What makes us porn addicts

I forgot how hot it gets in this place.

Ever since I left my parents’ house six years ago, coming back has always been an erratic experience. Sometimes comforting, sometimes exasperating, in many ways triggering. This is the city that saw me grow up into some sort of adult, before I packed my things and left in search of a new life and a new me. Behind, I left not only family and friends but also some pretty bad habits.

The house that I grew up in is the house that witnessed the worst of my porn addiction. It was locked into this place that I wasted my teenage years away, one video at a time, in endless pornography sessions that would take up my time, energy, and self-esteem. Although I would carry with me some of my problems with pornography when I moved out, it was here where they started, escalated, and hit rock-bottom, and it wasn’t until I left that I would — eventually — get out of that dynamic and back onto a better path.

Entering my old room now, months after I could last visit it due to the pandemic restrictions, feels like breaking into a crime scene. I can almost picture my silhouette drawn on the desk chair with white tape, a sitting figure in front of the computer: one hand holding the mouse, the other reaching down into some invisible pants. On CSI : Las Vegas, Grisson and his team would illuminate a crime scene with ultraviolet light to reveal semen stains. If you were to use that light right here, I’m sure the whole area would light up like a casino.

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A Roomba turns around the corner and starts marching down a narrow corridor, the only one in this small 900-square-foot apartment with a wood finish and stuccoed walls. They used to think that by the year 2008 we would have robot assistants that would greet us by our name, announce the daily news, and cook us dinner — instead, we’ve got this. The Roomba grazes the baseboard, turns 90 degrees to the right, then heads in the direction of an empty 16-year-old teenage boy’s room. Without hesitation, it rolls in through the door.

Closing that door is how my long sessions of porn always start, and it’s something I do even when my parents are not around — just to be safe when they come back. Unfortunately though, doors in this house are a thing you just open, not a thing you knock, and so the sense of security is always false. I’ve learned to quickly take my hand out of my pants and minimize the browser every time I hear footsteps down the corridor, in case any of my parents decides to come in unannounced. This habit has saved me — and them— from a few awkward encounters, yet somehow I’ve still had a couple of very close calls over the years.

When I think about it, I wonder whether the fear of getting caught plays a role in my addiction, giving me an extra dopamine hit that keeps me hooked to the whole experience.

They say that addictions feed on secrecy. On the guilt of doing something that you know is bad for you, and the shame that makes you hide it from the ones that love you.

If one can only be addicted to porn in secret, then that door is what makes me an addict.

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A solitary speck of dust lies on the floor, unaware of the huge robot coming to end its life. As the Roomba sucks that one in, a new speck comes flying and settles on the floor a few inches away. Cleaning is a losing battle against time — an advantage of having an unintelligent assistant is that they can’t feel the frustration.

A small window, rising over the desk, offers an entry to the dust and, to the room, a glance of the outside world. A building on the opposite side of my room blocks the view, and so all that one can see from there is a big orange wall of bare bricks. Another window inserts itself into the wall, connecting my room with the neighbors’ kitchen. For years, a masturbating teenager has been the background for their family dinners.

It’s not that I’m an exhibitionist at heart, it’s just that sometimes it’s too hot to keep the blinds closed, I forget, or I’m just too caught up in the moment to even care if they see me. When that happens, I wonder what I look like from there. A teenager sitting at a desk, his face illuminated by a screen as he stares at it, hypnotized, not blinking nearly as often as he should. I hope that, from the distance, the movements in my upper body are not an obvious giveaway of what my hand is doing under the desk — nor my red face or my nervous glances in their direction.

Maybe all I need is for a neighbor to break their leg. To spend their whole summer with nothing to do but look into my room with one of those binoculars… yet, in all likelihood, it wouldn’t be enough. The crime in Hitchcock’s Rear Window was just so much more obvious. Here, my cries for help are silent, and there is no dead body to bury. It’s just me, a teenager spending his time in front of the computer, self-destructing for everybody to see, but for no one to notice.

Porn addiction remains a misunderstood and under-discussed issue. As a result, many people unknowingly develop a toxic relationship with porn, and then fail to receive the validation and help that they need to overcome it.

If one can only be addicted to porn due to the lack of information, recognition, and support, then that window is what makes me an addict.

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The Roomba continues into the room, crossing it from end to end in an almost perfectly straight line. When it reaches the other side, its progress is halted by a desk.

The desk fits perfectly in the corner of the room, stuck between the bed and the wall. A glass plate covers it only partially, exposing a blue paint that’s starting to wear off in the areas where my arms rest. Below, just enough space to slide in an uncomfortable rolling chair. The chair was a bit too big when I was a kid, and it’s a bit too small now for a teenager. The seat of that chair knows my butt better than the back pocket of my favorite pair of jeans, and the sweat marks on it after hours of watching porn bare-assed are always a crude testimony of my addiction.

On the desk, a disordered pile of books and papers. Homework and other study material, always waiting for me to finish the last few videos and get back to them — hurriedly and just in time to barely meet the deadline. There’s high pressure on me to be a good student, but in porn I often find the perfect procrastination method to put off that responsibility for a while without feeling remorse in the process.

To the side, stuck to the wall, hangs a calendar. Marked on it are some past and upcoming events: dinner plans and weekend parties, but also friends’ birthdays, holidays, and other big celebrations. My social life and my relationship with porn are tightly entangled. Shyness, low self-esteem, and social anxiety drive my addiction. Watching porn is often an effortless alternative to events that force me to socialize, and fake comfort after the events that I do attend leave me feeling terrible about myself.

They say that porn addiction is the result of using pornography to cope with other issues in your life. For some people, porn becomes an escape from persecutory feelings and anxiety-provoking situations — a distraction that quickly turns into a problem of its own.

If one can only be addicted to porn as a way to cope with feelings such as academic pressure and social anxiety, then that desk and that calendar are what make me an addict.

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Finding a gap in between the chair legs, the Roomba manages to penetrate into the area beneath the desk, a patch rich in ingredients it can feed on. It doesn’t take long for it to meet another obstacle: a bunch of cables hanging loosely and meandering on the floor. Confident at first, the Roomba tries to roll over the first cable, but it soon gets entangled and gives up. After clumsily bouncing back and forth for a while, it finally meets the gap again and finds its way out of the desk’s shadow.

At the other end of those cables, resting on top of the desk, impassible, lies the jewel in this room’s crown: the computer.

A keyboard — dusty and sprinkled with crumbs — sits on the front. My porn sessions always start with the tapping of my fingers on this keyboard, like a pianist playing the introduction to a symphony right before the whole orchestra joins into the beat. I type the name of a website, then press CTRL+T, type another name, repeat. Visiting the top ten porn producers and networks to see what new videos they’ve released since the last time I checked is usually what sets the ball rolling.

A mouse — splattered with scabs of old sweat — takes over from there. My porn sessions are nothing but vast collections of clicks. Every video that I click on opens in a new tab. I click on homepages, categories, related videos. Every tab that I close sprouts a few more, like a pornographic hydra that grows larger and larger with every click.

A monitor — 24 inches in size — is where the action takes place. The stage on which all these so-called actors and actresses perform, one after the other in unrelenting succession. That screen is the room’s absolute center of attention. Nothing else exists in my world as long as there’s porn playing there. The monitor is an abyss that sucks me in completely, then spits me out hours later — bewildered and exhausted, not quite knowing what exactly happened or how I got there.

A system unit — standing on the side — runs the whole show. The elements in it are what makes everything possible. A network adapter grants me access to the Internet, the CPU processes all my requests, and a hard drive lets me save my favorite videos. Encasing it all, a tall, black, majestic frame: my personal Dark Tower. Drawn by it, I embark on a fatuous and obsessive journey every time I sit at this desk. On my quest for the perfect porn video, I wind up as scarred and dissatisfied as Roland did in the course of those eight books. And once the pilgrimage is over, I seem to be doomed to forget about it all and repeat the same mistakes time and time again.

Free and easy access to boundless amounts of content is what makes Internet porn particularly addictive. The dopamine released with every new discovery turns the experience into an absorbing search for porn videos that can easily spiral out of control.

If one can only be addicted to porn thanks to how effortlessly and in abundance it can be found on the Internet, then that computer is what makes me an addict.

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The Roomba paces back across the room, revisiting areas where there isn’t anything left for it to vacuum. After a couple of slight turns, it finally rolls out through the door with the satisfaction of a job well done.

A few moments later, a teenager walks into the room, closes the door and the window blinds, sits at the desk, turns the computer on, and starts watching porn.

Porn addiction is the consequence of a decision. The decision to keep watching it despite negative consequences, and the indecisiveness that prevents you from doing the work necessary to overcome it.

If one can only be addicted to porn out of bad personal choices, then I myself am, ultimately, what makes me an addict.

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I forgot how hot it gets in this place.

A few years living in colder climates seem to have erased my tolerance to the heat.

A light breeze breaks through the heavy air in my old room, blowing a little relief on my face. Both the door and the window stay wide open, helping the air circulate freely in the space between them. The desk, now clear of papers and books, sits in the same old corner. On top of it, a solitary laptop. No clicking can be heard, only the tapping of my fingers on the keyboard. The browser on the screen holds a single tab. In it, letters turn into words, and words into sentences, immortalizing a story: the story of how, after many years of struggle, I managed to get rid of the things that were making me an addict and finally overcame my issues with porn.

It’s been a wild ride, but it feels good to be back.