The dangers of pornography

The world we live in has changed and it has changed in ways we are still having trouble adjusting to. One of the most insidious and destructive changes we have seen from the days, before computers made their way into every home in American, is the proliferation of pornography. We as parents
see pornography as distasteful and even evil but we are often uneducated as to what the actual harm is. What happens to us, or our children, from continued exposure to this drug of lust? While medical research data is limited, there have been some studies done and those studies have only solidified my research

One such study is "Pornography and Addiction: Brain Chemistry Research and Porn" (by Marnia Robinson). Here is a link to Marnia's research: http://www.reuniting.info/download/pdf/ORI.pdf

Let me first begin with the method by which I obtained my data. The research I have done is composed from interviews with hundreds of drug addicts and sex additcs, in the southern region of the U.S. The reason drug addicts offer so much valuable insight into sex addiction is, the two are chemically very much the same. That statement sounds unreasonable seeing the drug addict ingests his addictive substance and the sex addict does something that is a natural body function. However in the case of addiction, the brain does not always recognize the difference.

Here is a relevant excerpt from Marnia's reasearch: "There are evident parallels between drug use and heavy porn use: escalation, tolerance, impaired decision-making, anxiety, altered perception, and so forth. There are also strong parallels between the withdrawal symptoms of addicts and the withdrawal symptoms of heavy porn users who try to quit: shakes, severe insomnia, persistent headaches, irritability, extreme cravings, despair, brain fog, desire to isolate, flu-like symptoms, and so forth."

To further our understanding of what happens to the brain as we do things repetitively, I will take another quote from Marnia Robinson's research.

"Psychiatrist Normal Doidge (The Brain That Changes Itself) has explained that brain plasticity means porn causes physiological changes in the brain."

So what is Brain Plasticity? Dr Doidge could explain it better then I could but as it relates to the topic of addiction, I understand this concept very well. Drug addicts, as do sex addicts, change as they fall deeper into addiction. Their very brain's begin to translate information in a way that not only justifies the activity, it even begins to connect drug use with other things, such as smell or sound and these are called triggers. While this is less of an explanation of Brain Plasticity and more of a result, for our purposes it will help us to understand that porn is not something one can easily stop, once addicted.

Once the brain has adjusted (molded) and transformed itself into that of dependency, it seeks the release of brain chemicals such as dopamine and oxytocin. The porn addict becomes ensnared by compulsion and not only mentally but chemically over-uses his natural instincts to mate. This over-use of libido then unknowingly often triggers depression, or other disorders, which are really a response to depleted D2 receptors.

(Interestingly oxytocin (oxy-toe-in) is sometimes use to help people get over addictions such as smoking. This is useful because it helps replace one thing with another and thus changes the brain chemistry to a more normal state.

"In terms of how it lights up the brain with hit after hit of dopamine, today's porn is more like a drug or like gambling. It hijacks normal mating circuits without leading to satiety"

"The research situation is complicated by the fact that orgasm itself creates a drug-like high. Dutch scientist Gert Holstege observed, while viewing scans of men ejaculating, that the scans reminded him of scans of people shooting heroin. (Brain activation during human male ejaculation) Masturbation to Internet porn is a double neurochemical hit: the rush of watching extreme material and (eventually) the reinforcing rush of orgasm, both of which rapidly consolidate learning-i.e., wiring in the synapses."

So far I have tried to outline a basic medical understanding of brain chemistry as it reacts to drugs or porn. I will try to further this understanding with what drug and porn addicts revealed in my research. The ease and availability of porn makes it very destructive in a way drugs are not. While the after-response of use is much the same, guilt, shame, unfufillment, and back to use in order to mask the discomfort of feelings. The lack of possible legal consequences, the relatively low cost and the instant availability, make going back to the drug of pornography, far easier. This is important because with porn, the user is not faced with the extreme anxiety,of getting money, or purchasing an illegal substance, (often in dangerous neighborhoods) to achieve the high.

Porn is a powerful stimulant and just like a drug, it becomes impossible to sate the users desires, while paradoxically, most users say it is better then sex with a partner. The actual act of coupling tends to dispel the fantasies the user wants to retain and does not produce the same chemical drop that pornography gives. The imagination, coupled with graphic images, allows the sexual experience to be manipulated internally in a way more precisely connected with specific desires thus increasing the release of the brains pleasure chemicals. As the porn addict repeatedly acts out erotic scenes in isolated fantasy, they always build emotional walls to protect their secret sex fix, just as alcoholics block and avoid people or situations in order to protect their drinking. The porn users perception of sex and more importantly love, become distorted and warped as their associations with the opposite sex change.
Many porn addicts say they can no longer become aroused without porn and almost all of them have damaged their ability to connect on a passionate level with a partner outside of the parameters of lust. Most I have interviewed also fantasy about a particular porn imagine when having sex with a partner. This often leads to relationship issues, further isolation, and self justification for the use of more porn. The porn user just like the drug user, remembers the euphoric state achieved in the start of their using and often tries to re-create that first high.
Almost all of those asked need a large variance in the porn they view. They do not want to watch the same porn over and over, in the same way many men and women want new sex partners. This variance for addicted porn users is, in a way, them trying to reach the perfect imagined/mental place during masturbation. They tend to look for just the right sequence of events, sex position, combination of partners or any combination of those and other things, to achieve the desired mental and chemical reaction in the brain. One major problem is, they are almost always let down. The act of trying to achieve this euphoric place is usually better then the anticipated result.
The litmus test for association is the Pavlov effect. Do they see, feel, or smell, something that triggers their usage of porn in the same way as their drug of choice? The answer to that question is a resounding yes. Every one of the drug addicts interviewed, who where also pornography addicts, experienced the same triggering effects with porn, as with drugs. The most common series of physical effects at the point of the trigger, aret, a quick euphoric anticipation, butterflies in the stomach, then sudden plan-making to achieve the solitude, isolation, or set-up, they desire for masturbation, just like drug users.

I think it important to distinguish the difference between a sex addict and a porn addict. While a porn addict is always a sex addict, a sex addict is not always a porn addict. There are millions of sex addicts who fulfill their addiction by having sex with partner after partner. Porn addicts almost always want to be alone and this resembles a drug addict in a particular way. It is the isolation and lack of human interaction that allow them to fully immerse themselves in fantasy. It is more often then not, role playing in ones own mind and the variation usually become more perverse the longer the addict uses the drug of porn. The addictive effect is also progressive, meaning the disease picks up where it left off even after years of abstinences. This progressive effect is also a cornerstone of what we know about drug addiction.

The porn addict has the same disease as the drug addict. Further proof of this is the large numbers of sex addicts, who are also drug addicts. This cross over, from one drug to another, is also very common with drug addicts. Drug addicts, who may not have access to their drug of choice, more often then not, end up addicted to another substance, they used to replace it. 

The final observation I would like to express, is the difficulty cocaine addicts, who used cocaine, while watching porn, have in getting clean. One man (Mike W.) I interviewed, wrote this about the phenomena.

"The mixture of cocaine and pornography is a very potent and destructive combination. Even if the desire to use drugs is not present at a given moment the basic underlying need for intimacy and sex spawned by the base desire for lust became an almost constant that triggered the drug desire which intensified the sexual desire. I don't know weather it was the chicken or the egg but the two worked so closely together that the combination drew even more power from my most basic needs and then perverted them into pure lust. It then uses those base desires to draw me right back to a using state. This mixture and my own feelings of remorse, shame and guilt made it truly impossible for me to overcome my addictions."

The drug cocaine has an effect on porn users that deeply intensifies the brain chemistry and helps them go deeper into the fantasy. It fuses the two together in such a way that a trigger for either is a trigger both. This makes it super humanly hard to avoid relapsing and also decreases the enjoyment of one with out the other. This Phenomena is not exclusive to the drug cocaine, it is possable with other drugs as well, even those not nearly as potent as cocaine. This is a good example of how the brain molds (Plasticity) itself to achieve an over-stimulated, dependent state. All porn addicts who are also sex addicts interviewed, when possable, used drugs during or before masturbation or sex in order to intensify the high of both.