In 2014, Mahesh was an average techie living in Bengaluru. He had been married for two years and was leading a normal life with his wife. He even had a 7-month-old baby. But he had one problem – the habit of watching porn excessively. For a few months, he was not able to give enough time to his wife and newly born, leading to conflicts in the family. Despite a healthy sex-life with his wife, he was not able to control his urge to watch porn.
Later that year when things came to a flashpoint, Mahesh started asking himself, was he addicted to porn? Was it a medical, or a psychological problem? That’s when he decided to visit the Service for Healthy Use of Technology (SHUT) clinic at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bengaluru.
That was the first case in which the patient himself came to us to get himself ‘treated’ for this problem.
— Dr Manoj Kumar Sharma, Additional Professor at SHUT
The SHUT clinic was an idea born out of a study on behavioural addiction in Bengaluru, funded by the Indian Council for Medical Research. Dr Sharma and three other doctors were a part of the study, and it is during that study that the idea emerged that a clinic like SHUT, which exclusively deals with addiction to technology, was required.
“Through the study, we found out that 4-7 % of the respondents were behavioural addicts to technology related activities like watching porn, gambling, shopping and many more” says Dr Sharma, who has been one of the primary innovators of SHUT clinic which deals with addiction to technology. After the ICMR study was completed, Dr Sharma and his colleagues proposed the idea to NIMHANS and SHUT was thrown open in August 2014.
In the past one year, Dr Sharma has attended to over 60 cases of technology addiction, of which 7 involved porn addicts or those at the risk of becoming one. And as the word spreads about the clinic, they are getting more cases of technological behavioural addiction, including addiction to porn.
Dr Sharma says that almost all his patients belonged to the middle or higher socio-economic strata and in most cases the patient was the parent’s only child.
Porn-Addiction
Unlike other types of addiction, the dependence on porn has to be dealt with differently. Dr Prabhat Chand, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Center for De-Addiction Medicine at NIMHANS, says that porn addiction comes under behavioral addiction, which means that the person is not addicted to any substance which is the case in tobacco or alcohol addiction.
There is no global definition for porn addiction, but Dr Sharma believes it involves four steps, the 4 Cs – Craving, loss of Control, Compulsion and Consequences.
The treatment procedure differs from case to case. Sometimes treatment may end within a month or it could even go on for 6 months with high frequency of sessions.
The treatment to the porn addiction involves counselling sessions, there is no medication or any other procedure involved. Sometimes, even the parents are involved as co-therapists, but that happens only if the parents know of the addiction, and the patient and parents are willing to get through it together. The doctors encourage the patients to replace their porn-watching time with other activities, like family walks or other outings. They advice life-style change and motivate the patient to step out of the addiction.
But treating porn addiction is not easy, and there can be no assured success.
In the case of Mahesh, he came forward willingly and made efforts towards treatment, as a result of which he is now leading a happy life. But not everyone’s treatment ends like that.
Porn Ban
The doctors at SHUT are now trying to increase awareness and encourage people to come in if they feel they need help.
The ‘menace’ of porn has also grabbed the attention of the Indian government, so much so that recently the government ordered all Internet Service Providers to block more than 800 pornographic websites across the country, making it a offence for any ISP to violate the order. It was after instant public backlash that the government restricted the order to child-porn content. But the government maintained that watching porn were causing real problems in the society.
Will a national ban on porn help people with addiction? Dr Sharma was quick to respond:
Just like in a dry state where ban on alcohol only means that it will be available in the black market, ban on porn will only mean that people might most likely shift the focus from visual sexual content to other sources like may be text.
—Dr Manoj Kumar Sharma, NIMHANS
He also says that instead of banning porn, technology literacy and sex education can help in a far better way
(The article written by Steffy Thevar originally appeared in The News Minute. It has been edited for length.)