Early addiction interaction and its connection to adult substance abuse & child sex trafficking

Michael Eiden LCSW, LCADC, CSAT, CCS, HPFSS member, clinical social worker, addictions counsellor, and Certified Sex Addiction Therapist was asked to speak at the 2025 Mississippi Opioid Summit attended largely by law enforcement officials, family doctors, paediatric healthcare workers, and addiction counsellors. The focus of the summit was on collective efforts in the southern part of the United States to address the opioid crisis, reduce overdose deaths, and prevent harms against children related to human trafficking. Compulsive internet use sits squarely at the intersection of these issues and the presentation focused on helping healthcare professionals in both family medicine and adult addiction treatment spaces to effectively assess and treat addictive internet use.

In my practice I primarily work with teens and adults who have addictions, whether it be to pornography, gambling, sex, opioids, methamphetamine, or alcohol. What I find is that the norm is for folks to have multiple addictions, for those addictions to interact with one another in some way, and that the primary addiction they want treatment for may not be the first one they encountered. Someone with a methamphetamine addiction may also compulsively scroll dating apps and pornography as they merge their sexual lives with the drugs they consume to amplify the experience. It’s common that eventually the two behaviors become so intertwined that one cannot exist without the other. This experience is not so different from a teenager who builds up a pattern of behavior where they consume large amounts of pornography and sext other teens (or unknown adults) online. This process of building tolerance to increasingly extreme sexual stimuli (pornography, virtual reality based erotic experiences, sexting with multiple partners, etc.) can cause what’s known as Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction (PIED). In short, this is a clinical term that explains the phenomena where a person cannot maintain physical arousal in a sexual experience with someone else, because the level of stimulation provided by physical sex with another can’t mimic the level of euphoria provided by the combination of pornography and digitalized sexual encounters. This phenomenon can sometimes lead to experiences of sexual assault (digitally or in-person) where because of the person’s dependence on pornography they may pressure schoolmates or potential dating partners to share nude photos of themselves or send unwanted erotic photos to force a sexual encounter. This form of digital exhibitionism has led many porn-addicted young people into unwanted confrontations with law enforcement and into therapy offices. When a young person compulsively seeks out erotic conversations online, they are also at greater risk to be sexually solicited by an adult who aims to exploit them. The anonymity of the internet provides an effective smoke screen for adults who aim to capture youth in this kind of exchange.

The shared wisdom in the clinical treatment of addictions is that the sooner someone gets exposed to highly stimulating behaviors or drugs and the more access they have, the more likely they are to develop longer term problems with addictive behavior as adults. It’s my theory, and I believe early evidence of this is currently emerging, that the collective normalization of addictive internet use will translate to young people having a stronger vulnerability to developing chemical addictions as well.

What can be done? Luckily, great work has been done in researching this area of healthcare and social policy. The consensus among health professionals and child development researchers is that preventing early access to highly stimulating screen use helps to protect the social/emotional development of children, decreases risk of unwanted sexual solicitation online, reduces the likelihood to develop addictions, and improves focus, attention, and emotional regulation. Community based and legislative efforts to prevent smartphone access in youth, bans on phones in schools, minimum age requirements for social media accounts, and consistent screen-free time are all effective means of protecting children from the myriad health consequences associated with addictive screen use.