Porn Addiction Seminar

Awareness Seminar on Porn Addiction among students

27^th July, 2013

Venue : St. Joseph’s Guidance and Counseling Centre (SJGCC), Quilon

Students in their developmental stage experience not only many academic challenges but psycho-social problems.  St. Joseph’s Guidance and Counseling Centre through a professionally qualified team of counseling psychologists have been addressing the needs of the students who have been psycho-socially marginalized.

With the therapeutic success in the treatment of social phobia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, exam phobia, learning disability, academic backwardness,   the study of pornographic addiction was undertaken by SJGCC as it became a problem to be reckoned with in counseling.

Pornography can create a powerful biochemical “rush” in the user. Body chemicals, such as serotonin, adrenaline, endorphins, and dopamine are at play creating a euphoric state in the user. Teens who experience this biochemical thrill will, not surprisingly, want to experience it again. From this standpoint, it is helpful to see pornography not as just a social issue, but as a drug because the addictive mechanism is clearly part of the danger when teenagers habitually use pornography.

Some of the negative consequences of porn addiction include modeling and imitation of inappropriate behaviors; unhealthy interference with normal sexual development; emotional side effects (including nightmares, and residual feelings of shame, guilt, anxiety and confusion); stimulation of premature sexual activity; and the development of misleading and potentially harmful attitudes towards sex.

Porn has also been associated with sexual addiction, trouble with respecting boundaries, relationship and attachment problems, aggressive patterns of acting out sexually, the depersonalization of woman (and now men and children), irritability, depression, and loss of integrity, social isolation, neglecting important areas of life, personality disorders, out of control emotions, out of control behaviors, difficulty with thinking and problem solving, and high-risk sex . Viewing explicit materials increases your acceptance of self-focused sexual behaviors that are casual and not relationship-focused and not affectionate.

It is important to be aware of the prevalence, dangers of porn addiction and its adverse effects on the brain and important areas of the addict’s life. The impact on marriages and families is immense, and it starts when people are teens.