Why there are better healing options than 12-step
In a recent article, psychoanalyst Michael Bader aired his concerns about labelling people who struggle with compulsive sex and porn viewing as "addicts".
The problem is that in our culture once something becomes viewed as an addiction, any real inquiry about its meaning goes out the window. No one cares any more why a man spends so much time on the Internet or spends a ton of money seeking out dominatrices. His focus -- our focus -- naturally shifts to simply stopping his behavior, one day at a time.
No one cares why I can't be faithful in a relationship. My problem is my compulsive behavior; my recovery is measured only by the cessation of that behavior. Everything else, like the meaning of my behavior, is either discounted as intellectualized psychobabble or viewed as an elaborate rationalization. When addiction is the problem, its whys and wherefores, its psychological origins and meanings, are superfluous.
He also explains why the 12-step treatment approach doesn't work for the majority of them.
In fact, by viewing someone's sexual desires as addictions, 12-step approaches can subtly reinforce someone's own pathological view of themselves. People struggling with sexual compulsions are already afraid of their sexuality, viewing it as an alien internal beast. To imply that the addict's sexual fantasies and sources of satisfaction are, like alcohol to the alcoholic, a loaded gun, reinforces this belief, when in fact it's simply another fantasy.
The actual psychological reality is that the so-called addicts' desires and fantasies are perfectly understandable attempts to deal with anxiety and depression given the context of their personal histories, their painful and irrational views about themselves and about men and women, and their inability to imagine a healthier way of living. Once they're helped to become aware of these meanings, they actually increase their self-compassion and are freer to exercise self-control.
Porn Game Over is Jason's self-help plan for quitting the habit. Click here for a fresh approach to internet pornography addiction...
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10 comments
Hello Jason, THANK YOU !!!
Hello Jason,
THANK YOU !!! well done for including this piece because by psychoanalyst Michael Bader this is precisely the point I have been trying to make for many many months on this website. The precise point I've been trying to make to you and to Margaux and to other contributors here.
We are in danger of constantly missing the real point of why people use pornography in the first place. What does it say about us as people that we feel the need to turn to and use porn, what does it say about our society & culture that we feel such a strong need to escape daily life, daily reality. What does it say about us as men & our desires & disappointments?, what does it say about our lives at work or at home that we wish to bury ourselves in digital self deceptions? My list of questions is a very very long one.
This is a brilliant article and touches on the fact that we should not dismissing the importance of the underlying issues (meanings) that drive people to porn dependency. This article I believe touches on core issues related to porn usage, & the importance of not slapping the label of addiction on someone with a porn habit, a porn habit is not like drug or alcohol or substance abuse. Porn dependency should not be lumped together with addictions of this kind they are NOT the same, & I believe this is because porn dependency is largely misunderstood even now today.
I agree with much of what the
I agree with much of what the article said, but I don't see a major difference between alcohol / drug addiction, and compulsive consumption of porn/sex. Both are all about compulsively turning on the reward centers of the brain in an unhealthy way, because of genetically or environmentally caused wiring problems in the brain. And treatment is all about rewiring the brain to get to the point where you can eventually "steer the battleship" of your behavior. Alcohol and some drugs cause physical dependence, but I think that addiction treatment specialists agree that detoxing an addict is the easiest and most straightforward part of treating addiction.
The article asks "If a married man has a lot of extramarital sex, is he necessarily a sex addict? If a seemingly straight man frequents restrooms for casual sex, is he an addict? How much pornography does someone have to look at, how many hours spent in chat rooms, hookers hired, to go from "hound dog" to "sex addict?"". The answer to this hypothetical question is that if a person wishes to quit or manage their behavior and can't, or if he accelerates in his behavior in the face of negative consequences, or if he has to seek out increasingly intense experiences to maintain his arousal (i.e. tolerance is forming), he may be an addict. If not, he probably is not.
What I most strongly agreed with in the article is his central point - that the root causes of the undesired behavior have to be addressed for real change to come about. But I think that most addiction treatment people would agree with that, and I think that that's a big part of what 12 step programs are all about. I just don't get the addiction denial.
My point is if the initial
My point is if the initial diagnosis is wrong then so will be the approach to healing the problem. If you view the problem as a medical one when its no such thing then the so called treatment will fail to which is one of the central points being made. The difference with porn is that its not addictive in the physiological sense like substance abuse but it might possibly be habit forming in the emotional, stroke psychological sense.
YES! I agree that the effects of using porn are on the psyche, the effects are habit forming, or create chronic patterns of repeated behavior, & that this is probably due to hormonal release in the body & brain. That porn does directly affect the dopamine centers of the brain. My argument is that treatment should be focused on healing the whole person not just focusing on doing cold turkey (because we know sudden withdrawal from porn doesn't work indeed it often back fires completely). Or abstinence programs or 12 step programs. In my opinion and what worked for me was a subtle combination of a) self help b) practical tools such as content filtering and c) counseling or therapy over a sustained period of time.
I'm all for considering other
I'm all for considering other ways of treating this problem or another label for it, but what I just don't understand whenever this topic comes up is the assumption that 12 step programs 1) Are against digging into one's past/family of origin issues and getting to the roots and whys of those issues (which is what many of the steps deal with directly) and 2) Are all about abstinence and simply stopping the behavior. Because neither of those are true. Plenty of 12 step programs deal with problems like compulsive sex or overeating--behaviors one absolutely *shouldn't* stop all together, and their solution is not to abstain completely but to develop healthy boundaries around those activities. There are big differences between the way AA and NA operate and the way sex-addiction 12-step operates. That's why there are separate groups for separate addictions.
I should also add that within
I should also add that within 12 step sex addiction recovery, there are various groups who have different ways of dealing with the problem. SA (Sexaholics Anonymous) is very conservative and defines sobriety as "sex only within marriage." SAA (Sex Addicts Anonymous) and SLAA (Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous) have a boundary system where one defines their own sobriety based on behaviors they feel are healthy or unhealthy for them, which they revisit often with a sponsor. I personally feel the latter is healthier and does a much better job of allowing a person to gauge their own inner compass rather than moralizing.
This is just a small point
This is just a small point but never the less relevant here too in this discussion. Porn crosses cultures and continents but nobody has mentioned yet that different approaches are going to vary or need to be adapted to the culture of different societies. So treatment or healing approaches will feel or be different in different places, different in flavor here in the UK from the US, different from Africa etc,etc.
**Much of the discussion and the article itself seems quite slanted or comes from a US based perspective. I'm NOT knocking that but we should be aware of that fact though.
**The cultural differences themselves don't negate the basic tenets of healing or recovery or so called treatments.
What does it really mean when
What does it really mean when we talk about "having a porn habit or porn problem". It means that the person is driven by completely irrational sexual feelings mixed with sensations of acute anxiety or fear. The person is driven or compelled to seek out or view porn in order to quell or numb out these feelings, these feelings are complex not simple and the type of sensations felt & their inner intensity will be highly individual too.
PORN USE LEADS TO CHRONIC PATTERNS,
Essentially we are talking about what's termed "chronic patterns" in our psyche & chronic patterns are by default irrational and are characterized by a repeated cycle of similar or same behavior just like a broken record when the needle gets stuck in the same groove. Such chronic patterns do actually have a crippling effect on your intelligence, meaning a small piece of our rational functioning self is blocked or shut down, & because of this the result is that the person repeats a pattern of dysfunctional behavior they wouldn't otherwise repeat.
Thus the conflict which gets expressed with chronic porn usage is a kind of inner turmoil, we become conflicted in a very powerful way. Torn between a rational self and feelings we can cope with and the chronic pattern which has a power over us, an irrational power that drives us to repeat the need to view porn yet again. Its a complex problem and the answers to healing & dealing with it are complex & multifaceted too.
My personal experience with
My personal experience with SLAA was not a good one. I am (mostly) athiestic and despite 'higher power' having some flexibility in what it means at the meetings, the very strong subtext was higher power = Christian deity and I figured after a couple of months it is better to try something else.
It does, however, encourage introspection and healing from within, and taking responsibility for one's actions (which is at odds with giving power over to 'God', if you ask me). The deep introspection isn't done at meetings, though. Meetings are more of a time to update your situation, not delve into it.
E, that's why I think other
E, that's why I think other treatment options should definitely be explored--12 step doesn't click with everyone, and the more people who can be helped, the better. But I also don't think it's fair in these articles about treatment to dismiss 12 step because it truly does work for some people. And so many of these articles seem ill-informed--the reasons they give for 12 step not working are false. I think a more accurate reason that 12 step doesn't work for everyone is that the concepts of "powerless" and a "Higher Power" just don't resonate--and that's okay. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with the people trying (unsuccessfully) to work these programs or that there's something wrong with the program itself. It just means that more options need to be available.
About this: "The problem is
About this: "The problem is that in our culture once something becomes viewed as an addiction, any real inquiry about its meaning goes out the window. No one cares any more why a man spends so much time on the Internet or spends a ton of money seeking out dominatrices. His focus -- our focus -- naturally shifts to simply stopping his behavior, one day at a time."
This claim is false. I say that as someone who's been sober 10 years in AA. People who do the 12 steps, in earnest, with a sponsor, work hard to uncover sources of shame and other difficult feelings -- i.e., the reasons for their addiction, the meaning of their addiction. Then they try to clean up the messes they've made. That helps keep them sober. It's not just about abstinence.
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