Webcam Porn Sex Addiction: Getting Out of the Internet Rut
Jared was only 10 the first time someone showed him pornography on the Internet, and while this may seem young, it was only one year before the average age most children in the US see porn for the first time.
By 12, Jared was using his family’s shared computer to regularly view pornography; it was a simple matter of clearing the computer’s cache and history. By 16, Jared had his own smartphone and laptop and had graduated from the standard porn films and amateur sites to something known in the industry as webcam girls. On these sites, Jared could watch a live video feed of any one of thousands of women across the world, and instantaneously chat with her via instant messaging. She might remove her clothing for him and proceed to do anything else he requested. Jared could see the woman through her video feed, but she couldn’t see him; she only had his words – and his money.
These were paid sites. In the beginning, Jared had used his parent’s credit card information. When his father demanded to know what the charge had been for, Jared was able to explain that paying for pizzas over the Internet had allowed someone to steal their credit information. (Kids are perennially savvy.) Jared was able to procure credit in his own name without so much as a paying job. With a post office box, he kept up the charade and used one card to pay off another until college, when he landed his first job in order to begin paying off over $10,000 in credit card debt – all for the services of web cam “entertainers.”
Jared had more than just a financial problem, however. He had managed to allow himself to believe that several of these women were his friends and that at least two of them were his girlfriends. He believed he was in love. Jared had never been in a romantic relationship in real time; he’d never negotiated the intricacies of emotional or physical intimacy with anyone. All he knew of sex had been gleaned across a computer screen and while watching women alone in rooms performing for pay, pretending to be his friend.
It took impossible financial debt, inability to rent an apartment or buy a car (due to that debt), and increasing awareness of his social limitations (inability to create or sustain a relationship) for Jared to see that he might have a problem. He kept making promises to himself that he would no longer visit webcam porn sites, and he kept disappointing himself by being unable to keep those promises. Eventually he reached out in an online forum, writing about his experiences, and in all the responses – many sharing similar experiences, some telling him he was “abnormal” and should just quit – someone broke through to him. He decided to get help for what he now saw as a sexual addiction. He joined a 12-Step meeting near his university for sex addicts, joined a gym, and started going to weekly movie nights for young film critics. For a time, Jared did well, but then he began to relapse. He felt despondent, disgusted and depressed. In a culture in which sex is literally everywhere, he felt consistently triggered. It was impossible, he felt, to stay “clean.” He needed something more, some deeper answer.
Consciously Emerging From the Relapse Rut
Jared’s experience is not uncommon, no matter the addiction. He now knew what his problem was and he knew that he wanted to change, to no longer have this problem, but he may not have yet moved into the frame of mind that he wanted to heal the problem or the wound that had created it. He was thinking only in terms of avoidance.
Embracing Ones’ Demons
As a young film critic, one of Jared’s favorite horror classics was The Exorcist. In the Judeo-Christian framework, we think of exorcising our demons – sometimes a literal, but mostly a metaphorical way of thinking about ridding ourselves of the problems that plague us, problems that originate within us. In the East, in Buddhism, for example, a comparison has been drawn between our differing approaches. A monk and teacher once said that while in the West we seek to exorcise our demons, in Buddhism, they seek to embrace them. By embracing their demons, they bring them into balance so that they can be healed. They do not deny them by attempting to cast them out. The point here is that in our attempts to avoid habitual tendencies and unwanted or painful addictions, too often we miss the importance of that addiction in our lives: why it surfaced in the first place; what its origin was; what it is trying to teach us about ourselves. Trying to avoid the behavior is doing exactly what the addiction did – avoiding feeling something we don’t want to feel. But perhaps we need instead to dig in, embrace, accept, learn. We need to recognize and accept the source of our addictive behavior so that we can grow from it – so that we never need repeat it again.
True and Irreversible Change
Another thing Jared needed to do was change his life more substantially. He followed the tips in the brochures he read. He joined a gym and tried to be more social, but otherwise, he was still going home to a lonely, dark, messy apartment where a computer sat waiting to be turned on. He still chose to see himself as a mostly failed human. Notice the word here is “chose”; it was a choice as nearly everything is. He still chose to work only so hard on his assignments in classes that weren’t the most interesting to him and to work only so hard in a job that wasn’t exciting. He didn’t dare and he did not dream. The years he spent inside a for-pay make-believe eroticized cyber environment had been so stale and dim and wasted that Jared had acquired the mistaken belief that all of life was this way. That he, Jared, was also this way. He needed to begin to rewire his beliefs about himself and the world. He needed to carefully choose other beliefs, other landscapes, other people to surround him. Only full and total commitment to change would bring about the increased conscious engagement that Jared would need to help him see his world and himself through new eyes.
Conscious Steps for No-Escape
When the urge to turn on the computer in order to escape arose, Jared needed a routine for engaging himself in dialogue: Is this going to ultimately make me feel worse? Is this going to create more harmful feelings than good ones? What is it I am trying to escape? Why am I trying to escape this? What will the rest of my world look like because of what I see when I choose to enter here? How will I feel more empowered by choosing not to escape into my addiction but by doing something more beneficial? What is that more beneficial thing that I can do right now instead of activating my addiction?
If Jared could fulfill all of those questions satisfactorily, then logic and self-care would have prevailed rather than numbness, thoughtlessness and addiction. These are all things any of us can do. So much a part of disengaging from addiction is in more fully and consciously engaging with ourselves and with lives we choose to create for the sake of beauty, creativity, health, and purpose. Addiction is about avoidance; health is about conscious engagement. The more aware and awake we become, the less our old addictive patterns stand a chance of reemerging.
Jared is on his way; may you be fully and wholly on yours as well.