Is there a single point in time to which I can point and say: this is when I became a pornography addict? Or was I simply born this way; doomed right from the start?

I guess it depends on how far you stretch the definition of addiction. I don’t believe I became obsessed with pornography until my early teens, but there were plenty of signs before then that suggested, at the very least, I had an unhealthy interest in sexual imagery, both in my developing personality traits and in my actions.

I don’t remember this but my mother tells me that, when I was a very small boy, she took to hiding her travel brochures because she’d find me browsing through the pages looking for pictures of topless sunbathers. I was three years old.

My earliest experiences in this area that I can actually remember are from the age of about nine or ten. I recall

Learning how addiction really works was a revelation that became a fascination. It never previously occurred to me that an alcoholic’s experience could have anything in common with my experience as a pornography addict. It turns out that all varieties of addiction carry certain symptoms that are experienced by virtually all addicts.

• Emotional hypersensitivity.
• Simple or minor problems often become overwhelming.
• A feeling of ease and comfort while using.
• Intense remorse after using followed by a renewed resolve never to use again.
• Deceptive behaviour.
• Rampant guilt.
• A self-deceptive view of what constitutes a lapse.

One of the effects I’ve personally experienced from studying addiction behaviour is

I was originally going to call this blog post Confessions of a Porn Addict but I was worried I might attract the wrong audience. Ultimately, my story is not about pornography, it’s about addiction. And like every other kind of addiction, my basic behaviour is the same:

Craving
Torture
Taste
Binge
Remorse
Never Again

The warm glow of mental scourging followed by renewed determination lasts anything from a few hours to a few weeks, and then it’s “rinse and repeat”. I’ve heard it said that routine behaviour makes time appear to progress more quickly. That might explain why the last 20 years seems to have gone in a flash.

I seem to have spent most of my life juddering between two states of mind: