Tags for this video have been changed from 'mormons, lds, maturbation, battlefield' to 'mormons, lds, masturbation, battlefield, pornography addiction, byu idaho' - edited by xxovercastxx

Aah, WoW. The rich man's addiction...
>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^gwiz665:
So, anything but alcoholism, internet addiction, compulsive overeating, pornography addiction and gambling?
>> ^Psychologic:
Any addiction I don't have is imaginary.


You've got it. Throw in some night elves and it's a date.

>> ^gwiz665:
So, anything but alcoholism, internet addiction, compulsive overeating, pornography addiction and gambling?
>> ^Psychologic:
Any addiction I don't have is imaginary.



You've got it. Throw in some night elves and it's a date.

So, anything but alcoholism, internet addiction, compulsive overeating, pornography addiction and gambling?
>> ^Psychologic:
Any addiction I don't have is imaginary.

So, Pinky, I read those articles and they completely cemented my opinion for me, thank you.

I didn't disagree that pornography is addictive, just that it is psychological and not to be compared with real physically dependent addictions. Just as you said, "the panelists themselves acknowledged, there is no consensus among mental health professionals about the dangers of porn or the use of the term 'pornography addiction.'"

I also love the generalizations in these: "people who use pornography feel dead inside" right... how about: "Pornography does damage because it encourages people to make their home in shallow relationships," I know that one is bogus.

This quote is my favorite: By the time Nick Samuels had reached his mid-20s, it was altering his view of what he wanted from a sexual relationship. ‘I used to watch porn with one of my girlfriends, and I started to want to try things I'd seen in the films.’ Married for 15 years, he admits he has carried the same sexual expectations into the marital bedroom. ‘There's been real friction over this: my wife simply isn't that kind of person. And it's only now, after all these years, that I'm beginning to move on from it. Porn is like alcoholism: it clings to you like a leech.’

If his wife wont do these things with him then that is her problem, not his and definitely not porn's fault. My girlfriend and I love to watch porn together. Part of the fun is trying new things out and it keeps the sex interesting. Sex is an intensely important part of a relationship, and a marriage in which the partners don't agree on matters of sex is a marriage that shouldn't last. This is something that had been known for thousands of years by nearly every civilization... until Christianity started forcing itself into the bedroom.

As for your personal experiences, they are what they are, but a few examples of porn addiction cannot make for a suitable base for a consensus. Consider how many people are users of pornography and compare that with the number of people who have a serious problem and you will no doubt find that there are much more important issues to worry about (including America's obesity - a point which I stand by).

Anyway, I am done with this discussion as neither of us will sway the other. I'll just leave you with one more fact. The only concerted efforts to stop pornography (not including the obviously harmful child pornography), whether in the US or worldwide, have come from religious groups or feminist groups. No one else wants pornography to end.

I chose selections from an article about male porn habit that addresses the subject for your reading pleasure. I have a few problems with the article. It seems to assume that only lonely and hurting people use porn, and that isn't true. Still, it makes some good points:

"How addictive is pornography?

‘I'm frightened of real sex, which is unscripted and unpredictable so I engage in pornography, which is totally under my control. But it brings intense disappointment because it is not what I'm really searching for. It's rather like a hungry person standing outside the window of a restaurant, thinking that they're going to get fed.’ That’s how one man described his porn addiction to Edward Marriott...

...Like many men, I first saw pornography during puberty. At boarding school...long before my first sexual relationship, porn was my sex education....Being away from home, my friends and I longed for love, closeness, acceptance. The women over whom we masturbated - surrogate mothers, if you like - seemed to be offering this but, of course, were never going to provide it. The untruths it taught me on top of this disappointment - that women are always available, that sex is about what a man can do to a woman - I am only now succeeding in unlearning.

...'Just like drugs, pornography provides a quick fix, a masturbatory universe people can get stuck in. This can result in their not being able to involve anyone else.’

...Men, as much as women, hunger for intimacy. For many males, locked into a life in which self-esteem has grown intrinsically entwined with performance, sex assumes a freight of demands and needs...

...It is into this troubled scenario that porn finds easy access. For in pornography, unlike in real life, there is no criticism, real or imagined, of male performance...

...Women in porn are always, in the words of the average internet site, ‘hot and ready’, eager to please...

...Men, say psychologists, also feel threatened by the ‘emotional power’ they perceive women wielding over them...they are at the same time painfully aware that their only salvation from isolation comes in being sexually acceptable to women. This sense of neediness can provoke intense anger that, all too often, finds expression in porn...

...The porn industry, of course, dismisses such talk, yet occasionally comes a glimmer of authenticity. Bill Margold, left, one of the industry's longest-serving film performers, was interviewed in 1991 by psychoanalyst Robert Stoller for his book Porn: Myths For The Twentieth Century. Margold admitted: ‘My whole reason for being in this industry is to satisfy the desire of the men in the world who basically don't care much for women and want to see the men in my industry getting even with the women they couldn't have when they were growing up. So we come on a woman's face or brutalise her sexually: we're getting even for lost dreams.'...

...As well as ‘eroticising male supremacy’, in the words of anti-porn campaigner John Stoltenberg, pornography also attempts to assuage other male fears, in particular that of erection failure. Pornography answers men's fetishistic need for visual proof of phallic potency...

...Pornography, in other words, is a lie. It peddles falsehoods about men, women and relationships. It seduces vulnerable, lonely men with the promise of intimacy, and delivers only a transitory fix. Increasingly, though, men are starting to be open about the effect of pornography. David McLeod, a marketing executive, explains the cycle: ‘I'm drawn to porn when I'm lonely, particularly when I'm single and sexually frustrated. But I can easily get disgusted with myself. After watching a video two or three times, I'll throw it away and vow never to watch another again. But my resolve never lasts very long.’

Like many men, McLeod is torn. Quick to claim that porn has ‘no harmful effects’, he is also happy to acknowledge the contradictory fact that it is ‘deadening’.

Extended exposure to pornography can have a whole raft of effects.
By the time Nick Samuels had reached his mid-20s, it was altering his view of what he wanted from a sexual relationship. ‘I used to watch porn with one of my girlfriends, and I started to want to try things I'd seen in the films.’ Married for 15 years, he admits he has carried the same sexual expectations into the marital bedroom. ‘There's been real friction over this: my wife simply isn't that kind of person. And it's only now, after all these years, that I'm beginning to move on from it. Porn is like alcoholism: it clings to you like a leech.’

...Even when in a loving sexual relationship, men who have used porn say that, all too often, they see their partner through a kind of ‘pornographic filter’. This effect is summed up by US sociologist Harry Brod, in LynneSegal's essay Sweet Sorrows, Painful Pleasures: ‘There have been too many times when I have guiltily resorted to impersonal fantasy because the genuine love I felt for a woman wasn't enough to convert feelings into performance. And in those sorry, secret moments, I have resented deeply my lifelong indoctrination into (pornography).’...

...Running through all pornography use, according to David Morgan, is the desire for control...

...The user of pornography is also psychologically on the run.
Welldon says: ‘people who use pornography feel dead inside, and they are trying to avoid being aware of that pain. There is a sense of liberation, which is temporary: that's why pornography is so repetitive - you have to go back again and again.’...

...For John-Paul Day, an Edinburgh architect, the experience of being a small boy with a dying mother drove him to seek solace in masturbation. He says he has been ‘addicted’ to pornography his entire adult life. He has attended meetings of Sex Addicts Anonymous for 12 years...

...Like drugs and drink, pornography - as Day has realised - is an addictive substance. Porn actor Kelly Cooke says this applies on either side of the camera: ‘It got to the point where I considered having sex the way most people consider getting a hamburger. But when you try to give it up, you realise how addictive it is, both for consumers and performers. It's a class A drug, and it's hell coming off it.’

The cycle of addiction leads one way: towards ever harder material...

Morgan believes ‘all pornography ends up with S&M’.
The myth about porn, as a witness told the 1983 Minneapolis city council public hearings on it, is that ‘it frees the libido and gives men an outlet for sexual expression. This is truly a myth. I have found pornography not only does not liberate men, but on the contrary is a source of bondage. Men masturbate to pornography only to become addicted to the fantasy.'..."

Read the whole article here: http://www.malehealth.co.uk/userpage1.cfm?item_id=2302

Other articles on the sibject of porn "addiction":

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/11/65772

http://men.webmd.com/guide/is-pornography-addictive

Well, I looked up some stuff for you.

"Mary Anne Layden, co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Cognitive Therapy, called porn the 'most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today.'

'The internet is a perfect drug delivery system because you are anonymous, aroused and have role models for these behaviors,' Layden said. 'To have drug pumped into your house 24/7, free, and children know how to use it better than grown-ups know how to use it -- it's a perfect delivery system if we want to have a whole generation of young addicts who will never have the drug out of their mind.'

Pornography addicts have a more difficult time recovering from their addiction than cocaine addicts, since coke users can get the drug out of their system, but pornographic images stay in the brain forever, Layden said.'"

This woman's opinion is rather extreme, but to an extent I agree with her, based on things that I've seen.

I didn't say that porn addiction is worse than alcoholism. I compared it to nicotine addiction. I admit, my assertion was based on purely subjective personal opinion. I have known several people who have overcome a nicotine addiction with no lasting physical or psychological affects. On the other hand, I have known people who have tried to beat a porn habit and either failed or are still tempted, even years later. A very good friend of mine married a guy who lied to her about his porn habit. She found out about it and went through some serious trauma. He bawled like a baby when she told him that she was emotionally incapable of having sex with him unless he quit the habit. He tried and failed to quit and the marriage ended. I know no less that three other guys who quit using pornography for personal reasons. Two of them, years later, expressed to me how difficult it was to quit. At times it felt impossible. And they are both still tempted. I have another friend who is manic depressive and he says that he can't get over his emotional dependency on porn, though he has been trying for years. One guy I talked to compared porn addiction to "chasing the dragon," a phrase that is used in reference to heroine. Another guy said that porn images still haunt him.

I admit that experts can't agree on whether or not porn is "addictive." Most of them agree, on the other hand, that it is a compulsion, habit-forming, and that the effects are lasting.

Skeeve, you said that my "pizza consumption (or at least some people's) does hurt people besides you... America is dying at continually younger ages of early onset heart disease, diabetes, etc., largely thanks to unhealthy diets. I guarantee you that fatty foods are not only physically responsible for more deaths in America than porn but also lead to more psychological problems in the people who develop negative body image thanks to that bad nutrition."

I started writing a response, but then I realized that it isn't worth my time to try and explain why your porn vs. pizza comparison is bogus.