“It was strange for me, as a woman, that I found myself having a sexual response to what I’d find horrific in real life.”
I lost whole days to pornography, ” recalls therapist Andrea Johnson, “but I think I just knew there was something toxic in it for me. There were the mental health impacts—the way I felt disgusted after, like a hangover. It affected my confidence a lot. I quickly found in a matter of months that I lost the ability to have a full sexual response in the real world without the assistance of porn. I couldn’t orgasm without it. Nothing would do it.”
“I’m not anti-pleasure. I’m not anti-sex. But online porn is a sewer. I don’t want it near me, ” adds Johnson, who eventually found the determination to go cold turkey, and has taken a zero tolerance approach to porn for herself and her husband ever since. “Sure, I spent a lot of time in support groups and most of the time I was the only woman. But I think there will be more and more women who struggle with a porn compulsion.”
The vast majority of men and women who watch porn as a masturbation aid don’t become compulsive users. Still, the worlds of
