EDMONTON, CANADA — An Edmonton, Canada-based psychologist whose practice consists almost entirely of men who claim to be addicted to pornography calls internet-based adult entertainment “the crack cocaine of porn.”That’s the premise for a new Canadian Broadcasting Company-funded documentary about the destructive potential of online porn. Robert Benger’s Porndemic, which debuted Thursday night on CBC’s Doc Zone, explores one of the fastest-growing organizations in modern times: Sex Addicts Anonymous. Benger, 58, said he initially declined the opportunity to lens the project, but he changed his mind after discovering his 14-year-old son had viewed explicit sex online.
Part of the film was shot at the annual AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. Benger said the experience was an eye-opener.
“I assumed that porn was oppressive to women, and that they would all be skeletal, plasticized bimbos, but they weren’t,” he told the Winnipeg Sun. “It’s a very obvious thing that people assume, that the women are there against their will and that the men are all gung-ho, but I’d have to say that 80-percent of the people I met were in porn willingly.”
That most performers engage the genre willingly doesn’t change the fact that viewers often don’t, psychologist Doris Vincent averred.
“How many times can you try crack cocaine on an occasional basis?” she asks in the film. “Porn is designed to offer you something once, and the next time it isn’t so exciting, so we try something a little further on the edge.”
Vincent said her porn-addict clients primarily are successful, educated, white-collar types who are on the verge of losing spouses and families because they cannot give up internet porn.
“He wants to be alone with the computer and close the doors,” she told the camera. “It’s not safe to dabble with this. It’s a slippery slope toward addiction.”
Benger’s son is one of the 70-percent of Canadian males who experience their first sex via online porn, according to one Alberta-based study.
“The Internet makes everything too light, too easy,” Benger told the Winnipeg Sun. “We’re creating a new expectation of highs. It’s not about connecting with a partner; it’s about novelty and extremes. It does not build intimacy between a couple, and that kind of intimacy and closeness is what’s going to last in the long run.”
