Your Brain on Porn (23 page)

So what do we do to prepare (potential) porn users so, like smokers, they can make informed choices? Perhaps you've heard that education is the solution. I agree, but such education needs to inform all ages of the symptoms that today's internet porn users are reporting, as well as teach people how the brain learns, how chronic overconsumption can alter it for the worse, and what is entailed in reversing unwanted brain changes (sexual conditioning, addiction).

Furthermore, everyone can benefit from knowledge of how the primitive appetite mechanism of the brain, the reward circuitry, has priorities set by evolution: furthering survival and genetic success.

It votes ‘Yes!’ for more calories or more ‘fertilization’ opportunities regardless of the potential consequences.

People also need to know that reward-circuitry balance is indispensable for lifelong emotional,

physical and mental wellbeing because of its power to shape our perceptions and choices without our conscious awareness. And to be informed of methods that help humans steer for balance in the reward circuitry: exercise and other beneficial stressors, time in nature, companionship, healthy relationships, meditation and so on.

Once we begin to think clearly about neuroplasticity we are inevitably drawn to the question of

what we want from life – what we consider to be a good life. Each of us must answer that for ourselves. But we are best able to do so when we understand the threats that some substances and behaviours pose to our capacity to live the lives we want. Self-determination requires that we understand ourselves as best we can.

When we are dealing with young people we have an even greater responsibility to understand the

risks that explicit sexual material can pose. Adolescents cannot decide for themselves what constitutes the good life and there are grounds for thinking that disruption of their reward-circuits can take more of a toll than in adults. So I would also like to see widespread education about the unique vulnerabilities of the adolescent brain with respect to sexual conditioning and addiction.

Instead, you sometimes hear that schools only need to teach kids how to distinguish 'good porn'

from 'bad porn'. For example, in 2013 the
Daily Mail
proclaimed, ‘teachers should give lessons in pornography and tell pupils “it's not all bad”, experts say’. The claim is that all one needs to know to enjoy both is the difference between fantasy and reality.

Sadly, there is not one shred of scientific evidence to support the idea that pointing kids to ‘good porn’ will prevent problems or prepare them for today's hyperstimulating environment. Such thinking actually runs counter to dozens of internet-addiction brain science studies, which suggest that the internet itself – that is, the delivery on demand of endless enticing stimulation – is the chief peril.

Porn users can keep their dopamine at artificially high levels for hours simply by clicking. Even if they confine their excursions to ‘good porn’, they still risk conditioning their sexual response to screens, voyeurism, isolation and the ability to click to more stimulation at will. Two porn users comment:

Videos and pornography don't do it for me. The fake look of porn and porn actresses turns

me off. I just use stills of athletic women. But I'm looking for that right girl or image that gets
me off, so I view hundreds per session. My current girlfriend actually fits what I would
masturbate to. While I'm very attracted to her I'm noticing weak erections. I believe my brain
rewired to the ‘searching’ aspect as well as the variety and the comfort of not having to
please anyone but myself.

*

I tried to heal my porn problems by changing what types of porn I watched. I avoided all

professional porn, sticking to homemade stuff, which at least has ‘real girls’. Of course half
that stuff is fake and involves porn stars anyway. And, I still spent hours finding the ‘perfect’

clip to finish with, meanwhile giving my brain endless hits.

Watching ‘good porn’ won't eradicate these risks. For users whose brains easily go out of balance in response to overstimulation, there is no ‘good’ porn, with the possible exception of an old-fashioned magazine. For them, the unending erotic novelty of the internet comprises a supernormal stimulus.

As a matter of science, an attempt to sort good porn from bad is futile. The brain's reward circuitry, which drives sexual arousal, has no definition of 'porn'. It just sends a ‘go get it!’ signal in response to whatever releases sufficient dopamine.

It should also be evident that teaching ‘realistic sex’ doesn't stop teens from accessing extreme content when left (literally) to their own devices. Teen brains evolved with a penchant for the weird and wonderful; they are powerfully drawn to novelty and surprise. Such a naive policy would be like handing a teen an old issue of
Playboy
and telling him that the only suitable content is on pages 5

through 18. As a teen, which pages would you have turned to first?

Incidentally, the good-porn-bad-porn proposal may arise from less than noble intent. It lays the groundwork for endless debate about
values
. It is an invitation for the most vocal to lobby for the suitability of their preferred types of porn while maintaining that critics are trying to impose their arbitrary moral standards. What any group thinks is bad another will argue is vital.

Yet frankly, type of content and orientation of the viewer may be of little import compared with

today's delivery. Since the advent of streaming clips of porn videos, escalating, morphing sexual tastes, a range of sexual dysfunctions and loss of attraction to real partners appear to be affecting a percentage of all groups: gay, straight and in between. It is the way that users can maintain a prolonged dopamine high from endless novel content that seems to create the problem.

Debates about good and bad porn are beyond the realm of science and can never be resolved.

Meanwhile, they distract everyone from the mounting scientific evidence, and still needed research, on internet porn's actual effects on users. Let's steer the debate away from unscientific distractions and back to the effects on porn users and the hard science that helps explain what they're experiencing. In the process, we can all learn a lot about human sexuality.

In the end, such a focus will also serve porn users. Like smokers, they will be able to make informed choices about pornography use with full knowledge of its risks for plastic brains like ours.

We are what we repeatedly do.
Aristotle

Further Reading

Burnham, Terry and Phelan, Jay,
Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food Taming Our Primal Instincts,
New York: Basic Books, 2000. Funny, informative book about how the reward circuitry of the brain drives us to do things that are not always in our best interests.

Chamberlain, Mark, PhD and Geoff Steurer MS, LMFT,
Love You, Hate the Porn: Healing a Relationship Damaged by Virtual
Infidelity
, Salt Lake City: Shadow Mountain, 2011. Practical guide for married couples where one partner was deeply upset by the other partner's porn use.

Church, Noah B.E.,
Wack: Addicted to Internet Porn,
Portland: Bvrning Qvestions, LLC, 2014. Brilliant, readable, personal account of a 24-year old who recovered from porn-related sexual dysfunction.

Doidge, Norman, MD,
The Brain That Changes Itself
, New York: Viking, 2007. Fascinating book about brain plasticity, with a chapter on sex and porn.

Fisch, Harry, MD,
The New Naked: The Ultimate Sex Education for Grown-Ups,
Naperville: Sourcebooks, Inc. 2014. Standard-issue self-help book for couples with porn-related problems.

Hall, Paula,
Understanding and Treating Sex Addiction: A Comprehensive Guide For People Who Struggle With Sex
Addiction And Those Who Want To Help Them,
East Sussex: Routledge, 2013. Practical guide for therapists and porn-afflicted alike by UK therapist.

McDougal, Brian,
Porned Out: Erectile Dysfunction, Depression, And 7 More (Selfish) Reasons To Quit Porn,
Kindle ebook, 2012. Brief, useful book by recovered porn user.

Maltz, Wendy, LCSW, DST and Larry Maltz,
The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by
Pornography,
New York: Harper, 2010. Practical guide for therapists and porn-afflicted alike by US therapists.

Robinson, Marnia,
Cupid's Poisoned Arrow: From Habit to Harmony in Sexual Relationships,
Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2011. Discusses the effects of sex on the brain and relationships, with a chapter on porn.

[1]
See Lucia O’Sullivan et al, “Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Functioning among Sexually Experienced Middle to Late Adolescents”,
Journal of Sexual Medicine
2014; 11:630-641

[2]
Note number of "Fapstronauts" on Reddit and post by Chinese visitor about similar site, "Chinese way of nofap,"

http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/28smcs/chinese_way_of_nofap.

[3]
"LIVE BLOG: Porn-induced erectile dysfunction and young men,"
16x9
(TV), March 31, 2014, http://globalnews.ca/news/1232800/live-blog-porn-induced-erectile-dysfunction-and-young-men.

[4]
Harry Fisch, MD,
The New Naked: The Ultimate Sex Education for Grown-Ups
Fisch, Naperville: Sourcebooks, Inc. 2014.

[5]
Simone Kühn and Jürgen Gallinat, "Brain Structure and Functional Connectivity Associated With Pornography Consumption: The Brain on Porn,"
JAMA Psychiatry
(2014), doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.93.

[6]
Valerie Voon,
et al.,
"Neural Correlates of Sexual Cue Reactivity in Individuals with and without Compulsive Sexual Behaviours",
PLOS One
(2014): DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0102419.

[7]
H. Mouras,
et al.,
" Activation of mirror-neuron system by erotic video clips predicts degree of induced erection: an fMRI study,"
Neuroimage
. 42(3) (2008): 1142-50, doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.05.051.

[8]
M. Brand,
et al
. "Watching pornographic pictures on the Internet: role of sexual arousal ratings and psychological-psychiatric symptoms for using Internet sex sites excessively,"
Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw
14/6 (2011): 371-377, doi: 10.1089/cyber.2010.0222.

[9]
Sherry Pagoto, PhD, "What Do Porn and Snickers Have in Common?"
Psychology Today
blogs, August 7, 2012, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shrink/201208/what-do-porn-and-snickers-have-in-common.

[10]
Links to Chinese forums: http://www.jiese.org/bbs/index.php and http://tieba.baidu.com. Also see this forum post, "Chinese way of nofap" June 22, 2014, http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/28smcs/chinese_way_of_nofap.

[11]
G. Rodríguez-Manzo, I.L. Guadarrama-Bazante, A. Morales-Calderón, "Recovery from sexual exhaustion-induced copulatory inhibition and drug hypersensitivity follow a same time course: two expressions of a same process?"
Behav Brain Res
217/2 (2011): 253-260, doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2010.09.014.

[12]
John J. Medina, PhD, "Of Stress and Alcoholism, Of Mice and Men,"
Psychiatric Times
, July, 2008, 18-19.

[13]

http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap;

http://www.rebootnation.org;

http://www.reddit.com/r/pornfree;

http://www.yourbrainrebalanced.com; http://www.nofap.org.

[14]

NoFap

Survey,

www.reddit.com/r/NoFap
,

March,

2014,

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7q3tr4EV02wbkpTTVk4R2VGbm8/edit?pli=1.

[15]
Nathaniel M. Lambert,
et al.
, "A Love That Doesn't Last: Pornography Consumption and Weakened Commitment to One's Romantic Partner,"
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology
31/4 (2012): 410-438.

[16]
Michael E. Levin, Jason Lillis, Steven C. Hayes, "When is Online Pornography Viewing Problematic Among College Males?

Examining the Moderating Role of Experiential Avoidance,"
Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity
19/3 (2012): 168-180, doi: 10.1080/10720162.2012.657150.

[17]
E.M. Morgan, "Associations between young adults' use of sexually explicit materials and their sexual preferences, behaviors, and satisfaction,"
J Sex Res
48/6 (2011): 520-530, doi: 10.1080/00224499.2010.543960.

[18]
J.B. Weaver 3rd,
et. al.,
" Mental-and physical-health indicators and sexually explicit media use behavior by adults,"
J Sex
Med
. 8/3 (2011): 764-72, doi: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2010.02030.x.

[19]
Andreas G. Philaretou, Ahmed Y. Mahfouz, Katherine R. Allen, "Use of internet pornography and men's wellbeing,"
Men's
Studies Press
4/2 (2005): 149-169, doi 10.3149/jmh.0402.149.

[20]
Kat Daine,
et al.
, "The Power of the Web: A Systematic Review of Studies of the Influence of the Internet on Self-Harm and Suicide in Young People,"
PLoS One,
October 30, 2013, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0077555.

[21]
Lucia F. O'Sullivan,
et al.
, "Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Functioning among Sexually Experienced Middle to Late Adolescents,"
J Sex Med
11/3 (2014): 630-641, doi: 10.1111/jsm.12419.