‘I’d try to hide it as best I could’: a UK man on his struggle with porn addiction | Pornography
Ben Lennard often joked about pornography with his friends; This was the kind of jokes men in their mid-20s often shared.
But looking back, he now realizes that humor was a deflection tool that tried to mask a problem that was destroying his life.
“I joke a lot with my friends and the people around me, I have a humorous side,” he said. “So for me, when I was watching it, even if I was in public places or there were people around, I would just make jokes. But no one knew about the addiction. I would try to hide it as much as I could. I saw the funny side of it that no one would think to question.”
Despite the jokes, porn had become a huge problem, interfering with her relationships and destroying her self-esteem.
“On the worst days, my mind would be racing at 100 miles per hour. All I could think about would be porn, sex, everything. There would be a time when I would absolutely desire everything I saw,” she said.
“Whenever I watched porn, it didn’t necessarily mean I was masturbating. I would literally watch it as if you were taking out your phone and watching a video on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, or somewhere else. That was me, but with porn.”
Lennard began watching pornography as a child, after first seeing sexually explicit scenes when he was 10 or 11 years old and seeking out more of this content.
“When you’re young you’re into that kind of thing and I think at first it just seemed normal to me because I was young, porn. And as time went on I started to realize there was a problem, it was so addictive it was taking up my time.”
“It was interfering with my life because I was constantly questioning why I was so dependent on it. As I was growing up, it got worse through school and in my personal life. And things didn’t get a little out of control until my late 20s.”
He said it was hard to resist the “urge” or “craving” he might have.
“It was addictive to me, and I didn’t really understand what was wrong with me at the time, so I suppressed my feelings towards it.”
She is left with “remorse” in relationships, she said, “because you think, ‘I should love my partner, I should respect my partner, I should love her and her body.'”
“There was a guilty side to me [I was thinking]’Why should I watch porn? ‘Why would I watch other people have sex when I’m supposed to love my partner?’ and you know it kind of surprised me.
Watching porn also led to unrealistic expectations about herself. He added: “It can take a very bad toll on your mental health. Watching it for so long, it’s kind of fed my brain.” [that] I have to be like this. I would compare myself and it hurts so much.
“I don’t think people realized it was fake. [The performers] I take a lot of medication and have surgeries and all this stuff to make it look good. “People get it into their heads that this is the truth when it is not.”
Being diagnosed with ADHD in 2024 helped Lennard realize that his brain was wired for impulsive behavior, especially excitement and pleasure-seeking, more than a typical person’s.
He said he has since gone “cold turkey”, helped in part by the Online Safety Act, because putting his personal information on porn websites was something he didn’t want to do.
He said he never thought “in a million years” to speak publicly about the issue, but now feels like a “tremendous burden” has been lifted off his shoulders.
