Pornography Addiction - Louis Faith, MA
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What Is Porn Addiction
Pornography addiction is defined as someone having an obsessive need to engage in pornographic materials despite any negative consequences that engaging it has on the individual. Pornography addiction does not discriminate, and it can affect anyone at any time. When a person begins using pornography, and the amount of time they are using it determines the severity of the addiction and its withdrawal symptoms.
Porn Addiction Withdrawal Effects on the Brain
The porn addiction withdrawal process is like that of alcohol and opiates due to your brain experiencing a dramatic change in dopamine levels. Dopamine, the pleasure neurotransmitter, is released when the individual engages in pornography use at high rates, which is unique to the individual. Unlike other substances that have timeframe and amount of use restrictions (i.e. pleasure onset, drug amount availability, cost, etc.), the dopamine release experienced with pornography use is usually rapid, and the amount of dopamine released can be easily adjusted by the length of time and type of pornography one engages in. The unfortunate fact about pornography addiction is that it is easily accessible, mostly legal, and becoming increasingly socially acceptable. For all these reasons and more, pornography addiction and withdrawal can be devastating. Pornography withdrawal can be very uncomfortable and result in various neurological problems, no evidence exists to suggest that the withdrawal process can be fatal. Regardless, the withdrawal process can be very uncomfortable and is unique to everyone. As your brain becomes used to the high dopamine levels released when you view pornography, it becomes dependent on those levels. When you stop engaging in pornography, dopamine levels drastically reduce, and your brain and body begins to protest, and the withdrawal process begins.
Typical Porn Addiction Withdrawal Symptoms
Anxiety: One of the most common symptoms of withdrawal. It can manifest in many ways, such as feeling on edge, restless, or panicked.
Depression: Quitting porn can worsen depressive symptoms or cause a depressive episode.
Irritability: Prompted by the anxiety and stress of quitting an addiction.
Loss of Libido: Many people addicted to porn lose interest in sex because they have become used to its instant gratification and may find human intimacy and sexual intercourse less stimulating.
Insomnia: Many people experiencing addictions have difficulty with insomnia which may be due to brain chemistry changes and anxiety.
Fatigue: Fatigue is also a common addiction withdrawal symptom and results from the physical and mental exhaustion that comes from the addiction.
Headaches: Many individuals experience headaches during the early withdrawal period.
Intrusive Thoughts: Symptoms of distressing thoughts about porn that take-over the thought process causing a disruption in normal thinking that impacts activities of daily living.
Cravings: Cravings are a normal part of the pornography withdrawal process can be intense and can lead to relapse when not effectively managed.
Mood Swings: These are a normal part of the pornography addiction withdrawal process resulting from brain chemistry changes and other hormonal change processes.
Difficulty Concentrating: Pornography withdrawal impacts concentration and is influenced by cravings and intrusive thoughts.
Consequences of Using Pornography
Social Isolation: Social isolation is another common symptom of addiction exacerbated by feelings of shame and embarrassment.
Effect on the Mind: Pornography distorts attitudes and perceptions about the nature of sexual intercourse for men and women. People who regularly look at pornography have increased tolerance for deviant sexual behaviors, sexual aggression, promiscuity, and even rape. In addition, men begin to view women and even children as “sex objects,” commodities or instruments for their pleasure, not as persons with their own inherent dignity.
Effect on the Body: Pornography is very addictive, has negative consequences on the dopamine system, and increases promiscuity, which increases the risk of contracting STI’s and unplanned pregnancy.
Emotional Effects: Married people who are involved in pornography feel less satisfied with their marital sexual relations and less emotionally attached to each other and are left with feelings of betrayal, mistrust, and anger. Pornographic use may lead to infidelity and even divorce. Adolescents viewing pornography feel shame, lower self-confidence, and sexual uncertainty.
Family Consequences: A child exposed to pornography within a family setting causes them stress and increases the risk for developing negative attitudes about authentic human sexuality. Adolescents viewing pornography experience a shift in their attitudes toward human sexuality negatively shaping sexual expectations and behavior. Adults experience pornography’s destructive effects on marriage.
Impact on Children: Pornography eliminates authentic (natural) family life, which is essential to normal development resulting in potential traumatic experiences such as encountering their parent’s pornographic material, encountering a parent masturbating, experiencing stress from parents/siblings engaging in pornographic online sexual activities, increased risk of children viewing pornography, experiencing parental conflict, increased experience of parental job loss, financial strain, separation, divorce, parental disclosure of pornography use, and decreased parental attention.
Impact on Adolescents: Pornography viewing distorts adolescents’ normal development by influencing the uncertainty about their sexual beliefs and moral values. It increases sexual deviancy, exploration of sex outside of marriage, and lowers self-esteem resulting in symptoms of depression and feelings of shame. High pornography consumption negatively affects behavior (i.e. involvement in hook-up culture and teen pregnancy).
Impacts on Marriage: Pornography use has several impacts on married couples including marital dissatisfaction due to men viewing wives unfavorably, along with the couple’s reduction in romance, isolation, extramarital affairs, divorce, sexual deviancy, separation, and divorce.
Distorted Perception of Reality: Three major ways pornography leads to distorted perceptions are that sexual relationships are viewed as recreational in nature, men are generally sexually driven, and women are sex objects or commodities. Pornography also supports the idea that degradation of women is acceptable such as degrading women through “rape myth acceptance” scenes, which depict women being raped and ultimately enjoying the experience. Women tend to view pornography as more degrading of women than men do. After prolonged exposure to pornography, men especially, but also some women, trivialize rape as a criminal offense.
Statistics Involving Pornography
68 percent of divorce cases involved one party meeting a new paramour over the Internet.
56 percent involved “one party having an obsessive interest in pornographic websites,”
47 percent involved “spending excessive time on the computer,”
33 percent involved spending excessive time in chat rooms.
In over 22 percent of couples observed, the spouse was no longer living with the “cybersex” addict, and in many of the other cases spouses were seriously considering leaving the marriage or relationship.
Men are more than six times as likely to view pornography as females, and more likely to spend more time viewing it.
Women reported that they preferred engaging in “cybersex” within the context of a relationship (via email or chat room) rather than accessing pornographic images. 80 percent of women who engaged in these online sexual activities also had real-life sexual encounters with their online partners, compared to the much lower proportion of 33 percent for men.
For men who flirted in Internet chat rooms, 78 percent reported they had at least one face-to-face sexual experience with someone they had met through a chat room in the past year.
A study of sex-addicted men also found that 43 percent used online sexual activity to engage in sexual activities they would never otherwise perform. Self-reports also reveal that the tendency to explore new behaviors in “offline” relationships increases with increased online sexual activity.
Only 23 percent of women claimed they would be more bothered by sexual infidelity, compared to the 77 percent of women who would be more bothered by emotional infidelity.
84 percent of the men reported they would be more bothered by sexual infidelity, whereas only 16 percent say they would be more bothered by emotional infidelity.
In a study which examined different types of degrading pornography, featuring themes such as “objectification” and “dominance,” both men and women rated the same three major themes as the most degrading of all, but with different intensities: women rated them as even more degrading than men did.
A 2000 study of college freshmen found that the habitual use of pornography led to greater tolerance of sexually explicit material, thus requiring more novel and bizarre material to achieve the same level of arousal or interest (i.e. illegal child pornography, BDSM, rape, etc.).
72 percent of the young women but only 23 percent of the young men stated their feelings towards pornography were negative. Moreover, when asked if pornography is degrading, almost 90 percent of young women but only 65 percent of young men agreed that pornography is degrading.(Fagan, 2009).
References
Fagan, P. (2009). The Effects of Pornography on Individuals, Marriage, Family and Community.
The Cardinal Newman Society. https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/effects-pornography individuals-marriage-family-community/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwlPWgBhDHARIsAH2xdNemGqnZJr910hCVC_Cq9U6c3a_VrhnSTX2I-WTnLvZrI3LrYwHETHQaAnKSEALw_wcB
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