Before Turner tried to poison his wife, his boss at the Missionary Training Center of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints confronted him about pornography found on a computer.

When Kinyon was suspended for material found on his computer, he snapped.

"I've seen some people who are definitely deserving of the label, people who are really doing themselves damage," says David Tomb, a University of Utah psychology professor who has met with dozens of men consumed by porn. "They feel out of control to the point where they are losing their job, their marriage is falling apart, their whole life is disassembling because of their need to look at pornography, and they have a lot of the same characteristics you see with someone who has a drug addiction."

Does compulsive viewing of pornography qualify as an addiction? And if it does, is it a harmless waste of time, a healthy stimulus for bored couples, or a dangerous obsession that destroys relationships, ends careers and contributes to violence?

On a recent Tuesday night, a group of admitted sex addicts gathered at an Orem church for a weekly meeting. They met in the nursery, a cheery yellow room with pictures of Jerusalem and Noah's Ark taped to the wall.

Sitting in a circle, the men introduced themselves as "sexaholics" and shared temptations encountered during the previous week — both those they overcame and those to which they succumbed. For men who had stayed sober from compulsive sexual behavior for a month or longer, there were tokens and hugs.

Sexaholic groups in conservative, largely Mormon Utah County (there are two) attract everyone from newlyweds obsessed with porn to white-haired grandfathers who have lost count of how many prostitutes they have bedded. Some of the men have attended these meetings, which use the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous, for years.

For these men, pornography addiction is a very real thing; it is a habit that has hurt relationships and affected job performance.

Reid, who runs the program for compulsive sexual behavior at the Gathering Place, said he has counseled dozens of porn addicts. Most are men, he said, and most come in on their own. Others are referred by employers such as Novell that have become aware of the problem.

"We've had police officers, postal workers. This problem is not discriminatory," Reid said. "You'll get the custodian, you'll get the medical doctor and everything in between."

An estimated 6 million Americans surfed porn Web sites while at work in April of last year, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. A survey of 224 corporations conducted by David Greenfield, author of the book "Virtual Addiction," shows more than 40 percent of all Internet-related workplace disciplinary actions were related to Internet pornography.