LONDON, March 10, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Admitting years of addiction to hardcore pornography and masturbation is one of the most difficult things many people could imagine. Yet a YouTube video posted by a female law student has gone around the globe, reaching more than 130,000 people with the message that there is a way out of the darkness.
The story of Oghosa Ovienrioba, a 22-year-old Coventry University student who grew up in the UK, began the way many similar tales begin: with years of sexual abuse.
Oghosa said that as a child, she was molested for years by a family friend. In time, she internalized the need for sexual contact. After her family moved, she began to act out sexually by masturbating.
“When I would feel depressed, or when something bad was going on in the home, it would start again and be more frequent,” she said. “Every time I did it, I just felt really dirty.”
At age 14, she discovered pornography and within a year, she was watching “every few days when I could.”
“The thing about porn is, it works on desensitizing,” she said. “It's also delving you more and more into it, because you're constantly looking for something that's going to fulfill the pleasures that you've got or give you that kick. That's what happened to me.”
When she turned 17, she began dating someone, and the need for sexual affirmation faded, so she stopped watching hardcore films.
Then she went into “a strange limbo” in university. At age 18, she began isolating herself in a dark room with porn videos. “That's when I was watching porn once a week, and then it would increase to twice a week. By the time I was 21, it was almost like everyday – everyday, twice a day, three times a day.”
“If I wasn't doing anything, it would be all the time,” she said.
She later told The Daily Mail, “I would sit in my room alone for hours, with the lights off, watching porn. … It was all I could think about.”
That hypersexuality began to change her sense of sexual attraction – and to loosen her bonds to the rest of humanity.
“When you see people, you don’t even see people anymore, like, regardless of sex – as in gender,” she said in her video. “You see them as sex objects. And the simplest thing can set you off.”
Seeing a man, or a woman, innocently unbutton a button on a shirt or blouse could trigger an erotic obsession. “Because you've been seeing it in porn, you can enact it in your head,” she revealed.
Then one day, a Christian friend told her that Jesus Christ wanted to have a personal relationship with her. Oghosa said she felt her soul was contaminated, as though her history of self-pleasure made her unworthy of love.
But at age 21, she accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior.
“Literally, everything changed,” she said. “From the day I was saved, I never touched porn again.”
She said in the video – uploaded to YouTube last February – that she had not come to terms with how beholden she had become to pornography until after Christ came into her life.
“I never really thought it had a hold on me until probably right now,” she said. “Sex, I feel like in a sense it stole some of my life away. It's like you become a slave to it.”
“After I was saved, everything changed, and I felt so clean and I didn't feel disgusting and dirty and a freak,” she said.
Embracing Christianity changed the way she lived her life and the kinds of things she put into her mind, she told the Daily Mail. “As a Christian, you have to be quite controlled about what you let into your heart, in terms of what you see and do,” she said. “So now, I don’t read sex scenes in books and I don’t listen to oversexualised music…I also try to avoid inappropriate programs on TV late at night.'
Although her 2014 vlog was marked “private,” the 15-minute video diary has gone viral throughout the world, being covered by European, African, and North American media. The video has been seen more than 138,000 as of this writing.
The statistics drive home an inescapable fact: A huge global population is struggling with the harms of unleashed pornography.
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In 2012, ExtremeTech magazine estimated that 30 percent of all internet traffic is dedicated to pornography. In 2013, the porn industry made $97 billion worldwide, according to Kassia Wosick, assistant professor of sociology at New Mexico State University – approximately $10-12 billion in the United States.
Counselors are seeing porn addictions at ever-younger ages. Meanwhile, neuroscience has shown that frequent porn use makes adult male brains more impulsive and childish.
The epidemic of porn abuse has become so undeniable that even MTV has warned against the harms pornography causes its users, particularly a lack of mental focus on the job or at school.
Oghosa said she has heard from people from every corner of the earth who shared the same secret.
“I received hundred of heartwarming comments from women who were going through the same thing for years,” she has said.
“When I read some of the comments on that video, it brings a tear to my eye. People have told me how alone they felt with their addiction until they saw my video,” she added.
“Lots of people don't think girls can suffer a porn addiction but it's a problem for both sexes. I hope I can help others out there.”
While it is good so many are seeking self-care, she said the authorities need to arrest the problem facing the youth and pre-adolescence of the entire planet.
“It's heartbreaking to know that children can still access pornography so easily like I did,” she said. “There are age restrictions on drinking and smoking – the same should go for porn.”
She ends her video with a simple message for those who may know someone – or are approached by someone – who is quietly addicted to flashing images of sexuality.
“That person's got a story, and that person just wants to be listened to,” she said.
“I think the lesson behind this video is just to listen – listen to what people are telling you, not to quickly find a solution to it. Just listen.”
