COLUMN: The mind gamble

From Kristopher Couch's, "Nothing But the Truth," Fall '96 From Kristopher Couch's, "Nothing But the Truth," Fall '96Internet pornography is dangerous andFrom Kristopher Couch's, "Nothing But the Truth," Fall '96Internet pornography is dangerous andaddictive, and kicking the habit is a struggle. From Kristopher Couch's, "Nothing But the Truth," Fall '96Internet pornography is dangerous andaddictive, and kicking the habit is a struggle. When I was 10 years old, my friend and I would scour the supermarket parking lot picking up lottery tickets. We were gambling on the hope that someone had accidentally thrown away a winning ticket. If only we were 18, we thought, then we could buy all the lottery tickets we wanted. Many years passed before pornography would enter my life a second time. I was a freshman majoring in Computer Science and the Internet hadn't quite reached household name status. I explored it all: electronic mail, Gopher and Fetch. And then it happened. I stumbled into newsgroups, learned how to download and saw my first digital pornographic picture. I had heard in high school that kids could download such pictures from bulletin boards, but this was different. No identification. No signing in. No fee or price. Just anonymous downloading of pornography. I was 18, so age wasn't really a factor anymore. Would I ever have gone out and bought a pornographic magazine? No way, for the same reason most people don't talk to others about the pornography they encounter: The social stigma is too great. This is what makes the Internet is so different? and dangerous. I remember rationalizing it all away. "Nobody knows about it, so it's as if it really isn't happening," I thought. "Pornography doesn't really affect me. I am just seeking a little visual stimulation. That doesn't hurt anybody. Right?" Wrong. A majority of psychological studies show that exposure to pornography leads to a generalized predisposition toward violent and sexual acts. Is it any big surprise that those who argue that pornography doesn't contribute to rape, battery and child molestation are sellers of porn? It doesn't take much imagination to understand that pornography corrupts people. It has the ability to create strong sexual cravings and reduce human beings, usually women, to anonymous tools for the stimulation and gratification of these cravings. But none of this was new to me, as I'm sure it's not new for many of you, either. And yet somehow, I continued to make the trek from my dorm room to the computer labs. I rationalized past the evidence and defined my own world of right and wrong, good and bad. It didn't occur to me that pornography is more than just explicit pictures. It has an independent, psychological power whose force I didn't realize until it was too late? and then I knew. Pornography is an addiction. Its users become desensitized in much the same way as do those who use illicit drugs. Stimulation isn't achieved unless the stimulus is different or more powerful each time. Don't believe me? Unfortunately, viewers of porn may know this situation all too well. Choose one pornographic picture, and every time you have the desire to look at pornography, just look at that one picture. What happens? You get bored. There is an intense need for a different or more exciting stimulus. Anyone familiar with Internet porn knows that porn providers understand desensitization all too well. The majority of pornography on the Internet covers themes like mutilation, bondage, torture and bestiality. But really, I'm sure nobody ever looks at pictures with bestiality in them. People are just looking for the "soft" porn, after all. A little nudity here and there never hurt anyone, right? Wrong again. Desensitization is a term all porn suppliers know about, but will never discuss. Desensitization flies in the face of the "soft" porn argument. How do I know? Because I felt it. When I realized that "soft" porn no longer provided the same stimulus for me, I knew I was being desensitized. I got scared. Scared enough to do anything I could to keep myself from downloading pornography. I made myself a promise. And then I broke that promise. As with any addiction, just because it's difficult to quit doesn't mean it's not worth quitting. I made a promise again and changed my password so that I couldn't log in without remembering that promise to myself. I confided in a friend. I asked him to keep me accountable. He checked up on me. I tried to lie to him, but he knew when I was lying. When I failed, he was disappointed, but always encouraging. I know now that the greatest help can come from a friend who offers a simple word of encouragement. It was a difficult uphill battle to keep myself from looking at Internet pornography. I knew nothing would change until I was honest with myself. I explored how I felt after looking at pornographic images. In a word, rotten. I focused on that feeling until even the desire to look at porn made me feel rotten. Since then, I've kept the promise to myself for quite some time. And yet, I'm still scared. I'm scared for my friends, my younger brothers and others who will sit in front of a computer screen and download their brain into the wastebasket. I'm scared for myself. I know the damage has been done. There are times when I can conjure up the images I've seen as if they were imprinted on my brain. I can only hope that with time they will all fade away. It's probably no surprise that back when we were 10, my friend and I never found any winning lottery tickets. When people have a good thing, they tend to hang on to it. I can look back now and know for sure that we would have been better off buying 100 losing tickets than finding that pornographic magazine. At least with the lottery tickets, I would have taken a gamble with my money, instead of with my mind.