Would we be happier without online pornography?
A few years ago, men from all over the world began arriving in my website’s forum complaining that they were unable to stop using Internet porn. Google had sent them—perhaps because my site shares information about the effects of sex on the brain.
My site, however, is about relationships, not recovery. Yet their obvious distress, and porn’s impact on their relationships, motivated me to welcome them. As I listen, these visitors support each other in the struggle to leave porn behind.
Often they report dramatic changes as porn use recedes: more energy, increased social confidence, better concentration, greater gains from workouts, stronger erections, a return to earlier sexual tastes, increased optimism, and more enjoyment from life’s subtler pleasures.
In short, many men are happier without Internet pornography.
Their experience has shown me that porn’s chief danger isn’t obvious to most users. It arises from intense stimulation of the reward circuitry of the brain—a portion of the ancient “mammalian brain,” which lies under the newer neocortex (rational brain). The reward circuitry governs emotions, mating, eating, motivation, and all addictions. It runs on a neurochemical called dopamine, the “gotta get it!” neurotransmitter.
Novelty-on-demand (slot machines, video games, porn videos) is often so enticing for this primitive part of the brain, that compulsion becomes a risk. Moreover, our brains evolved to light up not only for novelty-on-demand, but also for the genetic bonanza of sex with a novel partner.
Therefore, Internet porn, which offers new partners begging for ejaculate at each mouse click, registers as so rewarding that the brain easily rewires itself to focus more and more attention on these perceived opportunities. This can swiftly reorder the user’s priorities.
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Our brain’s reward circuitry evolved foremost to drive us toward sex and food. We seem to be especially vulnerable to superstimulating sexual arousal and junk food. Junk food has helped make 64 percent of Americans overweight (and half of those obese).
And now that free, streaming videos are available privately in endless supply, how many are using porn? (Hint: last year a Montreal professor had to revise his study about the effects of porn. He couldn’t find any male “porn virgins” on a major university campus.)
“The addictiveness of Internet pornography is not a metaphor,” explains psychiatrist Norman Doidge in The Brain That Changes Itself. Porn users are seduced into pornographic training sessions that meet all the conditions required for plastic change of brain maps, namely, rapt attention, reinforcement, and dopamine consolidation of new neural connections.
Some users (such as musician John Mayer) substitute porn for intimate relationships or friendly interaction, learning life skills, and so on. Their reward circuitry no longer perceives the latter as worth the effort. After all, this part of the brain can’t reason. It weighs options according to which release the most dopamine.
Paradoxically, it’s while someone is recovering from intense stimulation that he’s most likely to want more intense stimulation. This primitive mechanism evolved to keep us on task when something especially stimulating (“valuable”) is around. It works by numbing the pleasure response for a time (by weakening the effects of dopamine), so we look around for more.
This, by the way, is why drug addicts need more and more to get the same effects. This device probably worked just fine for spreading genes when receptive, novel mates were scarce. Today, however, the brain mistakes each enticing 2-D hottie as a prime opportunity to pass on genes. A porn user can feel as if his duty is never done.
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Overstimulated men report growing numb to life’s subtler pleasures, such as the charms of real partners. At the same time, they can be hypersensitive to the sexual stimuli their brains associate with “relief.” For many, the pursuit of more stimulating materials becomes mandatory to relieve the misery of feeling as if some key ingredient of their happiness is missing—and it is. Brain changes have temporarily dimmed their capacity for enjoyment.
It is not unusual for men caught in this cycle to feel anxious, socially ill-at-ease, moody, despairing, and apathetic. Until they reboot their brains, life seems meaningless, but for the single-minded pursuit of hotter stimuli. As one man put it:
With the magazines, porn use was a few times a week and I could basically regulate it. ‘Cause it wasn’t really that ‘special’. But when I entered the murky world of Internet porn, my brain had found something it just wanted more and more of…. I was out of control in less than 6 months. Years of mags: no problems. A few months of online porn: hooked.
Often users don’t realize what they’re passing up until they give their brains a chance to return to equilibrium. For some, the lengthy withdrawal required to achieve this can be so agonizing (shakes, insomnia, despair, cravings, splitting headaches) that they feel trapped.
For example, in The Great Internet Porn-Off, 70 percent of contestants could not go without porn for two weeks. Nor can some officials of the Securities and Exchange Commission, it seems.
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A planet where computer literate men run a considerable risk of compulsive porn use won’t be as happy as it could be. People struggling to ease cravings for more and more stimulation generally have little time, sensitivity, or resolve for creativity, good causes, relationships, or nature’s pleasures. Yet the transformation in those who feel better without porn is inspiring. Consider these posts:
I feel again. I feel emotions again. My interest in women is heightened, my confidence is up and gives me motivation again. I’m 28 now and until the last couple of years I felt I had the maturity of a 15 year old. But as I heal and recover from this compulsion, I’ve felt emotions I’ve never had to deal with before. It has helped me grow up.
After a few days I noticed increased energy, increased attention, and higher self-esteem. After a month—although it took several tries to get there—those improvements were all through the roof. A couple of months later, I was having real sex. It is nice to get aroused by little things, like a revealing blouse or just a woman’s flowing, shiny hair and fragrance.
I am more at ease with myself and can look people in the eye, with kindness and a superhuman confidence. I had two women introduce themselves to me yesterday, shake my hand and HOLD IT. Wow. I was so comfortable talking to everyone. I wrote two pages of a script that went in an even deeper direction than I was aiming for. Exercising is through the roof.
I have so much more energy, I’m less moody, I have more enthusiasm and motivation for work, I don’t feel drained all the time, and I feel a deeper sense of connection with everything around me. But the biggest change it has made is in my relationship. My girlfriend and I feel much closer to each other already.
When it comes to sexually explicit materials, our society tends to get lost in debates about free speech, degree of obscenity, sexual repression, and harm to third parties. Maybe we should take a closer look at porn’s power to hijack brains.
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Circumcision removes an extraordinary amount of nerves from the penis. It is the male equivalent to the clitoris. Let’s stop chopping that off, then get to the porn thing.
We’re right with you on that one. I think “The Good Men Project” did a series of articles on that subject not long ago. You may want to comment on them too.
So if circumcision robs men of most of their sexual pleasure – and porn gives back a tiny bit of pleasure – what is the point? Circumcision is irreversible! And there is little to no pleasure prior to orgasm so the point of sex with a woman is . . . what? With a circumcised penis it normally doesn’t please her either (through intercourse – see the Danish study asking women to rate circumcised lovers versus uncircumcised. Pity poor women in the USA with all those cut men. They are better off having their men watch porn! But still they… Read more »
I’d recommend any heavy internet porn user who isn’t feeling sexual pleasure during sex to cut out porn for several months. We’ve heard from many guys who thought they were asexual or suffering from circumcision deficits or whatever, who were amazed to discover that sex felt much better after a couple of months with no internet porn. Here’s a video that one made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0dDLWGMhUo&feature=youtube_gdata_player
It pays to rule out porn’s effects before assuming “cut” status is the culprit.
Porn: the New Normal: Unlimited Sexual Humiliation and Degradation and it’s Effects on Relationships (Note: I am a man and I feel this way. Hopefully more men will speak out.) The free and unlimited online pornography industry has been a large contributor to a sexually jaded (and emotionally damaged) generation of men and women who have never learned how to have a genuine, supportive and *lasting* relationship with the opposite sex. More than that, porn has been described as a form of terrorist propaganda against women, insofar as it depicts men celebrating the sexual dehumanization of women with impunity and… Read more »
THIS. Thank you.
I would have no issue giving up drinking alcohol if it bothered someone I loved. I think many men would have a problem giving up porn if it bothered someone they loved. I’m not the best person to speak on this subject because of my emotional state towards the topic- I had a horrific ‘marriage’ that delved into the pit of this stuff, ending in lots of psychological counseling – but ENDING. Thank god. I’m pretty sensitive to the abuse/aversion/etc. that *can come* from porn (doesn’t mean it always *does*). For starters, I was awakened at 3am and raped on… Read more »
Great Article Marnia. To those guys debating. Watching porn does not make you a “bad” person or an addict. Just as my drinking a beer doesn’t make me an alcoholic. And “People who are easily addicted to stimuli has other issues as well” is absolutely correct. The line where pornography viewing becomes a serious problem and an addition, is when the viewing of pornography is being used to numb emotional pain, escape from reality, and in other ways damage daily relationships.
Thanks for your thoughts, guys. I wish I could agree with you, but for some men, porn definitely is a problem, and the problems appear to be getting worse, and hitting guys younger. Here are some recent posts from my website: First guy: Here’s my story… Im only 23, eat healthy, exercise regularly, and not to sound conceited but I look good. I have no problems being social with women but when it comes time for sex i have an inability to obtain/maintain an erection. I also have a low sex drive. I have to pop sex pills about an… Read more »
I totally agree with you, Daddy Files. I love my wife too, she’s the hottest woman I’ve ever seen. She turns me on every day – and yet I occasionally watch porn. It’s not a problem because pornography is fiction in a way. She’s real. I can tell the difference… This article reminds me of articles in the 50’s, warning the public from the perills of masturbation: the palms grows hairy, the spine deteriorates, intelligence and social abilities vanishes – or to put it in other words: “…they feel anxious, socially ill-at-ease, moody, despairing, and apathetic. Until they reboot their… Read more »
I agree that this can be an issue. But I’d hate to see the addictive side of pornography preclude a real erotica, which I believe can be non-sexist, loving, and beautiful if used in moderation, and perhaps even in concert with other people. What should make us a little suspicious is that the anti-porn stuff fits right into the niche created by Victorian sexual repression. This issue is extremely multifaceted: women may rightly resist some pornography because of objectification and even abuse portrayed (notwithstanding that some women and men may desire these images as fetishes). Men may indeed find that… Read more »
It’s an issue of imbalance.
Why the focus on men? Women can’t be ‘addicted’ to porn?
Plus I hated interacting with people long before I discovered internet porn.
I’ve heard this nonsense before. I didn’t buy it then and I’m certainly not now. If someone is that addicted to pornography they have deeper issues than just watching porn. But these articles make it seem that men who indulge in online porn on occasion, are nothing short of sexual deviants or pathetic excuses for men who can’t get it up anywhere except in front of the computer screen. But that’s just not true. I love my wife. There’s no one sexier. But often she isn’t in the mood (right now it’s pregnancy, but she’s also suffered from various other… Read more »
@ Daddy Files If it’s not addicting I wonder how long you could last without it? Ever try that? You might be surprised. Funny how you say you use porn fairly often yet then turn around and say men who find it difficult separating from porn are “lazy and disinterested in their partners.” What drew you to this article in the first place? Is unlimited porn good for relationships? There are consequences of all this extreme sexual material available at the click of a mouse. Nobody said it was evil and it’s not “moralizing” to say that for some, porn… Read more »
You are such a clueless ass.
This is an important article. When I wrote the book, Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Overcoming Romantic and Sexual Addictions in 1988, Internet porn was not such a big problem and we were just beginning to recognize the effects of addictions, including sexual addictions, on the way the brain functions.
Great article
Thanks. For more on the biological implications of today’s Internet porn phenomenon visit Your Brain On Porn.