4 Ways Porn Addiction Changes Your Brain

I've had a few folks write in recently asking about pornography addiction and excessive masturbation. It's not really a subject I've been especially excited about broaching... I mean, who really wants to talk about watching other people do the deed on video while giving himself a hand?

But a few friends who've dealt with this have shared their experiences with me and suggested that I write about it, because they felt it was something that very much negatively affected them when they were in it and they thought this site was one with a wide enough audience that I'd be doing some good talking about it, and could reach a fair number of men.

I even had forwarded along to me by Genaro in customer service an email from a reader who used the contact form to send in what amounted to a full-length sales letter custom written just to urge me to write about this, because it was something he'd gone through and he felt I could really help some people by addressing it on a larger platform.

So, since it seems to be what the people want... let's talk about porn addiction: what causes it, how it sucks you in, why it's bad, and how to break its hold on you.

 

The first time I heard about porn addiction was back in early 2005. I had a new roommate in college, and we traded stories about our prior roommates. I told him about the accounting major roommate I'd had freshman year who used to rip loud, smelly, disgusting farts all day long and play Dave Matthews Band incessantly, and he told me about his roommate the previous year: a guy who did NOTHING but watch pornography ALL DAY.

According to my new roommate, all this guy would do was watch porn. My roommate said he rarely ever saw him go to class or study. Every time my roommate got back to his room, this guy was in there sitting in front of his computer watching porn.

The guy had a girlfriend for a while... and when she came over, that was pretty much the only time he ever turned the porn off. Eventually she broke up with him, because she felt like he wasn't very interested in her.

When my roommate would try to study, this guy would be watching porn.

When my roommate would watch a movie, this guy would be watching porn.

When my roommate would talk to his girlfriend in Connecticut over his webcam... this guy would be watching porn (and my roommate's girlfriend would say, "Is he watching porn AGAIN?!").

Much of the time it was bizarre porn, too, from what my friend told me. This guy watched all kinds of things. Bukkake. Gang bangs. Rape porn. Granny porn. Dwarf porn. Women having sex with farm animals.

I watched pornography, of course. Every guy did. But for me, it was just a little bit of lesbian action - a couple of pretty girls going at it. And I'd do it when I was in need of a sexual release - throw on some girls getting busy (no penises, please; I want to put myself in the scene and imagine touching everything there when I'm watching, and some penises in the mix sort of breaks the mood), make sure I had a couple of tissues handy, and get to work. Once that was all taken care of, suddenly the porn was boring again; I shut it off, and then I'd compose a new song or do some writing.

These guys with the porn addiction though, they weren't using it the same way I did or most of the guys I knew did. They watched porn just to watch it; they didn't even rub one out a whole lot. They'd spend hours watching porn at a time. And they sought increasingly higher degrees of novelty; the kind of porn I got off on - two girls, no guys - was downright boring to them.

They needed stuff like what my old roommate's former roommate watched in order to gain any stimulation.

Because it was detached from real sexual experience for them. They weren't imagining themselves there, in the scene, having sex with these women themselves, as I was... instead, they were just watching and voyeuring.

 

Changes in the Brain

Addiction to pornography, like all addictions, and like depression and victim mentality, which are addictions in their own rights (in this case, to negative / fatalistic thoughts), makes changes to the brain.

Porn addiction is usually included with Internet addiction by addiction researchers, since the two typically go hand-in-hand. Here are the research findings - and they're rather disturbing.

From "Cybersex addiction: Experienced sexual arousal when watching pornography and not real-life sexual contacts makes the difference":

“The results show that indicators of sexual arousal and craving to Internet pornographic cues predicted tendencies towards cybersex in the first study. Moreover, it was shown that problematic cybersex users report greater sexual arousal and craving reactions resulting from pornographic cue presentation. In both studies, the number and the quality with real-life sexual contacts were not associated to cybersex addiction.

The results support the gratification hypothesis, which assumes reinforcement, learning mechanisms, and craving to be relevant processes in the development and maintenance of cybersex addiction. Poor or unsatisfying sexual reallife contacts cannot sufficiently explain cybersex addiction.”

From "Pornographic Picture Processing Interferes with Working Memory Performance":

“Some individuals report problems during and after Internet sex engagement, such as missing sleep and forgetting appointments, which are associated with negative life consequences. One mechanism potentially leading to these kinds of problems is that sexual arousal during Internet sex might interfere with working memory (WM) capacity, resulting in a neglect of relevant environmental information and therefore disadvantageous decision making.

Results revealed worse WM performance in the pornographic picture condition of the 4-back task compared with the three remaining picture conditions. Furthermore, hierarchical regression analysis indicated an explanation of variance of the sensitivity in the pornographic picture condition by the subjective rating of the pornographic pictures as well as by a moderation effect of masturbation urges. Results contribute to the view that indicators of sexual arousal due to pornographic picture processing interfere with WM performance. Findings are discussed with respect to Internet addiction because WM interference by addiction-related cues is well known from substance dependencies.”

From "Enhanced Reward Sensitivity and Decreased Loss Sensitivity in Internet Addicts: An fMRI Study During a Guessing Task":

“As the world’s fastest growing “addiction”, Internet addiction should be studied to unravel the potential heterogeneity. The present study is set to examine reward and punishment processing in Internet addicts as compared to healthy controls while they subjectively experience monetary gain and loss during the performance of a guessing task. The results showed that Internet addicts associated with increased activation in orbitofrontal cortex in gain trials and decreased anterior cingulate activation in loss trials than normal controls. The results suggested that Internet addicts have enhanced reward sensitivity and decreased loss sensitivity than normal comparisons.”

And according to "The effect of psychiatric symptoms on the Internet addiction disorder in Isfahan’s university students," around 25% of young males are Internet and/or porn addicts.

That's quite a lot, isn't it? There's also research showing that white matter in the brain's orbitofrontal cortex shrinks and declines in porn addicts, and some gray matter in the brain atrophies, and that the net result of these losses in brain tissue are that the brain's conscious control systems become impaired and less able to modulate actions and stem impulsivity.

In other words, you become less conscious a human being, and more a kind of mindless impulse zombie, unable to control your own actions, fixated singularly on obtaining your next hit of Internet porn.

Let's review these changes in the brain from becoming addicted to Internet porn:

• The brain's reward circuits change, and the brain learns to associate watching other people have sex on a computer screen with sexual fulfillment, and ceases looking to real live women out in the real world for this

• The brain's working memory becomes poorer, and individuals addicted to pornography have more and more trouble retaining information

• The brain's reward circuits change to more feverishly chase down rewards and care less about loss - leading addicts to chase down porn hits, and shrug over lost girlfriends, poor school or work performance, or other losses non-addicts would find distressing (and, likely, motivating to get their acts in gear)

• The brain's conscious control centers atrophy, as the addict chases pornography consumption impulses and does whatever he needs to do to satisfy them

• 25% of young men (and around 10% of young women) are addicted to the Internet and/or addicted to porn

Wow, that's scary.

 

I've never watched a woman suck on a horse's penis.

Nor have I watched a man shove his penis into a transsexual's butt hole.

I haven't taken the time to watch two dwarves double-team a porn star, and I've never seen anyone over 40 have sex.

Even still, I noticed something curious when I started approaching women in 2005: I was not being turned on by women.

I hadn't yet read Casanova's autobiography (that came a few years later), but I'd seen excerpts from it, and I distinctly remembered him salivating as he watched beautiful women walk down the street.

And I could remember sitting there in the 7th grade, staring at girls' legs under the table, my penis hard as a rock in my pants, hoping that no one would notice.

That didn't happen anymore, though. What had changed?

 

The Brain Gets Tricked

"I've neutered myself," I realized one day.

It was true. I was totally asexual.

The prettiest girls in school used to flirt with me up and down and ask me out on dates back in junior high and early high school. But my last two years of high school, there hadn't been as much of this... and I'd been watching porn.

Same with college. Girls flirted with me much less. It was very frustrating, and I didn't know why. I assumed it was because I was going to a bigger school, and they didn't know me as well and hadn't had a chance to see my attractive qualities.

But then I realized how distinctly un-sexual I was.

I was probably a lot more sexual in the 7th grade than I was in my second year of college. I didn't show it, then, but it was bursting through.

Same with my first two years of high school.

And then in 1999 we got Internet, and I started finding websites like HornyAmateurLesbians.com, and watching the scrambled porn channel on cable TV. And I started self-stimulating 3 to 5 times a day.

There went my sex drive.

But on top of that, I also reconditioned my brain... I stopped having sexual interest in those girls around me - after all, I never even touched them, so it wasn't like they provided a realistic sexual release or anything. No... the real release was in porn.

My brain learned that porn = sex, and women do NOT = sex. Women in the real world quit being a turn-on, and women in porn took their place. I did not view real women as sexual creatures... they were just asexual beings, that didn't even get a moment's thought as sex partners most of the time.

One day, browsing a porn site, I realized something. I was looking at pictures of a naked girl, and thinking, "Whoa, she's hot."

And then I covered up her body. The only thing I could see was her face. And I looked at her face, and I said to myself, "There are so many girls around me right now who have WAY prettier faces than her, and whose bodies are at LEAST as good... how come I'm not interested in any of them at ALL, but I'm staring at this girl WISHING I could sleep with her?!"

And at that moment, I realized what I'd done to myself, and I largely abandoned porn.

 

Quitting Your Porn Addiction

Do you want to quit?

Because you're not going to quit if you don't want to quit. I could write the most compelling thing in the world for you here and you won't quit.

There's not a damn thing I can say that's going to mean anything to you if you aren't genuinely fed up with watching OTHER people have sex instead of having sex YOURSELF.

And that truly is the distinction. You're either doing one, or you're doing the other.

You know how much porn I watch these days? I think I've watched one video of a couple of girls going at it in the past year or so. I sometimes stop by porn picture sites to admire some beautiful naked girls, but not often.

Know why? Because it bores me.

Didn't used to. But when you're used to having sex with pretty girls, and then you go look at a PICTURE or VIDEO of a pretty girl naked / having sex, it's kind of like... meh, who cares; my penis isn't in her.

And that's the major difference between sex and pornography.

Pornography is all about the visuals, with no active involvement.

Sex is all about the feel. You're not watching your penis go into her and out of her most of the time during sex (save a few fun positions). Her breasts don't look especially appealing when she's lying on her back and they're all spread out and flattened across her chest instead of pointy and perky, and you're not usually looking at them anyway. And unless you're into cumshots, you don't watch sperm shoot out of you and onto her.

You have to retrain your brain to quit getting off on watching sex happen, and start training it to enjoy experiencing sex... with another person.

The steps are these:

1. You must be pissed at yourself for having porn addiction. You are not getting laid because you have porn addiction, due to your brain being more interested in staring at Plain Jane naked women on a screen (who look hotter than they are because of makeup and, well, NUDITY) than significantly attractive women around you IN REAL LIFE. Important parts of your brain that make you a human instead of a chimpanzee are disappearing as a result of your porn addiction. Your working memory is shot, your impulse control is nonexistent, and your desire to do anything of any real meaning with your life is indefinitely put on hold. If this makes you feel angry, frustrated, upset, or helpless, you can do something about it. If it doesn't... well, there goes any motivation to change. Enjoy your porn, I guess. But if it does, you've got the energy for it.

2. Cover up porn actresses bodies and just look at their faces. Are there more attractive women than her around you? I'm guessing "yes." Are their bodies as good as hers or better? I'm betting at least some of them are (though you don't see them naked because they have CLOTHES ON). Would you prefer to have those women naked in your bed for you to sleep with, instead of no women naked in your bed and you watching pretend women naked on the screen?

3. Time to start training your brain to find real women sexy now. Now it's time to pull out that dusty old tool you stored away and almost forgot about: your imagination. You need to begin to train yourself to view the women around you right now as sex objects. You need to watch a girl walking, look at her ass, and imagine bending her over naked and mounting her. You need to look at that girl sitting down and study her legs, her arms, the mounds of her breasts. You need to imagine what her neck tastes like. Imagine her looking up at you with her big eyes while her mouth is wrapped around your cock. Imagine a porn in your head, but with the women you meet and see around you in real life, instead. This trains your brain to seek sexual satisfaction with real women, and makes you horny for girls again. Some of the first few articles on this site were about training your brain this way; see 2008's "Picture the Conquest" and 2009's "Women as Sex Objects: Supercharge Your Game."

4. Never masturbate to porn again. I won't tell you not to masturbate at all. I will give you another rule about limiting it in a moment, but for this one, it's this: you are not allowed to masturbate while watching pornography. What if you need a little rub and tug, though... what do you do? Again, it's this: use your imagination. Imagine sex. YOU having sex. Shut your eyes, and imagine that what you feel is not your hand, but a moist, wet, welcoming vagina, of any kind of woman you want to imagine. Go wild. The point is training your brain to want real sex again, instead of finding satisfaction as a voyeur.

5. Never masturbate or watch porn on a day you're going out to meet women. One of the things you need to be doing if you're going to start getting out regularly to meet new girls is scheduling this into your routine; e.g., "Thursday night at 10:00 PM I go to Club Red to go talk to girls," or, "Sunday afternoon at 12:30 PM I go to Union Square to do some day game and collect phone numbers." You may not masturbate or watch pornography that day. You think it will excite you to meet women? It won't. It will demotivate you, because you will not meet any horny naked women when you go out. All the women you'll see will have clothes on and they will NOT be horny women, and your brain will say, "Aw shucks, it's a lot easier at home with the Internet. Why not just call it a day now and head on back and throw on some porn?" Then you will meet no women, have no sex, and be stuck still watching porn and cumming into your palm.

Just like with your porn addiction you trained your brain into being an unconscious zombie brain that finds real life women unattractive compared to fake horny naked Internet women (who really aren't all that attractive usually, but whose horniness and nakedness mask this), you can train your brain to find porn boring (because you never masturbate to it) and real women exciting (because you imagine having sex with them when you see them, when you masturbate, and eventually you start having real sex with them, too) instead.

 

Hope for the Porn Addicted

Even if you never read anything about porn addiction, chances are you'd come out of it naturally on your own. Most of the people with porn addiction are young guys. Maybe it's just the circles I run in, but I never meet men over 25 or so who are addicted to porn. I'm aware that some of these guys exist, but more and more men tend to pull themselves out of it as they get older, and start to realize it's impeding their love lives significantly.

Some of my friends are guys who were formerly porn addicted - way more than I ever was, with gangbangs, bestiality, etc. - but now aren't. And they love women, and have no trouble sleeping with girls.

So if you're annoyed by this, and you want to get rid of it, and you want to have a sex drive for real women again and you want to be sexually attractive to them again, you've got the steps for that above - follow them.

And if you really don't care and you're fine with watching porn and not annoyed at yourself for being porn addicted... well, you'll have a few years of sluggishness and reclusiveness and probably less success in your career or in school or in your other projects than had you given it up, and you'll have a few years of little to no success with women while you remain addicted.

But chances are, even if you don't do anything, at some point on your own you're going to say, "Screw this. I'm done watching porn. Time to get out of the house and go meet some real women, in the flesh."

And then life changes.

Ciao for now,
Chase