Are you addicted to porn?
If you watch porn regularly it’s likely you will lose the ability to fantasise and could experience difficulty in climaxing or maintaining an erection.
Ron Garreti in his TED talk says he stopped watching porn, as he believed he was taking part in filmed prostitution with male domination of women and he found his emotional health was suffering. Like other men he was finding it increasingly difficult to be aroused without porn and his connection with women was becoming awkward and isolating.
When is too much of a good thing, a bad thing?
When it becomes an addiction! It is now easier to get your hands on porn than ever before. Anyone can access porn in the comfort of their own home, no longer having to visit an adult sex store. Porn-related Erectile Dysfunction (ED) has increased in younger men and is becoming more common today than ever before. Usually associated with older men, younger men are reporting difficulty in maintaining an erection without using porn and in some cases impotence. Younger men are turning to the blue, yellow or red pill to help maintain their erections.
How Does Porn Impact Your Senses?
The neuroscience of addiction can be helpful in understanding the impact porn has on the senses. The neurotransmitter dopamine surges in excitement and naturally switches on and off when the excitement is fully realised. In repetitive behaviour such as surfing the net, dopamine is replaced with another neurotransmitter ‘Delta FosB’ that affects the regulating effect of dopamine by altering the brain cycle and neuro-pathway by creating a desire and an incased sense in craving for more.
Research in Australia says it’s the novelty not the nudity that gets men aroused. Men seek out in porn more novelty and higher risk sexual encounters to become aroused. This is a far step away from traditional dating and planning with the person you are attracted to.
Porn is a Private Affair
Porn like most addiction behaviour can be summarised as being secretive and remains an intensely private condition that does not extend to sexual interaction with others. It will however, likely interfere with healthy sexual experiences of any kind. It can be voyeuristic with continual mouse clicking searching, seeking specific sexual fantasies and novelty along with the shock and surprise factor.
Like any addiction, increasing amounts of porn is required as tolerance builds. A movie worth watching to understand the extent of porn addiction, titled Shame, where the central figure played by Michael Fassbender depicts very cleverly, the long-term effects of porn addiction. The constant searching, numbing of everyday pleasure and satisfaction, hyper- reactivity to porn, the erosion of willpower to stop and a desire for more and increasing excitement that can only be experienced through extreme viewing of porn.
Is Porn an Addiction or Compulsion?
There is a subtle difference between compulsion and addiction. Compulsion can be defined as a desire too strong to resist while addiction can be viewed as the next step along from compulsion, a need for more, a habit forming physiological and psychological desire with associated behaviours.
Any additive presentation includes dependency at the expense of other aspects of your life and importantly there is a development of tolerance to the addiction. Eventually escalation of frequency, and tolerance of what once may have shocked you.
Like Michael Fassbender if watching, thinking, reading about porn is interfering with your work, relationships, family life and social interactions, then it is a problem. If you are unable to perform sexually without the stimulation of porn then it’s a problem. If you can’t go a day without porn then it’s a problem. If you are seeking increasingly more graphic images and masturbating more and more then you are likely to have a problem and possibly an addiction.
For most people watching porn is an occasional pleasure. Don’t let it take over.