Confronting porn: ‘As long as people are afraid of judgment, porn addiction will continue'
(Left to right) Dr Martin Davoren, Executive Director and Donal Clifford, Counsellor at the Sex And Love Therapy Programme at the Sexual health centre in Cork. “We’re actually failing to support our young people in terms of their sexual health." Picture: Dan Linehan
“Porn addiction is one of the hardest to escape from,” said 22-year-old Seán*, who experienced body dysmorphia and erectile performance issues as a result of his porn use. ( )
“I am not the kind of person you would think of when you hear the words ‘porn addict’. I am employed at a job I like, social and physically active, Catholic and dating a beautiful woman who likes me a lot. But porn has ruined me in ways I am only now starting to see.”
His pornography addiction was much worse when he was 18, he said.
“I felt small and weak which, as a man, is one of the worst feelings in the world. I know now that those feelings are not an accurate representation of reality. But the fear of not being enough or disappointing my partner was crippling. I could not maintain an erection with my partner out of anxiety and over masturbation, which as a 22-year-old man was humiliating.”
Seán has struggled to overcome his issues resulting from porn use and visits online forums such as Reddit as a support group in lieu of dedicated in-person services, which are scarcely available in Ireland.
Why is porn addiction so difficult to overcome?
“It will actively seek you out,” he said.
“If you are an alcoholic you need to go out of your way to get a drink, either driving down to the local pub or buying alcohol from a store.
"But with porn and other sexually explicit content, it’s impossible to escape from in our highly sexualized society. Advertisements, music, video games, movies, social media, newspapers – you name it – all use sexual imagery in their marketing campaigns.
"[For] porn addicts this is just as tempting as a full syringe for a drug addict.”
Sean is not alone in his experiences – not even close to it. Nowadays, everyone is at it, and ‘it’ is everywhere. Justice Minister Helen McEntee has lamented that porn is “too easily accessible” for young people and has changed the way they view sexual relationships. The minister made the comments on foot of survey results from the Men’s Development Network which found more than 70% of men under 45 have reported using porn at least once a week.
Even the Pope said the priests and nuns are at it.
“The devil enters from there,” he warned an assembly at the Vatican recently, and previously labelled it as a threat to public health. Perhaps strong words, but mounting evidence suggests porn consumption can cause serious and long-lasting harm – especially when engaged with from a young age.
When you break things down for young people who have grown up with smartphones and therefore easy access to porn, the findings suggest porn use has become almost as everyday as making a cup of tea.
Research from the University of Galway found 99.7% of male university students had consumed porn, and 51% of those were exposed between the age of 10 and 13 – an age bracket that appears to be getting younger.
The younger a boy is exposed to porn, the more it’s associated with negative genital self-image. For women, 89.6% at college had watched porn and 54% were first exposed between the ages of 14 and 17.
Statistics released in November by the world’s most popular porn website Pornhub, found Irish viewers visit the site much more per capita than many other countries, and watch for longer. Despite ranking 124th in the world on population, Ireland ranks 42nd for traffic to the website, the vast majority of which comes from mobile devices.
Of particular concern to health experts are the findings of another University of Galway study which found most young people are using porn for sex education. Experts speaking to the have suggested as the State syllabus on sex education is vastly ineffective and not fit for purpose, young people are sexually maturing with a skewed image of sex and intimacy – and it’s all within reach in their pockets.
Leading the clinical charge to help those struggling the issue is Cork’s Sexual Health Centre.
“It is a growing and burgeoning issue, not only in Ireland, but across the world. It is the most looked up thing every single day,” said Martin Davoren, executive director at the centre.
"We’re actually failing to support our young people in terms of their sexual health. We’re just throwing it all under a carpet."
He said many have an “unrealistic optimism” that porn addiction won’t be in their family and children but the research points otherwise.
“You have this need to infantilise your children forever, but it’s not going to work.”
Donal Clifford is a psychotherapist at the centre and developed the Sex And Love Therapy (SALT) programme, aimed at helping clients overcome problematic use of sex workers, sexual aversion, sexual binge purge, sexual anorexia, and, of course, porn. The group programme tackles these issues through root causes such as opportunity, attachment deficits and trauma.
“SALT is much bigger than just pornography,” Donal said.
“Pornography is only a small piece of it. It’s like going into a bar and looking at all of the drinks and deciding because I drink lager, I’m an alcoholic. It’s a bit broader than that.
“The main goal is to stop the problematic sexual behaviour and until you stop the behaviour you can’t really move on with healthy sexuality.”
Martin added: “You cannot access overall health unless you access your sexual health.”
SALT is the only specialist service of its kind in the country and has seen a surge in demand, with a 360% increase in participation two years – which does not include those on the seven-month waiting list.
The Cork-based service is so popular that clients would travel from as far as Galway each week to attend only a few dozen spots available. Some have moved to Cork specifically for SALT, amid a drought in dedicated porn addiction recovery programmes nationwide.
Donal said this surge in demand for services like this has been forecast for at least 10 years, but “nobody really knew to the degree this was coming”. Martin echoed that they “didn’t see this happening”.
When the programme was first established at the centre more than two years ago, the pair were determined to not have a waiting list, but amid a surge in demand and difficulties upskilling therapists to lead the programme, the organisation is struggling to accommodate the numbers.
Martin said the level of demand highlights the need for the service in the community but stressed the process for receiving funding for the roll-out of Salt elsewhere in the country is “very slow”.
The HSE part-fund the Salt programme through the HSE social inclusion office, but the centre must make a new business case to expand the centre to Limerick and Galway where they are seeing demand.
However, the biggest hurdle to expanding the programme is getting counsellors to sign up. Ireland is lagging behind countries such as the UK on services like this and getting effective supports up and running will require extensive upskilling among counsellors, many of which don’t see the value in these services, Donal said.
But although SALT deals with adults, more and more young people are presenting after engaging in frequent porn use from a young age, having damaging effects. When Donal first developed the programme in 2014 it was older men attending, but now there are people in their late teens coming with issues they developed after engaging with regular porn use from an early age.
“All we’re doing is putting bandages on an amputation,” said Donal, and added that education around porn “has got to start at late-primary school”. SALT will “always be fighting it on the backfoot if there isn’t something done earlier on”.
“It’s like TikTok: you need the high. And the high isn’t about the material itself, it’s about ‘the new’. So what they end up doing then is new, new, new and, eventually, they find themselves downloading child sexual exploitation material. So there is an escalation. It’s like an alcoholic doesn’t start off drinking whiskey.
"My concern is – and I don’t want to put out big, huge alarm bells – is the younger they watch [porn], the more at risk they are of downloading illegal material. Because it’s the new."
Repercussions of porn addiction from an early age could be an inability to have a physical intimate relationship with a partner, seeing sexual violence as normal, inability to have a normal intimate relationship and turning to sex workers, he explained.
“Pornography can be the only template they have for sex.
"Everyone knows pornography isn’t real, but when that’s your only template and you don’t understand what else is involved in positive sex – a lot of guys wouldn’t know what consent is."
To have a chance at helping people, they must first feel comfortable coming forward, and stigmatization around problematic porn use can prevent seeking help, Donal said.
For 22-year-old Seán, sexual stigma is a point of particular frustration.
“If you are a recovering alcoholic or a recovering drug addict you can say things like, ‘I am two months sober,’ or, ‘I am three years clean,’ out loud and be met with congratulations and support for your battle against addiction.
"But if you are a recovering porn addict you do not get the same level of support or understanding. As long as people are afraid of judgment and fearful of how their loved ones will react, their addiction will continue.”
It took weeks of talking with his girlfriend for reassurance that he satisfied her sexually, before he could begin a healthy sexual relationship.
“Despite the fact that my life is better than it has ever been, I cannot break the chains that pornography has on my soul,” he said. “Any pleasure when taken to excess will become torture. Things have been going much better for me. I am on a long road to recovery, but I know that I can do it.”
He urged others not to make the same mistake and use porn to fill a void in their lives.
“To any who are struggling with addiction: It is treatable, there are people who want to help you and you do not need to struggle alone.”
For information on how to seek help through Sexual Health Centre Cork, visit sexualhealthcentre.com or call their helpline on 021 427 6676
- This is the first in a three-part series on pornography and its impacts on young people.
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