For nearly four years, David's days typically started and ended the same way. Around 6 a.m., he'd wake up, grab his phone or tablet from next to his bed and begin watching porn. Leaving little time to get ready and have breakfast, he'd head off to work around 8 a.m., where he would keep himself heavily caffeinated, anxiously waiting to leave. After work, he would head home, "literally running," and sometimes skip dinner to spend the rest of the evening fully engrossed in the clicks and hits of Internet pornography.



"I'd go until 11:30, 12, sometimes 1 [a.m.], until my eyes literally hurt," said David, 33, from Albany Park.



If it was a weekend, he'd spend it entirely at home watching porn. "I had no life. It was as if the whole world didn't exist. That's how I lived for many years," said David, who didn't want his real name used for this article. (While RedEye's typical standard is to include a source's first and last name, we are allowing some anonymity in stories dealing with addiction because of the sensitive nature of the topic.)



There's an ongoing debate over whether Internet pornography is addictive, but David's days depended on it. Not only are the statistics hard to track, but also a clinical definition of pornography addiction has yet to be agreed on by experts. Although a proposed hypersexual disorder category was considered for inclusion in the American Psychiatric Association's 2013 fifth edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," the standard for the mental health industry, reviewers decided in 2012 that there was not enough research and evidence to include the category.



Gary Wilson, author of "Your Brain on Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction," said there are no official statistics or surveys on porn addicts because the addiction hasn't been acknowledged yet. But a few polls on the subject were taken by organizations last year, including one by Proven Men Ministries, a Christian-focused organization that offers help to those who identify as porn and sex addicts. The nonprofit surveyed 1,000 adults, both men and women of various ages, races and geographical locations; a breakdown of those demographics, including religious backgrounds, could not be provided. It found that 33 percent of men ages 18–30 think they are addicted to pornography or are unsure if they're addicted. Overall, 18 percent of all men said the same.



Whether it is recognized as an addiction or not, people are talking about the trouble with porn. It's interfering with users' lives, and Chicago psychotherapist Jens Hussey believes that it is "the fastest-growing addiction that's out there right now," particularly in younger men.



Trained to need porn



Before Internet porn, users were limited to the analog stuff, consuming magazines and videos in lesser quantity. But today, the Internet has helped put porn into the hands of anyone who wants it, as much as they want it. With Internet access and a viewing device, anyone has the ability to watch thousands of naked strangers anywhere at any time—in the car, in the bathroom at work, before even getting out of bed in the morning.



"Back then I could only look at a picture of a naked girl, and what did I know about sex, when I was 12 or 13?" said Wilson, who also runs the website yourbrainonporn.com. "But now ... imagination has been replaced by what's on the screen. You become a voyeur to watch and click and surf, conditioning sexuality—that this is the way you do sex, this is how you have it...because it's real people having what you think is real sex."



Wilson's site references several studies that show how the brain is affected by porn, suggesting that too much Internet porn could be rewiring the brain, even if you're not addicted, by "taking advantage of these innate types of reward circuit responses," he said, that keep dopamine—the feel-good chemical in the brain—surging. Although what's on screen isn't real sex, the brain naturally finds voyeurism, novelty, shock and surprise, seeking and searching and other aspects sexually stimulating. Every time a person watching porn clicks to a new video with new naked people and new surprises, his dopamine shoots up. David said that while he was watching porn six hours a day, he'd only watch each video for about 10 seconds and then move on to the next.



Not everyone who watches porn uses it compulsively. But those who do crave it say it's affecting their sex lives, causing erectile dysfunction, changing how they view real partners and their own body image and, in some cases, ruining relationships and careers.



Hussey, who specializes in addiction, said access is a key component in the problem with porn. "When most people go to their jobs, alcohol is not there, cocaine is not on the job, but porn could be on the job," he said. "Because of access, it becomes very difficult to get away from it."



Because it's so accessible, young people are growing up with it, meaning that their brains are too: "Your brain keeps developing until about age 24," Hussey said. "So if you start masturbating and watching porn at age 12 or 13 and you have 10 years of brain development, and let's say you have a guy who every time he masturbates he watches porn, ... he is now developing sexuality to be trained to need porn."



David watched his first porn video at age 13 and started using it regularly at 26. When he was in his 20s, his parents began pressuring him to get married. A closeted gay man, the prospect of marrying a woman triggered his compulsive behavior, he said. At 29, he came out, hoping to begin dating and living a "normal life," but he wasn't interested in meeting people—it made him uncomfortable. The more he tried to stop watching porn, the deeper and deeper he'd fall into it.



"I can't describe obsession with the Internet, that unlimited supply," he said. "It was like there was a drug dealer living in my laptop."



Like a drug



A few studies have explored connections between drug and porn addiction, suggesting that the same parts of the brain are involved in both compulsive drug and porn use. A study by the University of Cambridge published last year suggested that a porn addict's brain looks similar to a drug addict's brain. It assessed 19 men with "compulsive sexual behavior" and 19 men without, monitoring brain function of both groups while they looked at short videos with either sexually explicit content or sports. The study found that three drug-related regions in the brain were more active in those with a compulsive penchant for porn.



For Kevin, 37, of Joliet, who didn't want his last name used in this story, the lightbulb in his head went on when he saw Wilson's "The Great Porn Experiment," a TEDx Talk (an independently organized event similar to the big Technology, Entertainment and Design convention). He realized that porn "caused the problem for myself and for the person that I cared so much about."



Kevin didn't watch a ton of porn when he was a teenager, but he started using more and more when he found that he wasn't sexually fulfilled in his marriage. He divorced and met someone else he was happy with, but when he started traveling for work, money got bad and so did things in the bedroom. He thought it was performance anxiety and thought porn would help, so he was watching it about once a day.



"Guys are trained to think of masturbation as practice for sex, but it's not at all," Kevin said. "You're thinking to yourself, 'It'll relax you, it'll keep your libido high because you're thinking about sex, it'll make you more confident,' but it doesn't, it makes you the exact opposite."



Kevin didn't feel more confident with porn and found that he was comparing himself to it. This is especially common in female porn addicts, which there are seemingly fewer of compared to men (the Proven Men Ministries study found that 7 percent of women ages 18 to 30 thought they were addicted to porn or unsure, and 3 percent of all women said the same). However, it hits the male demographic too. "I thought that I should be this mind-blowingly great partner because I knew all of these moves from porn," Kevin said.



Kevin tried counseling and meditation and eventually turned to a doctor who prescribed him sexual enhancement drugs. Nothing was helping. Then he heard about nofap.com, a porn recovery site, which got him thinking about quitting porn altogether. Wilson's TEDx Talk was the wake-up call. "I wish I could turn back the clock and have my doctor send me to nofap.com instead of getting me on the little blue pill," Kevin said.



'The problem isn't below the belt'



Wilson said he's heard similar sentiments echoed by people struggling with porn addiction "thousands of times over the years." Erectile dysfunction and low libido rates in men under 40 have skyrocketed. There are few studies looking at ED in younger men before 2000. A 1999 cross-sectional study found that only 5 percent of men ages 18-59 were affected by ED, concluding that it was mostly an issue for older men. Since 2012, studies looking at ED in younger men have said the rates are between 27 and 33 percent for men under 40, according to Wilson's site. Of all recent studies, only the Cambridge study published last year linked porn as a potential cause for ED, finding that more than half of the participants with compulsive sexual behavior reported such problems. When the sexual enhancement drugs aren't working for the younger guys, the problem could be addiction-related, Wilson said.



"...The problem isn't below the belt, where Viagra works, nor is the problem really psychological," he said in his TEDx Talk. "It's due to physical changes in the brain, those addiction-related changes. Their numb brains are sending weaker and weaker signals to their [penises]."



Mike Middleton's problem, however, wasn't getting an erection, it was finishing. The 30-year-old Wicker Park resident was ensnared in a failing marriage, and his addictive tendencies didn't help. Rather than therapy, he turned to alcohol, pot, cocaine, hash, pills. He had no sex drive, and he and his wife only had sex twice in the last year and a half of their two-and-a-half year marriage. Eventually porn became another vice, with him watching once or twice a day. Even after his wife left him, he was afraid of getting intimate with anyone else, nervous he couldn't perform. "I would find myself going crazy in my mind trying to find something to think of that could trigger me," Middleton said in an email.



The 1999 study also found that low sexual desire affected about 5 percent of men ages 18-59, and most were older. However, researchers around the world are making shocking discoveries. The Cambridge study found that more than half of the guys with compulsive sexual behavior said they've had issues getting turned on in physical relationships but not by watching porn. These men also first started watching porn at an earlier age (about 14) than the guys without compulsive sexual behavior did (about 17). A Canadian study published last year in the Journal of Sexual Medicine reported that 53.5 percent of males 16-21 have some symptom related to sexual problems, including ED (26 percent), low sexual desire (24 percent) and issues orgasming (11 percent). These rates were much higher in males than in females, unlike in earlier studies.



As Middleton fell deeper down the porn rabbit hole, he said, he started exploring fetishes. Wilson said it's common for heavy porn users to escalate to more shocking stimulation to get aroused. Middleton said he grew critical of his wife's "lack of sexual curiosity/exploration" toward the end of their marriage.



Hussey said men's sexuality is often affected in ways that real sex, even in relationships, becomes boring. Women in porn have "perfect" bodies, videos are well-lit and the sexual retelling is fine-tuned and edited. "It's all power and pumping and exactly what somebody wants it to be on a fantasy level, but real-life sex is kind of a letdown comparatively for people because it doesn't have said production value," Hussey said. "... It really kind of screws up the ability for someone to enjoy real sex." Hussey said he's heard men say that women in real life don't turn them on, or that they won't do what they like women in porn to do. Men feel detached from real sex, and it's more of a letdown on the fantasy and visual stimulation level.



"As with most use of anything that provides an immediate...dopamine release, [porn] has left me lonely, self-loathing and hopeless," Middleton said in an email. "I consider my past porn usage...to be just as dangerous as my drug and alcohol usage. It tarnished my character, made me a weaker person and took a considerable toll on my sense of self."



But Wilson said porn addicts can recover from ED and a low libido, although it might take some time.



Rebooting



Hussey said that in addiction therapy, it's important to get to the root of the purpose the addiction serves. "Does it help them manage anger, loneliness, stress, relationship conflicts—these are big reasons why people use addictive processes and substances," he said. "They work very well to manage stress." Socially awkward guys who are lonely, stressed and bored might turn to alcohol, porn or cocaine for a distraction, he said.



Like Middleton, David also struggled with an alcohol addiction and other internalized battles. When he decided it was time to get off porn, he had to quit the booze if he was going to commit. But porn proved to be a harder habit to kick. "I've been sober in all of this time, but the porn site has been a lot of struggle," he said. "It's completely different than alcoholism … [with it] being a substance ... but porn, all the images, the videos, everything, they're still in my head."



David started his recovery in January 2012. A few months earlier, he saw the movie "Shame," about a sex addict, and while David wasn't sexually active, he felt strangely connected with the main character. It hit him one day when he was driving home on the highway, at 60-70 mph, searching his phone browser to get videos ready to watch when he got home. "I could see myself, at the affliction of how obsessed I have become that I don't care about my own life, anybody's life, all I want is to have...these videos open the moment I open my door," he said. "That I would say was a painful moment—the moment of painful realization of how much powerlessness I have. It was just compulsion beyond my comprehension."



He started seeing a therapist and began 12-step programs in the city for alcoholism and porn addiction. During the therapy process, he discovered that he was sexually abused as a child. Although a gay man, he didn't watch gay porn—it was usually with men and women, but moreover, it was an escape. "Maybe in a way, I was trying to hide from everybody, and the moment I found porn, I found the one thing which will keep me isolated," David said. "I was really afraid of people, and I thought that if I can keep everybody away I am safe."



Today, David doesn't have Internet access at home. He uses security apps and works with his provider to help foolproof his phone, blocking any pornographic images from the server end. He has friends, goes on dates and has made a commitment to go dancing once a month. He said he feels like a teenager. "Most refreshing is I think I may be an extrovert," he said. "I do like people's company. ... I am this social being who just never exploded."



About six weeks ago, a small group from Middleton's church went over to his house for what he thought was Bible study. By the end of the night, he was in an intervention for his drug and alcohol abuse. That week, he started an intensive outpatient rehab program at a Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation clinic. He goes four days a week for three hours in the evenings. On Facebook, he came across Fight the New Drug, a nonprofit whose mission is to raise awareness of the "harmful effects of pornography." He said it's really opened his eyes to get sober. While the values the anonymity of addiction programs, he chooses to be open with friends and family. "Every time I take a stand to grab more control over my life and let people in, I feel less shame, and more confidence."



For Kevin, help was at nofap.com, which has a following on Reddit of more than 160,000 "fapstronauts" (followers). The site refers to recovery from porn addiction as "rebooting" and challenges users to refrain from porn, masturbation and maybe even sex altogether for a period of time. Kevin started April 7, and already he feels like a different person. He feels more confident, procrastinates less and feels like he has more testosterone. He said he thinks his ED has gone away and described random erections in the middle of the night. However, there have been struggles in his recovery. The hardest part: "Dealing with the anger of not finding it before while I was still with the person I really wanted to be with."



Hussey said it's important for anyone with an addiction to work with an individual psychotherapist. "They need to get to the underlying causes of why they ended up addicted in the first place," he said. He also recommends support groups, such as Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, which, he said, takes on "healthier attitudes toward sex in general."



"You don't have to be isolated anymore," David said. "You are a social being, and you deserve a full social life. Come out, ask for help. ... There is help out there. Just opening the door is all it takes."