Those who are addicted to pornography attempt to erase the distinction between art and life. On the one hand the addict knows, at some level of consciousness, that the world of pornography is unreal. To block out this knowledge, the addict tries to convince himself that all the world is pornographic, and that other people are too timid to see this truth. Thus the addict does not view or read pornography in the same way a scholar might read a poem about shepherds. The latter acknowledges the fictional nature of the bucolic, while the addict wants to deny pornography's fictional nature. In refusing the symbolic nature of art, the addict wishes to destroy the indestructible gulf between the sign and its referent.

Mura,D – Male Grief: Notes on Addiction and Pornography, 1995, note 7