Brain on Porn (Social #1) by DeYtH Banger (ereader android .TXT) 📖

protein called DeltaFosB. [15] DeltaFosB’s regular job is to build new nerve pathways to mentally connect what you’re doing (i.e. the porn you watch) to the pleasure you feel. [16] Those strong new memories outcompete other connections in the brain, making it easier and easier to return to porn. [17] (See How Porn Changes The Brain.)

As porn users become desensitized from repeated overloads of dopamine, they often find they can’t feel normal without a dopamine high. [18] Some report feeling anxious or down until they can get back to their porn. [19] As they delve deeper into the habit, their porn of choice often turns increasingly hard-core. [20] And many who try to break their porn habits report finding it “really hard” to stop. [21]

If this sounds like the classic symptoms of addiction, well….the head of the United States’ National Institute on Drug Abuse agrees. [22]



4. Porn Can Heavily Affect Your Sexual Tastes

The reward center (like we’ve talked about before) is usually a pretty great thing. Normally, our brain attracts us to healthy behaviors and encourages us to form life-supporting habits. [23] But when those reward chemicals get connected to something harmful, it has the opposite effect.

Porn users may think they’re just being entertained by sexually explicit content, but their brains are busy at work building connections between their feelings of arousal and whatever’s happening on their screen. [24] And since porn users typically become accustomed to the porn they’ve already seen and have to constantly move on to more extreme forms of pornography to get aroused, [25] the kind of porn a user watches usually changes over time. [26] (See Porn is an Escalating Behavior.)

In a survey of 1,500 young adult men, 56% said their tastes in porn had become “increasingly extreme or deviant.” [27] Just like the rats, many porn users eventually find themselves getting aroused by things that used to disgust them or that go against what they think is morally right. [28] In many cases, porn users find their tastes so changed that they can no longer respond sexually to their actual partners, though they can still respond to porn. [29]

Once users start watching extreme and dangerous sex acts, things that were disgusting or morally shameful can start to seem normal, acceptable, and more common than they really are. [30] One study found that people exposed to significant amounts of porn thought things like sex with animals and violent sex were twice as common as what those not exposed to porn believed. [31] And when people believe a behavior is normal, they’re more likely to try it. [32]



5. Porn Can Affect Your Brain (Similar To A Drug)

Researchers have found that Internet porn and addictive substances like tobacco have very similar effects on the brain, [33] and they are significantly different from how the brain reacts to healthy, natural pleasures like food or sex. [34] Think about it. When you’re munching a snack or enjoying a romantic encounter, eventually your cravings will drop and you’ll feel satisfied. Why? Because your brain has a built-in “off” switch for natural pleasures. “Dopamine cells stop firing after repeated consumption of a ‘natural reward’ (e.g. food or sex),” explains Nora Volkow, Director of The National Institute of Drug Abuse. [35] But addictive drugs go right on increasing dopamine levels without giving the brain a break. [36] The more a drug user hits up, the more dopamine floods his brain, and the stronger his urges are to keep using. That’s why drug addicts find it so hard to stop once they take the first hit. “[O]ne hit may turn into many hits, or even a lost weekend.” [37]

What else has the power to keep pumping dopamine endlessly into the brain? If you’ve ever sat in front of a computer screen for hours in a porn trance, you already know the answer.


(Note: Nothing is really sexy... in staying in dark room... and masturbating like crazy BASTARD.)

 

 

6. Porn Can Damage Your Sex Life

Doctors are seeing an epidemic of young men who, because of their porn use, can’t get an erection with a real, live partner. [38]

Study after study has shown that porn is directly related to problems with arousal, attraction, and sexual performance. [39]. Porn leads to less sex and to less sexual satisfaction within a relationship. [40] Researchers have shown a strong connection between porn use and low sex drive, erectile dysfunction, and trouble reaching orgasm. [41] Many frequent porn users reach a point where they have an easier time getting aroused by Internet porn than by having actual sex with a real partner. [42] One recent study even concluded that porn use was likely the reason for low sexual desire among a random sample of high school seniors. [43] Who ever heard of that? Low sexual desire among high school seniors!

This trend of sex problems is especially serious for teens and young adults. Their brains are particularly vulnerable to being rewired by porn, [44] and they are in a period where they are forming crucial attitudes, preferences, and expectations for their future. [45]



7. Porn Is Full Of Lies

Sex is natural and normal. Porn is something entirely different.

Make no mistake, porn is a product. Pornographers have a lot to gain by driving traffic to their sites, so they dress up their product to grab your attention. That “dressing up” is exactly what makes porn so unnatural.

Professional porn actors have a whole team of people to make every detail look perfect, from directing and filming to lighting and makeup, maybe even a plastic surgeon or two to thank. With some careful editing, a typical 45 minute porn flick that took three days to shoot can appear to have happened all at once, without a break. Film the right bodies from the right angles at the right moments, edit out all the mistakes, Photoshop away any imperfections, add a catchy soundtrack, and you have something most definitely NOT like “natural” sex with “normal” people.

Porn also makes it look like no matter what a man does, the woman likes it even though so many of the sex acts shown in porn are degrading, painful or violent. And these are just a couple of the countless lies porn sells.



8. Porn Can Damage Love

Research shows that pornography use is linked to less stability in relationships, [46] increased risk of infidelity, [47] and greater likelihood of divorce. [48] Men who are exposed to porn find their partners less sexually attractive and rate themselves as less in love with their partners. [49] A recent study tracked couples over a six year period, from 2006 to 2012, to see what factors influenced the quality of their marriage and their satisfaction with their sex lives. The researchers found that of all the factors considered, porn use was the second strongest indicator that a marriage would suffer. [50] Not only that, but the marriages that were harmed the most were those of men who viewed porn heavily, once a day or more. [51]

Why do porn users struggle so much in real life relationships? The science is pretty clear.

Research shows that porn users report less love and trust in their relationships, are more prone to separation and divorce, and often see marriage as a “constraint.” [52] Overall, they are less committed to their partners, [53] less satisfied in their relationships, [54] and more cynical about love and relationships in general. [55] They also have poorer communication with their partners and are more likely to agree that, in their own relationships, “little arguments escalate into ugly fights with accusations, criticisms, name-calling, and bringing up past hurts.” [56]

And if all that weren’t enough, porn also ruins a couple’s sex life. [57]

 

 

9. Porn Can Leave You Lonely

“The more one uses pornography, the more lonely one becomes,” says Dr. Gary Brooks, a psychologist who has worked with porn addicts for the last 30 years. [58] “Any time [a person] spends much time with the usual pornography usage cycle, it can’t help but be a depressing, demeaning, self-loathing kind of experience.” [59] The worse people feel about themselves, the more they seek comfort wherever they can get it. Normally, they would be able to rely on the people closest to them to help them through their hard times—a partner, friend, or family member. But most porn users aren’t exactly excited to tell anyone about their porn habits, least of all their partner. So they turn to the easiest source of “comfort” available: more porn.



10. Porn Can Hurt Your Partner

Studies have shown that most women—even if they believe that pornography use is okay for other people—see no acceptable role for porn within their own committed relationship. [60] And no wonder! The evidence that porn can harm relationships and partners is overwhelming. [61]

The fact is, porn reshapes expectations about sex and attraction by presenting an unrealistic picture. In porn, women always look their best. They are forever young, surgically enhanced, airbrushed, and Photoshopped to perfection. [62] So it’s not hard to see why, according to a national poll, six out of seven women believe that porn has changed men’s expectations of how women should look. [63]

As writer Naomi Wolf points out, “Today real naked women are just bad porn.” [64]



11. Porn Can Warp A Healthy View Of Sex

While porn is often called “adult material,” many of its viewers are well under the legal age. [65] In fact, the majority of teens are getting at least some of their sex ed from porn, whether they mean to or not. [66]

Researchers are finding that porn’s influence can and does find its way into teenager’s sexual behaviors. [67] For example, people who have seen a significant amount of porn are more likely to start having sex sooner and with more partners, to engage in riskier kinds of sex that put them at greater risk of getting sexually transmitted infections, and to have actually contracted an STI. [68]

Sociologist Dr. Michael Kimmel has found that men’s sexual fantasies have become heavily influenced by porn, [69] which gets awfully tricky when their partners don’t want to act out the degrading or dangerous acts porn shows. [70] As a result, men who look at pornography have been shown to be more likely to go to prostitutes, [71] often looking for a chance to live out what they’ve seen in porn. [72] In one survey of former prostitutes, 80% said that customers had shown them images of porn to illustrate what they wanted to do. [73]



12. Porn Is Inseparably Linked To Prostitution & Sex Trafficking

Defenders of pornography make the argument all the time, that no matter how a woman is treated in porn, it’s okay because she gave her consent. [74] In some cases it’s obvious when victims haven’t given consent, like when child pornography and human trafficking are involved. Pimps and sex traffickers often use porn to initiate their victims into their new life of sexual slavery, [75] and then they force their victims to participate in making new porn. [76]

The point is, when you watch porn, there’s no way to know what kind of “consent” the actors have given. You can’t assume, just because someone appears in a porn video, that they knew beforehand exactly what would happen or that they had a real choice or the ability to stop what was being done.

“I’ve never received a beating like that before in my life,” said Alexandra Read after being whipped and caned for 35 minutes. “I have permanent scars up and down the backs of my thighs. It was all things that I had consented to, but I didn’t know quite the brutality of what was about to happen to me until I was in it.” [77]

We’re not claiming that all porn is non-consensual. We’re just pointing out that some of it is and some of it isn’t, and when you watch it there’s no way to know which is which.

So, would you buy from a company if you knew that some, but not all, of their products were made with child labor? Would you support a store that abused some, but not all, of their