantasies and/or masturbation for up to six or seven hours a day,” she says.

Very often, such people are bright and high-achieving, but dogged by self-esteem issues from early in their lives, she says, adding that, often, there is a difficulty in connecting love and care with sexuality.

“It can damage their ability to work, because they’re constantly planning the next sexual experience.

“The person is not present in their relationship with the family. There is a massive sense of shame and guilt and the person often feels suicidal.”

The sex addict comes crashing down when their activities are discovered by a spouse or partner, or, worse, a child.

But it’s not just adults who are at risk of developing an addiction — the availability of smartphones means that porn is easily available to youngsters.

One study found that boys as young as nine are accessing it. EU Kids Online found that 14% of nine-to-16-year-olds have, in the past 12 months, seen images online that are “obviously sexual”.

Patrick*, an engineering student who started to view online porn on the family computer at the age of 13, spent years viewing increasingly extreme and hardcore material.

He endured a vicious cycle of shame, depression, guilt, self-disgust and suicidal thoughts, before ending up in a residential programme for sex addition.

Now in his 20s, he says parents should be far more cautious about allowing young children access to smartphones.

“Smartphones make it easier and easier for young lads to access porn — now, everyone has the internet in their pocket. Thirteen was far too young — my mind was not ready for it, and then, when I came to a crisis, I started using it to cope,” he says, adding that the long hours of late-night viewing also seriously interfered with his studies.

“The more time you spend online, the more unmanageable your life becomes,” Patrick says.

Exposure to pornography can affect a youngster’s ability to form real connections and maintain intimate human relationships, Weldon says.

“What’s happening is that sexual content is much more readily available to young people, at an age where they’re not ready to process it — and may set them up for problems down the road.

“For young people, one of the damaging messages in pornography is that there is no need for negotiation or consent — that everyone is up for it and available to everyone,” says Rape Crisis spokeswoman, Cliona Saidléar, adding that the sexuality promoted by pornography is fuelling an obsession with a “very restrictive and particular type of sex”.

For adults, the devastation wreaked by a sexual addiction is enormous, says Fergal Rooney, senior counselling psychologist at St John of God’s Hospital, which offers rehabilitation programmes for sex addictions.

“I’ve seen people as young as 19, and as old as over-70, having very real difficulty managing their viewing of porn. It’s impacting on their day-to-day function — it can impact on someone’s job, in terms of viewing porn in the workplace. I’ve seen people convicted in court for viewing illegal matter online at work.

“It’s quite disturbing. People can sit on a bus and view porn — the cost and effort required is minimal. The availability is certainly facilitating the obsession,” Rooney says.

He points to US research, which shows that although viewing of pornography can lead to a distorted view of sexuality, or relationships, for about 16% of people, about 6% are at risk of developing significantly problematic porn use and another 10% will become compulsive users.

“Their ability to form and maintain intimate relationships will be impacted, and their ability to engage in meaningful, sexually intimate relationships will be impacted,” says Rooney.

The personal damage can be significant.

“At that level, people can engage in viewing porn for hours — in extreme cases, it could be for up to 10 hours or more,” he says.

“They get locked into it, they don’t go to bed or sleep and are not able to have general relationships with their partners and families. Physical sexual contact becomes way less enticing than what they are able to view online.

“It can give them a very destructive expectation of girls, and what it is to be in a sexual relationship.

“They can become focused on very extreme or pornographic type of behaviours, which undermine the fundamentals of intimate relationships,” Rooney says.

The impact on a spouse or partner is devastating, says Frances Black, founder and CEO of The Rise Foundation.

“All addictions are traumatic for the family of the addict, but with sex addiction the wound can be deeper, because the sense of betrayal is more extreme, she says: “We usually get people in their 30s and 40s, always women, coming in about their partner. They’re absolutely devastated and heart-broken.”

However there is hope for those who seek help.

Therapist Austin Prior, former deputy director of the Rutland centre, works with couples who have overcome the juggernaut of problems following the discovery of a sex addiction.

“Partners and spouses need a lot of help with the feelings of rage and shame. People need a lot of work as a couple, but they should stay with it and work through it. It’s a long process, but it’s possible to rebuild a relationship after this,” Prior says.

Sexual addiction is about disconnection. The treatment is about reconnecting, says Weldon, pictured below.

“To put it simply, it is about reconnecting and it takes time, but once this reconnection has taken place, it can be quite overwhelming,” she says.

The Rutland Centre offers a number of programmes — its five-week residential programme, for overcoming sexual addiction, is covered by some health insurance companies, and costs up to €10,500; outpatient programmes, which last 10 weeks, cost about €3,500. Both programmes have a 12-month aftercare programme.

Even for those participating in the programme, there is no quick-fix.

“Recovering from a serious sex addiction is a long-term process, so we always insist that people commit to recover for at least a year,” says Weldon. “A lot of emotional coping, a lot of education and healing can happen.”

* Not his real name