"Increasing numbers of women admit to being hooked on internet porn"

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It was an ordinary weekday morning when Caroline first noticed how much pornography was taking over her life. With 15 minutes to go before she was due to leave for a job interview, she opened up her laptop to print off an extra copy of her CV and there, onscreen, was a grab she'd saved from pornhub.com.

"I remember the feeling of being sucked in, really wanting that two-minute fix, that numbness I got when I used porn," says Caroline. "I was stressed out, and I risked being late for my interview, but I pressed play anyway and fast-forwarded it to the bit I wanted. It took two minutes." But the relief was to be short-lived. "Afterwards I just hated myself for giving in and getting off on images that treated women like pieces of meat. But I kept going back."

Psychotherapist Phillip Hodson, of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, says that in consulting rooms, the issue of woman habitually using porn "is something that has not been aired before. It's something new that's just beginning to surface . . . Traditionally women's voices have been against porn. It's seen as more of a male thing, because it's men who are supposed to be visually stimulated. But that doesn't mean that women aren't. Men are just maybe more so."

Women who become regular users can suffer depression and low self-esteem because it can be hard to reconcile their enjoyment of porn with their intellectual dislike of seeing women used as sex objects. "Porn has an instant effect on the human body and mind and the psyche, even if you disapprove of what you are seeing . . . So women may find their body is saying yes, even though their mind may be saying no – and that can be upsetting."

The first support group in the US run for women by women was founded by Crystal Renaud, who also wrote a new book on women's addiction to porn, called Dirty Girls Come Clean.

A committed Christian, she first came across porn at the age of 11 in a magazine that belonged to her brother, and was addicted for eight years before she got her wake-up call when she arranged an anonymous hook-up with a man she met over the net. Renaud recalls: "I had no friends. No passions. I had one mission and purpose in my life: pornography. Any way I could find it, I would. It didn't matter where I was or what I was doing. Home, school, my friend's houses, summer camp and yes, even church: my addiction came too.

"Porn. Masturbation. Cybersex. Webcam sex. Phone sex. Anything you could think up, I watched, experienced and enjoyed. No matter how many times I said I would stop, I would just keep doing it."

Why more and more women are using pornography | Culture | The Guardian