Your Brain on Porn (3 page)

The subsequent chapter touches on contemporary neuroscience and the light it sheds on the delicate appetite mechanisms of the brain. I'll summarize some of the recent research on behavioural addiction, sexual conditioning and why adolescent brains are especially vulnerable in the face of a brain-training superstimulus like today's porn.

Chapter three recounts various commonsense approaches people have used to get clear of their porn-related problems as well as some pitfalls to avoid. I don't offer a set protocol. Everyone's circumstances are slightly different and there are no magic bullets. For example, tactics that work well for single people may have to be adapted by someone in a relationship. And younger guys who

develop porn-induced ED sometimes need longer than older guys. Often several different approaches are helpful, concurrently or in sequence.

In the conclusion I'll consider why a consensus about porn's risks is still in the future, and which lines of research are most promising. Finally, I'll consider how society might help porn users to make more informed choices.

One final thing before we start. I am not saying that you
should
have a problem with porn. I am not trying to start some kind of moral panic, or to say what is and isn’t ‘natural’ in human sexuality. If you don’t feel you have a problem, then I am not about to argue with you. It’s up to each of us to decide what we think about graphic sexual content and the industry that produces much of it.

But if you do feel that pornography is harming you, or someone you know, then read on, and I will do my best to explain how internet pornography can produce unexpected effects, and what you can do about it.

1: What Are We Dealing With?

It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.
Eugene Ionesco

Most users regard internet porn as a solution
–
to boredom, sexual frustration, loneliness or stress. However, about six years ago, some porn users started to connect various problems
with
their porn use. In 2012, a guy on an online forum known as Reddit/NoFap recounted the history of how men first figured out what they were dealing with. (The onomatopoeic term 'fap' is youthful slang for 'masturbation to porn'.):

Around 2008/2009, people started surfacing on the internet who were freaked out that
they had erectile dysfunction, but at the same time they could get a solid erection to varying
degrees of extreme porn with the help of some good old deathgrip [masturbation]. The weird

thing was, that in some cases, thousands of people responded to these forum posts, saying
they had the same exact symptoms.

Now, taking those symptoms into account, people figured they'd desensitised themselves to

real women by escalating to evermore extreme genres of porn and masturbating [such] that

no woman's vagina could match the stimulation. They hoped/guessed that if they'd stop
watching porn and masturbating for a significant amount of time this desentisation might be

reversed.

These people, who back then didn't have YBOP [www.yourbrainonporn.com], NoFap and

dozens of other forums on the subject, thought they were alone. The only weird-ass freaks on

the planet who can't get it up to a real woman, but find disgusting genres of porn a turn on. A
lot of them were still virgins. Others were failing for years with real women, which devastated
their confidence. They figured that they would never be able to have a normal fulfilling
relationship with a woman, and considering they were freaks of nature, they secluded
themselves from society and became hermits. ...

[Quitting porn] helped reverse the porn-induced ED of these guys, and besides normal
libido they started reporting other positive changes too: depression and social anxiety going

away, increased confidence, the feeling of fulfilment and being on top of the world...

I'm one of those guys. I'd had several failures with women, starting in the middle of
puberty. This had become the single most devastating thing to my psyche. In this modern
world, where there's hardly a commercial, a movie, a TV show, or a conversation without
sexual innuendos, I was constantly reminded of my weirdness. I was a failure as a man on a

very fundamental level and I seemed to be the only one.

A year before I [quit porn] I'd even gone to see psychiatrists and psychologists, who
diagnosed me with severe social anxiety disorder and depression, and wanted to put me on
antidepressants, which I never agreed to.

When I found out that the central problem of my life that was on my mind 24/7 could be

reversed, the heaviest rock was lifted from my heart. When I went on my first NoFap streak

(cca 80 days) I started noticing similar superpowers as reported by others. Is that really so

weird? The central thing destroying my confidence and making me feel alone on the planet of

7 billion was being reversed, and it turned out to be very common.

Today, on my 109th day of a streak, I feel happy, confident, social, smart, capable of
meeting any challenge, etc., etc.

The earliest people to report porn-related problems in online forums were typically computer programmers and information-technology specialists. They had acquired highspeed internet porn ahead of the pack
–
and then developed uncharacteristic sexual tastes, delayed ejaculation or erectile dysfunction (ED) during sex. Eventually, some experienced ED even while using porn. Nearly all were in their late twenties or older.

As one such forum member noted, internet porn was
different,
oddly irresistible:

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.

A bit of history gives us some clues as to why today's pornography might have unexpected effects

on the brain. Visual pornography entered the mainstream with magazines, but users had to content themselves with static erotica. Each instalment's novelty and its arousal potential faded fairly quickly, and a person either had to go back to fantasizing about his hot neighbour, or make a substantial, perhaps awkward or costly, foray to obtain more material. There were a few x-rated movies and some of them were big commercial successes. Dedicated fans of hardcore could also find sexually explicit clips in adult bookstores. But supply was still restricted to a handful of public or semi-public venues and most people didn't want to spend much time in movie houses or peepshow booths.

Then came video rentals and late-night cable channels. These media were more stimulating than

static por
n[7]
and much less awkward to access than a film at the cinema. Yet how many times could a person watch the same video before it was time for another trip to the video shop (and a break)?

Viewers often had to watch a story line with an erotic build-up before getting to the hot stuff. Most minors still had very limited access.

Next, porn viewers turned to dial-up: private, cheaper, but mostly stills ... at first. People could access it more easily, but it was slow. Material could not be consumed at a click:

You had to download the video, then open it and risk getting a virus. Sometimes you didn't

have the right software, so you spent a lot of time making sure it was what you wanted to see

before downloading it and 'enjoying' it, or you would go to a specific site whose content you

liked, watch the one or two new videos and leave it at that.

All that was about to change
.

In 2006, highspeed internet gave rise to a whole new creature: galleries of short porn clips of the hottest few minutes of an unending supply of streaming hardcore videos. They are called ‘tube sites’

because they stream like YouTube videos. The world of porn has never been the same. Users describe the transformation:

I'd looked at pictures for years (well over a decade), and video clips from time to time.

But when the tube sites became my daily fare, it was only shortly afterward that I developed

ED problems. I think the tube sites, with their endless clips immediately accessible, threw my
brain into overload.

*

On a tube site you go straight from 0 to 140 kph. Arousal isn't a slow, relaxed, teasing
build-up of expectation. It is straight to full-on orgasmic action. Because tube clips are so
short, you do a LOT more clicking to novel clips for various reasons: One is way too short to

build up arousal; you don't know what will be in the clip till you watch it; endless curiosity,
etc.

*

I can totally relate to ‘wanting to watch 10 videos all at once, streaming at the same
time...’ It's amazing to hear someone else say it. It's like this sensory overload, or hoarding,
or just overstuffing yourself with your favourite junk food.

*

Tube sites, especially the big ones, are the crack cocaine of internet pornography. There

is so much of it, and so much new content every day, every hour, every 10 minutes that I was

always able to find constant new stimulation.

*

Now with highspeed, even to smartphones, it has made me continuously watch more and

more and at higher resolution. It sometimes becomes a whole day affair looking for the
perfect one to finish on. It never, ever satisfies. ‘Need more’ the brain always says…such a
lie.

*

Before I discovered I had ED I had escalated to tube-site compilation videos, each
consisting of the hottest few
seconds
of dozens of hardcore videos.

*

Highspeed porn changed everything. I began masturbating more than once a day. If I
didn't feel like masturbating, but wanted to relieve stress or go to sleep, porn helped me get
aroused. I found myself looking at porn prior to sex with my wife because she just couldn't do
it for me anymore. Delayed ejaculation was a huge problem: I could no longer orgasm from

oral sex and I sometimes had difficulty with orgasm in a vagina.

Deep in a primitive part of the brain, surfing tube sites registers as really valuable because of all the sexual novelty. The extra excitement strengthens brain circuits that urge you to use porn again.

Your own sexual fantasies pale in comparison. According to one German research tea
m[8]
, users'

problems correlated most closely with the number of screens opened (variety) and degree of arousal, not with time spent viewing online porn.

Another risk of today's online porn buffet is overconsumption. University of Massachusetts Medical School professor Sherry Pagoto Ph
D[9]
writes:

Studies on appetite show that variety is strongly associated with overconsumption. You
will eat more at a buffet than you will when meatloaf is the only thing on the table. In neither
scenario will you leave hungry but in one you will leave regretful. In other words, [if you
want to circumvent overconsumption and its problems] avoid the buffets of life.

It's also worth noting that videos replace imagination in a way that still images don't. Left strictly to our imaginations we humans once tended to assume the starring role in our sexual fantasies, not the passive role of mere voyeur as in video-watching. However, some of those who start regular porn use very young are having a different experience:

'Alien' is the word I’d use to describe how it felt when I tried to have sex with real women.

It felt artificial and foreign to me. It's like I've gotten so conditioned to sitting in front of a
screen jerking it, that my mind considers that to be normal sex instead of real actual sex.

During real sex viewers aren't in the position of a voyeur, let alone a voyeur of a particular body part or very specific fetish that many of them have been viewing for years before they connect with a partner.

An Elephant in the Room

At the end of 2010, my wife suggested I set up an online resource about this new phenomenon. By

then, her forum on sexual relationships had been overrun by men seeking clues about their porn-related problems: loss of attraction to real partners, delayed ejaculation or complete inability to orgasm during sex, alarming new sexual tastes as they escalated through porn fetishes, even unaccustomed premature ejaculation. She felt they needed a dedicated website where they could read each others' self-reports and keep up on the new research on internet addiction, sexual conditioning and neuroplasticity. From this came the website Your Brain On Porn (YBOP).