At the age of 10, many children are still into Disney movies and love to watch cartoons as soon as they get home from school, but when Courtney Daniella Boateng was 10, the only thing she was interested in viewing was porn.
Now 23, Courtney from North London, has opened up about how she became addicted to porn from such a young age.
The beauty entrepreneur and Cambridge graduate claims she spent a decade battling her addiction, but has finally managed to overcome it.
She revealed all in a confessional YouTube video back in April in order to help others who might be struggling.
Alongside the video, she wrote: “I wanted to be honest about how I can overcame my 10 year addiction and tell you the story of my journey with it.
“If this is something you want to be overcome, you can. There were so many times I thought I just could never do it, but I did and all I can say is my faith in Jesus helped me the most.”
Courtney began by explaining that as a child she preferred to watch videos and films on the internet instead of on TV as she was able to view a lot more and there were no parental restrictions.
This is how she first discovered porn, as she simply Googled some of her burning questions about the ‘forbidden’ topic.
She said: “When it came to online pornography, I think there was just a day where I was like what is sex and where do you go to watch anything regarding sex?
“I had a curious mind, I was intrigued by this forbidden topic which they had started to introduce in my year six class which is sex education.
“I went to the internet and I found porn and this is where the whole situation began.”
She continued: “I think for me there was an intrigue that nothing was held back from me online. I had so many questions about what it was all about and watching pornography was satisfying that for me, because nobody else was giving me the fullness of this thing that the world seemed completely crazed by.
“There was also a sense of escapism, at 10 years old I can definitely, wholeheartedly say now, I was very depressed.
“During that time there was a lot on me, there was a lot that I had experienced and a lot that I had seen and at 10 years old I didn’t really know how to process my emotions, but all I knew at that age was that I felt sad pretty much all the time.
“Whilst I was watching this pornography, I was so captivated by what I was watching that I forgot anything, I forgot about hurt and trauma, I forgot about all of it, it was an escape.
“I would spend hours just consuming pornography because it would help me forget. It became a medication for me. If I’m feeling stressed or anxious, this is where I go. In that moment this felt better than anything else that happened in my day.”
Courtney claims that she became addicted to watching porn and this addiction lasted for a decade, until she was 20.
She explained how she would have an “internal battle” at 1:am some nights, with a little voice in her head encouraging her to go on certain porn websites, even when she didn’t really want to.
“It was to the point I was in cold sweats,” she recalls. “It was crazy, I just felt like I was going mad, I was tearing myself apart because I just couldn’t tell myself no. I was stuck in this cycle of addiction.”
Another sign that her addiction had gotten out of control presented itself when she was 18. At this age, her obsession ruined one of her relationships, as she found herself constantly comparing her partner to a porn star.
Courtney told The Sun: “The sex didn’t live up to my unrealistic expectations – it was awkward, messy and boring. There was no passion, and if he wasn’t going to provide the same satisfaction that porn did, why bother?”
In her video she admits to having some very honest and difficult conversations with herself and explains how her faith also helped.
“I had to acknowledge that this was an addiction, this wasn’t something I was doing casually, this wasn’t going to go away over night.
“I had to heal the things that drove me there in the first place.”
She also had to make big changes to what she was consuming in her daily life – from the music she listened to, to the people she followed on social media.
“The unfortunate thing is sex is everywhere,” she says. “There are so many things that will remind you of sex. You make one wrong swipe on your Twitter feed and you’re watching a whole clip of pornography. A song can take you back to a certain place and cause you to remember a feeling.”
She added: “I also did the practical things, like putting a child lock on my phone, on certain websites, it gave me a moment more to think ‘do I actually want to do this?'”
As well as this, she’s also thrown herself into learning more about the problems with the porn industry, such as the exploitation of women, and says understanding these things has helped lessen her attraction to pornography.
Courtney’s video has since been viewed more than 800,000 times and she says the response has been incredible.
Many people have come forward to share their own similar struggles and the 23-year-old now feels like she has her own sort of support group.
She no longer watches porn and doesn’t miss it, instead she’s focusing on her career and enjoying time with her family.