Between You & Me

By Barbara Pierce

“It’s pretty much a nightmare!” said Anna, her voice quivering, on the verge of tears. She’d come to see me in my practice as a counselor. This was our first meeting.

To get started, I asked her, “What’s going on with you right now?”

As she described her life, I could see why she felt she was living in a nightmare. The attractive 67-yearold had remarried five years ago. Though she’d only known him a few months when she agreed to marry him, he seemed perfect. A wonderful man her age, charming, bright, even paid his own way.

Sexual intimacy with him was so-so, but that didn’t matter to Anna.

They married, moved to Florida, bought a beautiful home. She was happy. Her life was all she’d been dreaming of for several years, though he seemed to avoid intimacy with her, no matter how hard she tried to attract him.

Then, things began to change. He spent more and more time on his computer, paying almost no attention to her. He’d quickly turn off his computer when she came near. Then came the time he was so engrossed in what he was doing, he didn’t turn it off.

Anna was sickened by what she saw on the screen. She quickly turned away from the hard core pornography images.

At that moment, their relationship changed: she went from happy in her marriage to devastated by what she finally understood was going on with him.

He went from being OK in the marriage to despising her for learning his dark secret. He became more and more emotionally abusive, calling her names, constantly criticizing,

By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant

Men died of opioid and stimulant drugs at a rate two to three times higher than women between 2020 and 2021, according to a recent study. The data looked at fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine.

The study said that men’s higher rates of use do not entirely account for the increase in mortality risk.

The study was published by Neuropsychopharmacology and led by investigators at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health.

“Though men and women are being exposed to the modern, fentanyl-contaminated drug supply, something is leading men to die at significantly higher rates,” said physician Nora Volkow, director of NIDA and one of the co-authors on the study in a press release. “It may be that men use drugs more frequently or in greater doses, which could increase their risk of death, or there may be protective factors among women that reduce their risk of death compared to men.”

The study indicated that further research must be done to determine why more men die from stimulant and opioid overdoses than women.

“We’re still trying to understand the underlying major mechanisms and modified risk factors that could explain this differential,” said physician Hemant Kalia, managing director at Invision Health in the great Rochester region. “Some things that come to light are maybe some cultural-bound differences where there is a propensity towards risky behavior that can lead to overdose demeaning, ridiculing, shaming or ignoring her.

Their time with a marriage and family therapist didn’t help. They divorced; she had no money to leave him so they both lived in their house. As he continued to be abusive and spent all his time on the computer, she got away from home as much as possible.

He was addicted to porn. It’s an addiction — the same as an addiction to drugs, gambling or alcohol. The brains of those involved in viewing erotic images are different from normal brains, but they are similar to brains seen in drug addicts.

Porn addiction is when you can’t stop looking at porn, even if you want to. And the obsession gets to the point that it interferes with work, relationships and other parts of daily life. It’s easy to understand how this could be a problem with the widespread availability of internet porn today, a few key strokes and you’re there.

Surveys show that more males than females view porn, yet, a relatively high percentage of viewers are female.

And the numbers are growing. “In the last three years, I’ve seen a huge uptick in the number of clients coming to see me because of porn,” Daniel Silverman, a licensed social worker in Rome, told me in a recent interview. “Porn has tremendous negative effects. I’ve seen many divorces because of it.”

If you want more details, you can find the negative consequences that happen when you’ve rewired your brain, as described by recovering addicts online. Like one man who said: “I was always hungry for more — more sites, more variety, more extreme content — but no matter how deep I delved, it never made me happy. I was so desensitized that real sex was awkward, unexciting, and disappointing.” and associated mortality. We’ve seen similar differences in a study that found males are three to four times more likely for motor vehicle collisions. That also goes with that risky behavior propensity. We cannot exclude other biological, behavior, and social factors.”

At Delphi Rise in Rochester, Clinical Director Carla Leaks said that her facility sees 70% men and 30% women; however, many of these are referrals from the legal system as identified with a substance use disorder.

“Thirty-two percent of the men in admission status with our clinic on June 30, 2023, had a primary diagnosis of opioid use disorder, moderate or severe,” she said.

One the same date, “20% of the women in admission status had a primary diagnosis of moderate or severe opioid use. This would suggest that men are using opioids more than women are.”

Leaks thinks that socially constructed beliefs about gender are driving behavioral differences that result in higher overdose rates, with men eager to take risks and look “macho.” There’s also the factor of men eschewing healthy ways of dealing with trauma and stress and turning to drugs.

“Parents should be especially vigilant,” Silverman urged. “I’m a parent. We need to be vigilant in terms of what our kids do as this addiction starts in childhood and works its way up very quickly. Parents have to be careful.”

Definitions about how much porn is too much vary. But most experts agree that if it gets in the way of your day-to-day activities, you could be watching too much. For example, if porn becomes a central part of your life. You stop doing things you really enjoy so that you can see more of it.

There is no clear consensus on what causes porn addiction, partly because not all researchers agree that viewing pornographic material constitutes an addiction.

And not everyone becomes addicted; some people have a problem with compulsive use and others do not. Some factors that may explain this include differences in the chemistry of the brain; or, it becomes a coping mechanism to manage life stresses or other mental health issues; or the person has difficulties with intimate relationships.

As for Anna, she left her abusive, addicted ex-husband to live with a friend until she received her share of the money from the sale of the house. Now she’s on her own, happy with her new life, trying to leave thoughts of her difficult marriage behind.

Leaks said that metabolic differences between men and women may also present a factor.

Evan Frost, assistant director of communications and public information at the NYS Office of Addiction Services and Supports (NYS OASAS) in Albany, said that more than 70% of treatment admissions are male.

“A higher prevalence of substance use disorder in men is not new and has been a steady trend in both New York state and the rest of the country for years,” he said.

As to why more men are dying — especially since they’re entering treatment programs at higher rates — it’s not entirely clear.

Most of the programs OASAS offers are oriented toward men or are men-only, including programs on parenting, relationships in early recovery, anger management, and specialized services for those involved in the criminal justice system.

“In general, we are also addressing opioid overdoses by increasing access to care through low threshold access to medications for opioid use disorder, providing overdose prevention education and naloxone, and providing fentanyl and xylazine test strips so people who use drugs can be informed about what is in their supply,” Frost added.