Let’s Talk About Porn Addiction
Hundreds of millions of people are struggling silently
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Several years ago, my wife and I traveled to ten countries to make a documentary about human trafficking, followed by a 150-city LIVE tour and TV broadcasts in fourteen countries. During our film trip, we met former traffickers, formerly enslaved children, politicians, undercover pimp busters, all sorts.
Two strange things kept popping up:
- Cops told us they often find video camera equipment when they raid brothels.
- Formerly prostituted women told us that men often came into their brothels with cell phones, showed them porn clips, and said they wanted to replicate certain acts.
As people who cared a lot about preventing human trafficking, we knew we needed to go upstream and make a documentary about pornography addiction.
So we did.
We traveled all over America to interview some of the nation’s top porn stars and former porn stars, neuroscientists, pro-porn industry advocates, former sex offenders, addiction therapists, politicians, elite researchers, child addicts, and more.
The result was Over 18: A Documentary About Pornography.
First exposure
I first saw porn when I was ten years old.
I was babysitting for a couple in our church. The kid was asleep, it was stormy outside, and I was watching the NBA All-Star game. Lightning must’ve hit a cable box somewhere because suddenly I was watching the Playboy Channel — and they didn’t have the Playboy Channel.
I turned it off and rushed to the front door to make sure no one was around. Coast clear, I returned and put on the TV, watching with fascination and confusion. About ten minutes later, it popped back to the All-Star game. I didn’t see porn again until I moved out of home and got my own computer, but by then, I had the tools to protect myself from addiction.
The simple science
According to the neuroscientists we interviewed for our documentary, the science behind porn…
