CLOSER NEWS REPORT

The rise of porn addiction

There’s been a 133 per cent increase in people seeking treatment for their obsession with X-rated videos. Shockingly, the NSPCC has reported children as young as 10 becoming addicted. Closer investigates the impact of hardcore films.…

Throughout herteen years, Louise Green* remembers regularly making excuses to get out of going to family events. The reason? So she could stay at home and indulge her porn addiction, watching videos for hours at a time. If her family was at home, she’d either stay in her bedroom or hide in the bathroom to get her fix.

Now aged 25 and working full-time in retail, Louise’s habit is under control, she sees a therapist and has cut her consumption of X-rated material down to about half an hour a week, spread out over the days. But she recognises her addiction could easily spiral out of control again.

EXCUSES

Louise, who lives with her sister in Oxford, explains, “I was 11 when I got into internet porn. I was on a site on my phone and the content came up by accident. I started watching it and was hooked. By the time I was in my teens, I’d watch it for hours every day, making excuses to stay at home from family gatherings. If I did have to go out I’d even slip away and watch it in the bathroom, claiming I had constipation or felt sick to explain the length of time I’d been away for.

“When I watched it I felt energetic and focused. I also enjoyed the rebellion of doing something ‘forbidden’. Now it’s more like a comfort blanket as it’s been my crutch for so long. I’ve become slightly desensitised to actual pornography – Ieven listen to audio porn to help me sleep and I often have a quick fix of a film in the morning. It wakes me up – it’s my equivalent to having a cup of coffee.”

Louise’s addiction has taken its toll on her romantic life though – she’s never had a boyfriend and is still a virgin. She explains, “One of the reasons I’ve never had sex is that I don’t see myself as desirable and that I need to have a perfect body in order to be intimate with someone.”

Recent studies have shown that women aged 18 to 24 are having 20 per cent less sex than women their age were a decade ago. It’s been reported that sexual health services are being overwhelmed with young women suffering from intimacy problems, pain during sex and plummeting libidos – all linked to a sharp rise in watching pornography online. Pop star Billie Eilish, now 21, admitted she used to regularly watch hardcore adult films from the age of 11 and said, “I think it really destroyed my brain and I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn.”

ACCESSIBLE

Data from the UK’s most popular adult content website, PornHub �