“My name is Sergio, I am 27 years old and I have been a former pornography user for more than two years. Of my entire life, I have truly lived 13 years, the rest I have spent as addicted to the pleasure of porn.”
“When I turned 11, a classmate in computer class showed me a virtual video game that I became addicted to over the years. A little later, a global controversy broke out with that video game, which was sanctioned for lack of control over minors. In that game, millions of people around the world were connected, and the controversy consisted of the fact that pornography websites began to be shared. And I was one of the victims. I accidentally clicked on that porn link and a tab opened in my web browser. "I was 13 years old."
“Through that website I was able to see explicit sexual relations for the first time in my life. I immediately noticed my addiction to pleasure. Day after day I watched those pornographic videos at night, and one day I wanted to watch gay porn, fetishism and more... My daily masturbations increased. My studies began to be seriously affected. I had no energy, I was always sleepy, tired. "I don't know how it is possible that today I have two average degrees with all this on top."
“When I was 20, I started living alone in another city, far from my family. As I was still addicted to porn, my daily dose started to grow and I started experimenting with real sex. “Over time, I started to stop watching porn because I lost interest and instead became a user of porn-induced sex.”
“Until one day, after another sexual experience, something woke up inside my mind. I realized I had hit rock bottom and, back home, I started looking into how to kick my porn addiction. And why did I start looking for how to quit addiction to pornography and not sex? Because sex addiction came through pornography.”
This testimony from Sergio, provided to this newspaper by Give it a ride, an entity born eight years ago when it detected problems of addiction to pornography and that offers help "to stop the harmful consumption of sexual images."
In this time they have served about 5,000 people, most of them addicts, but also parents of teenagers, who do not know how to act when their children consume porn websites. Or women, who discover the hours their husbands or boyfriends spend watching those websites and wanting to put into practice some of the actions they see in those movies. And the numbers do not stop growing. According to the few studies that exist on this addiction, it is estimated that almost 4 out of every 10 adolescents who watch porn have a “real” risk of becoming addicted. In the case of girls, two out of 10.
Alejandro Villena, a psychologist who is an expert in sexuality from Give it a ride, talks about a real epidemic, with dire consequences. Both for the addict, and for his family, and also for society. Many of the rapes that are recorded every day have their origin in the consumption of porn. And, above all, group sexual assaults, which do not stop growing. The websites that show gang rapes are among the most viewed. Also those of pedophilia...
Is there a profile of the porn addict? It is very variable, but there are some common points. Boys are more addicted and, furthermore, it has been proven that “they need to go more.” They start with hardcore porn (everything is already hardcore, explains Villena) and at the same time look for even harder, more violent videos, that cross the limits. What limits? “A few days ago I was treating a boy who came to us when he realized that he only wanted to watch porn with children.”
Many of these adolescents share insecurities, fear, difficulty managing feelings and poor social skills. Many live in unstructured families, with few rules, hostility and even violence. Your room and technology become spaces where you take refuge, explains Villena.
Personal relationships are reduced to a minimum and the feeling of loneliness sets in. Porn addiction favors the feeling. And as consumption grows (hours and hours, masturbation after masturbation) empathy, understanding others, putting oneself in their place fades. That explains the objectification of women and growing up that they like to be humiliated and hit. “The woman stops being a subject and becomes an object. And that narrative is very damaging and harmful,” explains Villena.
