Millions of people are addicted to watching adult content on the web.
The access is easy and it's easy to keep your habit as a secret. At the same time, people affected by this addiction find it difficult to look for help. Often, they try to overcome their problem by themselves. Lavario, one of the world's largest provider of self-help program against porn and sex addictions, have pub-lished the results of a recent survey among their customers.
Nine out of ten tried numerous times
More than half of the respondents tried more than 20 times to stop watching - or at least to reduce their consumption of explicit images considerably. Twenty percent stated that they tried between ten and twenty times to break their addictions.
Less than 10% answered that they're trying it for the first time. These numbers relate to the times before they started with the self-help program. Several conclusions can be drawn out of those results.
Great despair and low self-esteem
Obviously, there is great despair among sonic porn addicts.
It isn't difficult to imagine how you feel when you try to break a bad habit for so many times and always fail. An earlier survey of Lavario showed that almost four out of five addicts suffer from strong feelings of shame and guilt and from a low self-esteem.
At the same time, it shows that the suffering must be considerable as these people try again and again to break their addiction despite the constant failures. It also shows the strength of the addiction: despite good propositions and numerous attempts people still don't get away from it.
Two typical mistakes
Lavario explains that most addicts commit two mistakes when trying to quit porn. First of all, it would be more reasonable to reduce the daily dose of adult content gradually, e.g. during two months. Instead, most addicts try to get away from it overnight and therefore provoke a high chance of cravings and relapses.
Secondly, good intentions aren't sustainable unless they are supported by a therapy or by a self-help program. Addicts must find out why they ran into their problems. They must identify the problems driving them towards explicit content. Addicts must understand which are the daily triggers for watching porn, how to reject watching, how to de-velop alternatives.
With good support there are great chance to break an addiction within eight weeks.