The veteran, named Alex, served as a U.S. Marine in two deployments, experiencing combat on both missions. Once his deployment was completed, he struggled to work through the transition back to civilian life. Drug use and alcohol became self-medicating measures, and eventually, so did Internet pornography, according to a recent PR Web article. The pornography use then evolved into an all-consuming addiction that spanned multiple years.

Now in recovery for pornography addiction, Alex shares his experience on Feed The Right Wolf, a Web site that has received more than 200,000 viewers. On the site, Alex discusses spending several hours daily viewing online pornography and seeing it take over his life. Like other addictions, as his usage of pornography increased, so did his need for more of the substance – culminating in a point of complete loss of control.

The Web site “Feed The Right Wolf,” named after a Native American story, began as a blog and a tool for Alex to discuss the difficulties and the victories associated with overcoming a three-year pornography addiction.

The veteran says that many people don’t know how dangerous and consuming pornography is, and that not enough people who are battling through the addiction are willing to share their experiences. Part of his work involves teaching people ways to protect themselves and their children from falling into pornography addiction.

U.S. commandos said the materials found in Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was killed, included technologically-advanced versions of pornography on video. Analysts and experts hope to learn more by talking with bin Laden’s former wives, says an article on The Washington Post.

It is unclear who may have been using the materials, and whether or not bin Laden was among those who viewed them. Because bin Laden’s compound did not have Internet-based communications, experts are exploring how the materials could have been accessed and brought to the compound. The compound was able to produce and broadcast videos made inside. Devices including thumb drives were found in the compound, and are expected to be identified as ways bin Laden communicated with others outside the compound.

The discovery of pornography has occurred on other explorations of Islamist militants, and some U.S. officials have said the materials can be commonly found among these locations. Research articles from across the globe suggest that use of pornography may be linked to increased tendencies toward violence or violent sexual crimes.

Other experts believe the risk of children to be victimized by pornography and violent sex crimes may increase as the Internet pornography industry expands because more users of the material equates to higher demand for it. Psychologists are also exploring the ways people find a sense of validation for excessive use of pornography through their connections with online pornography communities.

In its innovative approach described in the Utah Statesman, the organization, called Fight the New Drug, views pornography addiction at a similar level of harm as drugs – and compares their efforts to campaigns from 50 years ago to warn people that smoking cigarettes, for example, could bring them tremendous harm.

Fight the New Drug’s Utah State University chapter also takes the approach that pornography affects everyone, and has used research and articles suggesting that when people watch pornography, similar brain responses are created as if they were abusing drugs. Research has also strengthened the belief that pornography acts upon the same brain-level chemicals that are released when a person forms a drug addiction.

The founders of Fight the New Drug said that pornography can have a lifelong impact on how a person chooses and views their marriage partner. They hope to bring the message of how pornography can harm students to area high schools and other community groups, believing that the more people begin to address pornography in conversations, the closer they will come to getting help for addiction.

College campuses are an environment where many students begin to use pornography, and Fight the New Drug founders believe more information about the destructive nature of pornography can prevent students from falling into pornography use and addiction.
 

When porn as an addiction is introduced into healthy relationships, the health of that relationship can suffer. John Buckingham was recently featured in a CNN blog, admitting that his addiction to porn started when he was just 12 years old. He had hoped the addiction would take care of itself when he got married.

For the first four months of his marriage, he was able to keep the demons at bay. At that point, he returned to his addiction and the marriage he had worked so hard to build as a solid relationship was shaken to its core. When hearing the news of his addiction, Buckingham’s wife was devastated.

In the majority of cases where pornography is a problem in a heterosexual relationship, the one with the addiction to porn is the male. The CRC Connection writer sought to gather opinions on the effect porn has on relationships and found one 30-year-old female student who believes it is healthy for relationships.

Another student, younger and male, shared that he believes porn is a slap in the face. He feels that spouses need and require attention, affection and love. When other people are brought into the marriage, online or otherwise, strife and bitterness always result.

A third student suggested that whenever she found porn in her boyfriend’s room, it made her feel insecure and angry. For Buckingham’s wife, it made her feel unattractive. With negative reactions to porn emerging in some relationships, seeking treatment for a porn addiction may be necessary to prevent damage in that relationship.
 

For those addicted to pornography, however, it’s a different story. Treatment is not as easily sought and is far more difficult to discuss as people with this addiction work their way toward recovery. This is especially true for family members of people addicted to pornography, who often have to endure the destruction of their family amidst strong feelings of guilt and shame.

Psychologically, the situations that lead to addiction to pornography can be compared to a drug addiction. The use of pornography releases endorphins, or feelings of pleasure or escape. Over time the body becomes so used to this release of endorphins that the person can no longer control their response to the addictive substance or material. The amount of pornographic material needed to achieve the same feelings of escape or pleasure increases over time, and leads to compulsive actions that can be completely life-consuming.

For family members of a loved one engaged in pornography addiction, they may find themselves separated from friends and workplace relationships, as well as from other family members. For married couples, therapy sessions attended together are often necessary to work through feelings of shame, betrayal and guilt. The shame factor, say sex addiction experts, can be especially harmful to the spouse of a pornography addict because it can keep them from seeking support from others. They may go months or years without telling anyone about the problem.

In addition to the feelings of isolation, family members whose loved one is involved in pornography addiction may not seek information about the powerful and widespread problem, further adding to the destructive and isolating properties of the addiction.

Experts in the field of pornography addiction say that lifelong emotional damage from childhood exposure to pornography or sexual abuse can spur an emergence of pornography use that can destroy a family. However, the addiction to sexual materials or videos masks the true situation – the person’s use of pornography to escape negative emotions or feelings that have not been dealt with properly.

Like a computer virus, say experts, the effects of pornography can infiltrate and influence a person’s thoughts about sex for years, affecting their self-views and ability to succeed in an intimate relationship. This is especially true when a person experiences pornography in their teen years, when many core beliefs are being developed.

Honest conversation about a family members’ use of pornography is key for beginning a recovery process, as well as a willingness to explore the negative feelings associated with pornography addiction together. Pornography destroys thousands of families each year, and experts advise seeking professional assistance as early as possible if a pornography addiction is suspected.
 

I examined the toughest addictions to quit, and found that love was the worst. But recent research has indicated a seriously disturbing addiction that is more commonplace than most people realized: pornography.

Senator Chuck Grassley asked for an investigation of SEC computers. You know the SEC—the Securities and Exchange Commission—the group charged with policing Wall Street to enforce any new financial regulations that are passed?

What may give us pause is that the SEC is the group that was supposed to police all of those derivative instruments and credit default swaps. In fact, the SEC couldn’t catch Bernie Madoff despite being offered explicit road maps to his Ponzi scheme, as Harry Markopolos revealed in his book No One Would Listen. Markopolos believes—surprise!—that all kinds of fraud are going on in the financial industry and that SEC enforcement wouldn’t recognize a crime if they saw a bank being robbed.

But back to the Grassley-inspired investigation, which was conducted by the SEC Inspector General’s office (and what have they been doing up until now?). This vigilant watchdog found over 30 people repeatedly viewing porn on government computers—during the financial meltdown! Seventeen porn viewers were at senior levels of the SEC.

Here are the worst two cases involving senior officials, one a lawyer and the other an accountant:

• The attorney spent up to eight hours a day viewing and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office. This man was promoted to head of the SEC (or is that SEX)—kidding!—he resigned. (Wonder what he’s doing with the free time he now has?)

• The accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting porn websites, but by diligent application, he still amassed a large collection of porn on his hard drive. This guy is now head of the SEC! Not, but he still works there, after a two-week suspension.

Visualize, if you will, someone trying 16,000 times in a month to outwit blocks to his getting to his one true desire, or someone spending all day at work compulsively lusting over porn. Tell me—is that an addiction? Come on. You know what porn is when you see it. Surely you can detect when something’s addictive. Let’s just hope they don’t put Harry Markopolos in charge of investigating everybody’s computers!

And this porn-seeking behavior is at the top of the addictive pile (remember, these guys then went home to their personal computers). Heroin addicts don’t spend all day and night shooting up. They rest sometimes.

"We had about 80 persons in Pocatello, about double that in Idaho Falls, triple that here in the Rexburg location. People are understanding (that) this is needing to be discussed in an appropriate way," said Craig Kobia, an event organizer.

State Sen. Brent Hill read some alarming statistics: There are 420 million Web pages of porn, and most people first see pornography at age 11. Senator Hill also spoke about his visit to jail, where he asked inmates about what youth need to do to stay out of prison.

"Number 1, stay away from drugs. Number 2, stay away from alcohol. And number 3, stay away from pornography," said Hill.

KIDK’s Steven Pope asked Dr. Donald Hilton, keynote speaker and brain surgeon, about his feelings on pornography.

"It’s a true addiction. In the past we tended to look at porn as a personal behavioral issue. Science now is equalizing what we call natural addictions to gambling, overeating leading to obesity, and sexual addictions as pornography. Really science is now equating that to drug addictions in terms of changes we’re seeing in the brain," said Dr. Hilton.

"I think what that means for us in terms of treatment, is that we must accord pornography addiction the same respect and treatment that we’d would any true drug addiction," said Dr. Hilton.

Easy access to high-speed, wireless Internet that (usually) is unregulated, uncensored, and unmonitored is "the antithesis of what you find in a typical business environment," Leahy writes, adding that college students are going to get a "real shock treatment" when they go to work for employers who have a zero-tolerance policy on porn. "What’s going to happen when these two worlds collide?” he posits.

Cheryl Wetzstein of the Washington Times writes that Leahy founded www.bravehearts.net in 2002 after recovering from a 30-year pornography habit in order to raise awareness about the encroachment of adult materials in American life.

Between 2006 and 2008, Leahy gathered responses from about 26,000 college students and 2,000 college staff who took an online survey about their sexual views and behaviors. He found that 64 percent of males regularly viewed online pornography, as did 18 percent of females.

He also found that a significant minority of respondents (26 percent of men and 18 percent of women) were already struggling to stop their sexual behavior, even when they knew it was "inappropriate."

Some of these troubled men and women will join the estimated 6 percent to 8 percent of the population considered to be full-blown sex addicts, Leahy said. However, a more common scenario will be that men and women will try to hide their pornography habits, both at home and at work.

Working in the computer industry is especially risky for people with porn problems, said Leahy, who was once an IBM executive. Since computer experts "set up all the firewalls and filtering, they know all the back doors," he said. But "they have no accountability — and they have no way to be held accountable—because they know all the tricks."

Leahy recommends that business leaders face the reality that, since the mid-1990s, young people have "been raised on perhaps the most explicit and habit-forming types of pornography known to man."

Having employees sign an Internet Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) that forbids online pornography, exchange of lewd photos and obscene jokes, and storage of adult materials on company equipment is not enough, Leahy said. Rather, employee education and awareness training about Internet pornography and sex addiction will help employees understand warning signs and open the door for conversations about the problem.

Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) should include referrals to sex-addiction counselors and 12-step programs, just as they do for substance abuse, Leahy said. For people in recovery, EAPs can help negotiate temporary limits on computer access at work and "accountability partners" who get summary reports on a person’s computer activity.

Leahy warns, "For every employee who surfaces and is exposed as a violator of our sexually related company policies and Internet AUPs, I can assure you that there are 10 others hiding in our hallways and operating under the radar yet to be discovered."

“Finding it was devastating to us. We had no idea, and the things that were coming up on the screen were…we’re not just talking a Playboy picture, we’re talking some horrible sexual figures that came up and some in cartoon form which was really awful to think what age they’re targeting for this,” the boy’s mother told Minnesota’s ABC 6 News.

Internet porn graduated to telephone porn in his case. “We felt like we had conquered the monster,” she explains. “We secured our computer and learned how to watch for it. A year later, when he was 15 we discovered that the phone had a bunch of 800 numbers on it. We had blocks for 900 numbers but his cell phone had 800 numbers. When we got the bill I looked it up and started dialing the numbers and found it was telephone porn,” she says.

“These are very hard core, pornographic pictures that even 8-year-old kids are seeing and it’s getting into their minds,” says Internet Forensic Investigator Darin Finch.

Finch investigates Internet activity on the corporate level and sees the long-term effects this type of addiction can have. “In my position with a couple of different companies, I’ve seen people’s careers end because they couldn’t stop browsing inappropriate things even though they know they’re being watched,” says Finch.

Vicki Tiede is a Christian motivational speaker who counsels countless women on pornography addiction. She has first-hand knowledge because her ex-husband spent a lot of time and money on his addiction to pornography.

“I share my own story having walked through this, having been married to someone before who didn’t struggle with it but who just did it and saw nothing wrong with it. Those who struggle with it actually have hope because they want to be rescued from this pit,” says Tiede. “I was one of those women who was up at two and three in the morning because my husband was on the computer, and thankfully I was pointed to resources and people who could help.”

Finch says, “I think the biggest challenge is how to explain to them how it could affect them later in life. How serious those images are and actions—we’re even talking about movies—how that is adversely affecting their views of women, their view of masculinity and sexuality and what healthy sexuality is versus what they’re seeing on TV or on the Internet.”

According to a Wall Street Journal article, one recovering addict is using a free program called X3watch, which runs in the background of his Web surfing and keeps track of any questionable sites he visits. The program then emails the log to a self-appointed “accountability partner,” who will then sit him down for a talk. A $19 pro version allows for more reports and more accountability partners.

However, the software doesn’t just look at the domain name of the questionable site but also looks for words within the pages like “naked,” “nude,” and “voyeur.” This means it can sometimes flag a visit to an innocent news site, but it typically only logs questionable sites.

Another program called Safe Eyes allows administrators to select which type of sites to block, including gambling, sexual, and even videogaming sites. It can also limit time spent online and restrict access to certain times of the day. A one-year subscription costs $50. There’s also a $20 Safe Eyes Mobile application for the iPhone so that your mobile phone will also be restricted.

All of the software is marketed through an online anti-porn ministry called www.xxxchurch.com, which aims to help people who are addicted to porn.