Brain surgeon: Porn is a ‘true addiction’

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Story Published: Nov 14, 2009 at 7:20 PM MDT

Story Updated: Nov 16, 2009 at 1:45 PM MDT

By Steven Pope

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REXBURG - There were three porn conferences in all, first Saturday morning in Pocatello, then Idaho Falls this afternoon, then finally in Rexburg.

"We had about 80 persons in Pocatello, about double that in Idaho Falls, triple that here in the Rexburg location. People are understanding this is needing to be discussed in an appropriate way," said Craig Kobia, an event organizer.

State Sen. Brent Hill gave some alarming statistics. There are 420 million webpages of porn, and the average age that a person first sees porn is 11. He also spoke about his visit to jail, where he asked inmates what youth need to do to stay out of prison.

"No. 1, stay away from drugs. No. 2 stay away from alcohol. And no. 3 stay away from pornography," said Hill.

I asked Dr. Donald Hilton, keynote speaker and brain surgeon about his feelings on porn.

"It's a true addiction. In the past we tended to look at porn as a personal behavioral issue. Science now is equalizing what we call natural addictions to gambling, over eating leading to obesity, and sexual addictions as pornography. Really science is now equating that to drug addictions in terms of changes we're seeing in the brain," said Hilton.

Society is taking these new findings on porn and applying them to the way we handle it's addiction.

"I think what that means for us in terms of treatment, is that we must accord pornography addiction the same respect and treatment that we'd would any true drug addiction," said Dr. Donald Hilton.

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