Hello, my name’s XXX and I’m a porn addict.

I’ve been watching porn since I was 13. After being tormented by school bullies for “being gay” and discovering I had a talent for upstaging any internet filter available, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Literally. It was then that I discovered one of lives important truths. Boobs. Are. Great! And there are millions of them!!! Everywhere. Every other person has them. Porn started as a way to convince myself I wasn’t gay. Then, it became a great place to hide from the bully’s echoing words. However, this favourite hobby of any pubescent boy became the catalyst for a great depression, a broken marriage and a story which ends with a cord around the neck of my unconscious body.

Addiction. It’s a dirty word. We don’t talk about it, we don’t acknowledge it, we don’t believe it. And that secrecy means it’s the perfect place for it to fester.

Addiction doesn’t mean I’m drunk by 11am, robbing vulnerable people to inject my veins, gambling with disregard for anyone else. It doesn’t mean I’m constantly horny, that I’m a sexual predator, that I want to watch porn. An addiction is a repetitious behaviour that, in spite of being fully aware of the destructive and malignant consequences, I am unable to control or regulate. Why? Because there’s something bigger underneath. I am not good enough. Something which I am too scared to acknowledge, deal with or ignore. I am not good enough. The only option is to drown it out with something louder. To numb it. I am not good enough.

Alcohol, drugs, gambling, prescription pills, social media, binge watching, video games, over eating/spending/working, negative self talk. All have one thing in common – effective methods of self harm. It’s far easier to deal with the physical pain of a gash on your inner thigh/a hangover on a work day/the deadline that has been missed again than the emotional pain you’re running from. I am not good enough.

It’s nothing about the ‘drug’, addiction is about the relationship to that ‘drug’. An alcoholic doesn’t drink because he enjoys the taste. He drinks to quiet the pain that tears him up inside. The compulsive eater, understands the harm to his body, but continues to use food to comfort his pain, insecurities, boredom. The teenage girl can deal with the physical pain on her inner thigh, because the emotional pain is too raw.

In the same way, porn is a coping mechanism. A particularly effective, insatiable, never ending, on tap, in my pocket, in shop windows, free, easy, socially acceptable (and often expected) coping mechanism.

And for all them reasons porn will kill me.

If it was possible to overdose on porn, I would have already…