Last month alone, adult Web sites drew between 42 million (Nielsen NetRatings) and 65 million (comScore Networks) unique visitors, depending on which of these prominent Web-tracking firms you believe. But millions of adults intentionally wander into triple-X terrain. Indeed, it’s hard to spend much time online and not interact with the multibillion-dollar Internet porn industry in some way, even if it’s just deleting X-rated spam. Some people who never would have otherwise tried the drug would become heroin addicts.” “Imagine that heroin were readily available in every household. “The porn industry is what built the Internet, and it’s still the most profitable part of it,” says Don Mathews, director of Pleasant Hill’s Impulse Treatment Center. Just about all the ones who seek treatment say they use the Web to feed their addiction, according to psychologists.
In a trend that has escalated with the growth of Internet access, millions of Americans are now addicted to sex - between 3 and 8 percent of the population, experts estimate - and many are in long-term relationships. Her determination that she and her boy not get dragged down by Trevor’s lies was the only thing keeping her sane. This was where she collected proof that the man she’d dated for six years and lived with for five, whom her adolescent son loved and called Dad, was not only a sex addict but a stranger.
Nicole printed out the two-page profile in full color and added it to what she would come to call her “bucket of evidence,” a deep nine-by-twelve-inch plastic bin. I am looking for someone who likes me for who I am.” She read further: “I am extremely giving and will pamper, but I also need to be pampered. That much was obvious from the intricate web of lies he’d spun for so long. After being in a relationship with someone who controlled me for the last 4.5 years, I need to find myself.”Ĭontrolled him? Nicole reread the words several times, incredulous, and before she knew it she was crying once again. But it was his description of what he wanted in a partner that shook her to the core: “I want to have fun. His manic grin cut through the numbness that had taken over more and more of her mind lately. She could tell he’d snapped the shirtless self-portraits in a guest bedroom of his parents’ Danville home. Her friend e-mailed over Trevor’s Match profile, and Nicole sat in front of her laptop staring at the broad-cheeked face she’d found so appealing in the past. And judging from the things she’d discovered in his absence, Nicole was pretty sure she didn’t want him to. Now, much to her surprise, it seemed he wasn’t coming back.
She’d known that much two weeks earlier when he’d left for a business trip in Los Angeles. Nicole told the truth: Trevor was a sex addict. They hadn’t spoken in a while, but the friend cut right to the chase: “What the hell is your fiancé doing on ?” she asked. On the second Wednesday in September, Nicole, a Brentwood resident in her mid-thirties, received a call from a single female friend in Southern California.