Are You Actually Addicted? A Self-Check That Isn't Clickbait

Why an online test can't tell you if you're addicted

Start with the uncomfortable fact that most quiz pages bury: “porn addiction” is not a diagnosis you can receive. It does not appear in the DSM-5, American psychiatry's diagnostic manual. The closest recognized condition is compulsive sexual behaviour disorder, which the World Health Organization added to the ICD-11 in 2018 — and the classification detail matters. As Kraus and colleagues describe in the paper announcing the decision, CSBD was placed among the impulse-control disorders, not the addictive disorders, precisely because the evidence was not judged strong enough to call the pattern an addiction. The condition is real; the label “addiction” is genuinely contested science, not settled fact.

That has a direct consequence for every online test, including this one: a quiz cannot check you against criteria for a diagnosis of porn addiction, because no such diagnostic criteria exist. And even for CSBD, which does have criteria, a diagnosis requires a clinical assessment — a trained person asking follow-up questions, ruling out other explanations, and weighing context. A checkbox form cannot do that. Any page that returns “you are addicted” after ten clicks is selling certainty it does not have.

There is also a subtler trap documented in the research literature: self-diagnosis in this area is strongly colored by shame. Studies reviewed in the 25-year audit of this field by Grubbs and colleagues found that feeling addicted to porn and having objectively heavy or uncontrolled use are surprisingly loosely related — people who believe porn is morally wrong report feeling addicted at much lower levels of use. A test that just asks “do you feel out of control?” often measures guilt, not behavior. That is why the check below asks about specific, observable behaviors — what happened, how often — rather than how bad you feel about it.

How this self-check works — and where your answers go (nowhere)

The nine questions below cover the behavioral signals that recur across the clinical and research literature on compulsive sexual behavior: using longer or more often than intended; repeated failed attempts to cut back; time taken from sleep, work, and relationships; escalation toward more extreme or novel material; restlessness and irritability when trying to stop; continuing after clear negative consequences; concealment; use as a primary coping mechanism; and reduced interest in real-life intimacy. The questions are written in plain language rather than clinical phrasing, and this check is deliberately not a copy of any validated instrument — those are clinical and research tools, and borrowing their items would only dress this page up as something it is not.

Each question asks how often something has been true over the last few months, on a four-step scale from “never” to “almost always.” The scoring is transparent: zero to three points per question, twenty-seven possible points, and three result ranges. The cutoffs between ranges are judgment calls, not validated clinical thresholds — no online test can honestly claim otherwise — which is why each result leads with what to observe next rather than with a label.

One more thing before you start, because on this topic it matters more than usual: your answers never leave this page. The scoring runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server, nothing is stored, and there is no account, email gate, or “unlock your results” step. When you close the tab, the answers are gone. If you have ever hesitated to answer a sensitive quiz honestly because you wondered where the data goes — here, it goes nowhere. Answer for the last few months as they actually were, not as your best week.

If you scored low: what a quiet result actually means

A score in the low range means your answers did not describe the signals that matter most: control is holding, porn is not taking things from you, and you are not organizing your life around hiding it. If you arrived here from a 2 a.m. search, that result deserves to be taken seriously — anxiety about porn use is common in communities where all use is treated as pathology, and the research on moral incongruence suggests plenty of people feel “addicted” at levels of use that show no sign of being out of control.

Two caveats keep a low score honest. First, it is a snapshot. Habits drift, usually during stress, and the useful thing to keep from this page is the question list itself — those are the signals worth noticing if things change. Second, a low score does not mean porn is costing you nothing; it means it is not showing addiction-shaped signals. If it conflicts with your values or your relationship, that is a real reason to change it — it is just a different reason, and it does not need a clinical label to be legitimate.

If you scored in the middle: watch the pattern, not the label

A middle-range score usually means some answers described real friction — more time than intended, promises that did not hold, porn standing in for coping — while others did not. This is exactly the zone where the addicted-or-not question is least useful, because the honest answer is “the data is mixed,” and a binary label throws that information away.

The better move is to stop asking what you are and start watching what happens. A one-minute quiz is a blurry photo; two weeks of observations are a film. Take your two or three highest-scored questions and track them against reality: when the urge shows up, where you are, what mood preceded it, what it cost. Patterns usually become visible within days — the specific hour, the specific emotional state, the specific device-and-door configuration. That knowledge is actionable in a way no score is: it tells you where to add friction and what need the habit is currently serving.

This is also the range where a private record earns its keep, because memory is a terrible instrument for exactly this job — it flattens slow trends and edits embarrassing details. The tool matters less than the honesty, and honesty is easier when the record provably stays with you. That is the design brief behind Virise: urges and outcomes logged in a few taps, stored on your device, nothing uploaded, no account required. A paper notebook obeys the same principle.

If you scored high: take it seriously — and take it to a person

A high score means your answers described a pattern that is resisting your control and costing you things: time, honesty, work, closeness. Hold both halves of the honest interpretation. This check still has not diagnosed you — the cutoff is a judgment call, and shame can inflate self-report. And: a pattern you have repeatedly tried and failed to change, that you hide, and that keeps charging you real costs is worth taking seriously regardless of what it is called.

The single most useful next step is not a harder streak app or a stricter blocker — it is a conversation with a professional. A doctor or mental-health clinician can assess whether compulsive sexual behaviour disorder applies, screen for the conditions that commonly travel with it, such as depression and anxiety, and lay out options. That assessment is precisely the thing no web page can do. If the idea feels disproportionate, notice the asymmetry: people book physiotherapy for a sore knee without demanding proof of rupture. Distress plus loss of control is enough reason to consult someone whose job this is.

Self-observation still has a role at this score — arriving at an appointment with three weeks of honest records beats arriving with a guilty blur, and if you want to watch your own pattern first, Virise keeps that record local to your device rather than uploading it anywhere. But at this range the log is preparation for help, not a substitute for it. And if things are heavier than a habit — if hopelessness or thoughts of self-harm are in the picture — skip the tracking entirely and use the crisis resources at the end of this page now.

What actually counts as porn addiction?

Notice what the self-check never asked: how often you watch, or what you watch. That omission is deliberate, and it is the clearest answer to “what counts.” In the clinical framing of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder, the problem is defined by control, consequence, and distress — a repetitive pattern the person cannot rein in despite trying, that continues despite real harm, and that causes marked distress or impairment over an extended period. Frequency alone appears nowhere in that description. Daily use with control and without cost does not meet it; rare use that is escalating, hidden, and repeatedly overriding your own decisions is far more concerning than a raw count.

The same clinical framing draws a second line that surprises people: distress that comes entirely from moral disapproval of one's own sexuality is explicitly not sufficient grounds for the diagnosis. Feeling terrible about porn because your community or beliefs condemn it is a genuine conflict worth resolving — but it is a values conflict, not evidence of a disorder, and the research consistently finds it inflates self-diagnosis. The practical test is behavioral: not “do I feel like an addict?” but “does my behavior keep overriding my own decisions, and what is it costing me?” Those are the two questions everything on this page reduces to — and the two an honest observer, or an honest log, can actually answer.

When to skip the quiz and go straight to help

Some situations should not route through a self-check at all. If sexual behavior feels genuinely out of your control despite repeated attempts to change, keeps escalating, involves anything illegal or nonconsensual, is entangled with depression, anxiety, or trauma, or is putting your safety or someone else's at risk, talk to a qualified doctor or mental-health professional directly. No score on this page adds anything to that decision.

If you are in crisis or having thoughts of self-harm, reach out now: in the United States, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), or call the SAMHSA National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357 for free, confidential treatment referrals. Outside the U.S., contact your local emergency services or national crisis line. A quiz can wait. This cannot.