Why do so many folks with PTSD get a porn addiction? PTSD sufferers, especially military-induced PTSD, are vulnerable to porn addiction. PTSD damages our soul and our sense of self. It damages our relationships, especially with our loved ones. PTSD creates a PTSD-Identity that tears us apart.
One of the features of addiction is that you do more and more and get less and less back. Alcoholics have to drink more to get the same buzz. Porn addicts have to engage in more porn for longer periods of time to get the same thrill. Porn addiction damages the soul and our relationships with others. No wonder it is closely associated with PTSD.
Porn Makes Other People Into Objects
The PTSD-Identity seeks to isolate the sufferer and eventually drive that person to suicide. One of the ways it does that is through creating a porn addiction.
Porn treats all others as an object to be used and discarded.
Thus, porn gives the PTSD afflicted person practice at treating people like meat to be used and then tossed away. There is no relationship between the PTSD person and the sex worker in the video. Porn teaches us how to exploit and discard other human beings. That attitude is then carried into the relationship with one’s spouse, family, and friends. In this way, porn drives people apart because the ability to truly care about someone as an individual with value and meaning is being destroyed by the porn addiction (But it’s not hopless!).
The Slippery Slope of Porn Addiction
Pornography sets a slippery slope for its users. Usually someone begins with photos or video of a single person who is being sexually provocative. After a short while the thrill that came with the porn recedes and the PTSD sufferer needs to regain that sense of thrill. In order to do this, they have to look at more porn (quantity) and more diversified porn (types).
By more diversified, we mean that initially a photo with a single nude person may have been sufficient to feel alive again. But then, quickly, the thrill fades and we feel even worse. To stop that feeling, we go after even worse forms of pornography: we diversify into other types of porn.
One of the things porn promises is that the user will feel more alive, less numb, and to relieve stress by orgasm. PTSD bounces us back and forth between extremes of hyper-numbness where we don’t feel anything and extremes of hyperactivity where we want to feel every thrill we can in order to feel alive. When the porn thrill begins to recede – and it will – then the user needs more diversified porn.
Any stress relief is brief and artificial. The PTSD anxiety kicks in faster and faster and the use of porn cannot relieve the new enhanced stress. So, being addicted, one increases quantity and diversity of porn – and makes oneself even more addicted.
Now that they are numb. They are unfazed by the photo of a single nude person. So they move onto pictures which include several people, and in this day and age they may go straight to video porn.
If they go to video porn, it is almost impossible for them to get the same thrill and aliveness they seek from a mere photograph. Rarely does someone go from video porn back down to simple photographs and be able to maintain the same thrill or get a higher thrill.
To increase the thrill or sense of aliveness, they devour an increasing quantity and diversity of pornography.
Devour is the right word, because they consume porn and it affects who they become.
To feed the addiction they watch multiple people engaged in sexual acts. Over time, even that loses its thrill and they seek out other forms of pornography.
To keep reaching for the level of thrill that always feels just out of there reach they may start going to strip or sex clubs. Often, the porn-addicted soul starts to look at fetish pornography and also they start seeking out videos which include younger and younger sex workers. They may start watching videos which simulate a sexual assault. Now they have digressed to the point where they can only find personal joy when someone else is seen to suffer violence.
Some of those rape videos are professional sex workers who act as if they are being raped. And, some of those videos are actually people who are being raped.
Where does the slippery slope of porn addiction end up? It ends in child pornography and snuff films. I include material about pornography in my class on the Theology of Violence and Non-Violence. In my studies for that presentation, I’ve read interviews with porn addicted people, usually men. They reveal the pattern of porn addiction:
a. Initial thrill from pictures of an adult sex worker
b. Moves to pictures/video of two sex workers together
c. Moves to videos of 3+ sex workers together
d. Moves to videos of mock violence
e. Moves to videos of younger looking sex workers
f. Moves to child pornography and real violence
g. Moves to snuff films
Not everyone goes all the way to snuff films, but some do. In the studies they said it was the only way they could get a sexual thrill anymore. They had become burnt out on all of the other stuff.
The porn addiction also consumes their time. Someone starts out for 15 or so minutes a day – just to relieve stress. After a while, they start making time for it, sneaking off for it. Over time they find all of their free time is spent on porn, trying to feel alive, trying to feel unstressed. Ironically, the very activity of engaging porn creates a stress that it cannot relieve itself.
There is Hope Against PTSD Porn Addiction
People can overcome porn addiction. It does not have to eat them up, ruin their reputations, cause a divorce, or land them in jail on child porn charges.
Breaking a pornography habit is tough. Overcoming habituated addictions of any kind are difficult endeavors: drugs, booze, porn, you name it. But there is hope, it can be done. You don’t have to allow the PTSD to ruin everything in your life.
The first part is to simply stop. See if you have the willpower to not be engaged with porn at all for 90 days. Alongside that is prayer. Be open to the possibility of God and that God loves you. You need not explicitly pray to be healed from porn or the images it has branded into your mind. The images will fade if you don’t keep restocking them. You can simply pray for healing and grace. God welcomes your invitation to join together on a journey of healing from the soul wound of PTSD.
Semper Pax, Dr. Z
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow Dr. Z. Great post. I am left with the thought that even though one is stricken with PTSD, and the PTSD personality wants the sufferer to be alone, the natural and true desire of the human being is to be loved by another human being. Porn quickly destroys the ability of real men to love real women, and vice versa I suppose. No woman could live up to what is portrayed on the porn screen (nor should she want to!). Porn is a travesty of our society, sucking the very life and love out of the people who have fallen prey to it’s lure, as well as the people who participate in it’s production.
Hi Becky, Thank you for your comment. You are right that no spouse would want to try and emulate what sex workers do in porn films. I was reading one man’s comments on his experience with porn. He said it made him more aggressive. As he watched more “simulated” rapes he began to emulate that violence in bed with his spouse. He realized that he no longer was involved in consentual love with his wife. He was raping her, not loving her.
Porn is vampiric: it leeches the love, tenderness, and devotion, out of a relationship. All parties are harmed. Thankfully, a person can recover from porn addiction. Discovering or re-establishing healthy loving relationships will cause PTSD to wither. By embracing life and nourishing relationships the porn can be defeated. Semper Pax, Dr. Z