How One Woman’s Addiction to Porn Destroyed Her Life

A growing number of people throughout the UK are becoming addicted to pornography. While some can watch porn in moderation, for others it becomes an obsession that takes over their lives and becomes a negative force. Izzy Barnett is one such individual, and she has been left with huge debts and no job because of her destructive porn addiction.

Sexually Inexperienced

Izzy admits she was sexually inexperienced at the age of twenty-two and, eager to impress an older boyfriend, she watched her first adult film. She soon became hooked s and was watching them for more than nine hours a day. This obsession with pornography led to her losing her job, her friends and struggling with mounting debt after subscribing to more sexually explicit sites.

Growing Problem

Izzy is not the only woman suffering from a porn addiction, with research suggesting that almost two million British women are in similar circumstances. Izzy said, “Porn is still a bit of a taboo subject – although it’s a real problem for lots of girls. I was so hooked on porn that my life wasn’t worth living.”

She admits that it became all she thought about and that nothing else mattered to her. She says that she would forget to eat or sleep while engrossed in the videos she was watching. Now she feels sick about the time she spent watching porn; her shame and guilt are common side effects of a porn addiction.

She believes it was her vulnerability that led to the porn addiction, and said, “I was really quite lost. I’d just dropped out of a photography course at university and I didn’t have any direction in life.”

She says that when she met a man six years older than her, she was desperate to impress him and afraid that if she did not watch porn with him, he would lose interest in her.

Normal Childhood

Izzy says that her childhood was normal and happy but that she did not talk about sex with her parents. She says she was never tempted to watch porn with her friends and admits she was ‘quite innocent’. She did not lose her virginity until she was nineteen, but three years later, she met the man who would change the course of her life.

She said their relationship became all about sex and, after the first time they watched porn together, it ‘snowballed’. Izzy said, “Soon, we’d be watching it all night and we’d often forget dinner because we were so engrossed in the videos.”

They began watching more hard-core porn and she would spend hours at night watching it on the laptop and would then be exhausted at work.

Devastating Addiction

Izzy’s addiction soon began to impact on other areas of her life as she shunned her friends in favour of watching porn. When her boyfriend started to work longer hours she started to watch porn on her own. Her obsession with it led to the breakdown of the relationship and her boyfriend moved out. She began to rely heavily on it and said, “Porn was all I had to fill my time.”

She started to apply for credit cards to pay for subscription websites for hard-core porn and admits that she didn’t look at her statements because she did not want to see what she was spending. When she fell asleep at work, she was sacked, and it was then that she realised the extent of her problem.

She booked herself into a treatment centre in Thailand as she knew she had to go ‘cold turkey’. When she arrived home, she felt strong enough to tell her parents and they were shocked but supportive. She says she is taking things one day at a time and is beating her addiction.

Sources:

1. The Daily Record