Inpatient Therapy

Please understand, this is not a sex addiction forum. This is a porn addiction forum. The distinction between the two is "availability." Sex, meaning sex with multiple partners on a regular, sometimes daily, basis, is not available to most people on the planet. On the other hand, porn, meaning searching for and seeing never before seen sexual imagery, is available to anyone with internet access, meaning it is available to a lot of people on the planet. Both addictions abuse the same dopamine reward system of the brain, but sex addiction is far less common due to availability, or, to be more specific, lack of availability. To have sex with another person requires a ton more effort than watching porn. It requires interaction with another human being. Porn does not. It requires affection, or pretended affection, and at least minimum empathy, with another person. Porn does not. It requires foreplay, flirting, and negotiation. Porn does not. In the case of sex addicts who visit prostitutes, it requires payment, meaning there is a monetary cost, which porn does not have, and being as it requires a monetary cost, it requires the sex addict to have some sort of job to make the money they spend on prostitutes. Porn addicts do not really need a job, and quite a few do not have jobs, as many of us are are still young and in school, meaning mom and dad are paying for our lifestyle. Treatment for sex addiction probably requires a lessening of social interaction with people, porn addiction recovery requires more social interaction with people. Sex addiction requires another human being, porn addiction requires only the addict, and most porn addicts are so socially awkward they have difficulty being around other people. Although the addictions, intuitively, seem similar, that intuition is wrong; they are, actually, quite different things. Many porn addicts cannot even engage in sex, due to porn induced erectile dysfunction, and many cannot reach orgasm with a sexual partner, but, due to anorgasmia, can only reach an orgasm with porn. All this is to say you might try asking the question in a sexual addiction forum, because though this may, on the surface, look like sex addiction, and does involve abuse of the same dopamine reward system, porn addiction is quite distinct from sex addiction.

 

U R Welcome. Addiction is best understood in terms of brain chemistry, and our (humanity's) learned ability to manipulate it to achieve a pleasure response. In the beginning of any abuse that leads to addiction, we do not think of it in those terms, but that is how every addiction forms: we figure out, allegorically, that we have a button we can push to get high, and we start pushing it.

When, as a spouse of a porn addict, you ask the question about inpatient treatment, I interpret that as you asking whether there is there any way to maximize recovery time, or, to make recovery more certain, more effective, more sure, and most likely to be effective. I also interpret it as asking whether a cure can be imposed on an addict, from the outside, or whether forces, external to the addict, can be brought in, to accomplish a cure, while the addict passively receives treatment.

To answer your question directly: I have not heard of any inpatient treatment for porn addiction. For that matter, I have only, occasionally, heard of any treatment or therapy for porn addiction. While more people accept, every day, that "porn addiction" is real, there are still many in the medical and psychological industry, who deny it, and do not accept the concept.

I'll have to answer this in the context of my own recovery. The day I accepted I was addicted, was the first day of my recovery. That is something that all addicts must own and accept, in order to recover. It is not something that can be told to them, it is not a diagnosis that can come from outside of themselves; they have to own it. It must be their own proclamation, from themselves, to themselves, about who and what they are. I think the concept of "inpatient treatment" implies external forces applying some cure that the addict passively permits and accepts. Sort of like lying in a bed receiving an IV, or, undergoing surgery, being manipulated by outside, benign, sources, for their own good. Being fixed by others. Porn addiction recovery really does not work like that. The addict gets addicted alone. In my experience, the addict cures themselves alone. Think of becoming addicted like training. We train our brains to become addicted a little bit, every day, for years. It is no problem, until it is a problem, or, more specifically, until it causes some problem in our lives, in our reality. After years of training our brains to become addicted, it takes time, and effort, pain, and discomfort, to train our brains to become non addicted. Please understand, this, the addiction, is 100% a brain issue, 100% above the belt. 100% of using an external stimulation (porn) to achieve a dopamine reaction we perceive as euphoric. It has very little to so with sex.

While I see you are here looking for help for your husband, may I ask, why isn't he here looking for help? I understand you are trying to help him, but, with this addiction, while your help should be appreciated, it is he who worked so hard to become addicted, by using porn every day for years, to ride a dopamine high, and it is him, and him alone, who will have to put in the effort, and the pain, to overcome it. Your support should be helpful to him, but only he, himself, alone, will feel the pain of quitting it; you cannot share in, or help him carry, that pain, no matter how much you genuinely would like to. For the addict quitting the addiction, they have to carry that pain alone, and there is simply no way of avoiding it.

OK, so he got addicted sitting in front of a computer. Maybe there is a way for him to become non addicted while sitting in front of a computer. Alexander Rhodes founded this site. He, and Mark Queppet, of the Sacred Sexuality Project, have created a Reboot Camp, which can be found on the home page of this website. I did not use that, myself, because I quit porn before it was created, but they are giving structure and process to overcoming the addiction, more so than any therapist I am aware of. Unless your husband has owned his addiction, though, I would not even bother. In this place, with this addiction, the first step toward freedom are the three words most painful for an addict to utter: I am addicted. If your husband is not there, don't even bother. He won't fix it if he does not think it is broken.

Hope this helps.

Much love.

Will I AM.

 

Much truth in WillIAm's post. Emphasize on the imperative necessity to get your husband to walk this path by himself.
You can get him started by having him realize his situation and what his behavior implies/causes/shatters/erases.
You can be there and support, that's no problem either, in fact it will help him tremendously.
But keep in mind that the required actions can't be forced on someone like us, addicts, who trained ourselves for decades to actually use the object of our addiction for relief/escape/intimacy/control. We're kings of the evasion, eluding, avoidance and little lies with ourselves. Especially when it comes to giving up the P. Giving up the domapine.
Just read every post in "Reboot" section or the "Success" section - what comes back over and over is this link with little lies and the reality we forge for ourselves, avoidance when it comes to facing consequences of our behaviors, responsibility over our actions and lives, etc.

My beloved ex- wanted to help me from where she stood. As a professional mental health practitioner it should've helped. It didn't, and she burnt out trying. See what I mean?

I'm truly with you if you need any support.

All the best