“Come to bed babe, I’ve got a surprise for you.” She said with a wicked smile on her face…
My heart sank…“Oh God I thought, she wants to do it, and I should as its been ages, but man, the footy’s on, maybe I can just say I’ve got a headache…”
Inside of me that part of me that took pride in being a man was silently dying, I knew I should be up for this, but I just couldn’t seem to get excited about the prospect…what the hell was happening?
I never thought I’d find myself writing this article, and it’s one I’ve thought long and hard (no pun intended) about publishing. But I truly believe this is an epidemic which is going totally unnoticed and needs bringing into the spotlight.
Before we go any further, I need to clear one thing up, I’m talking about porn here…not masturbation or sex. These things are very different and there are some specific reasons why porn is potentially harmful… so let’s not get the 2 confused.
First up I need to talk about dopamine…or the molecule of more.
Dopamine is the molecule which in many ways makes life worth living. It’s that buzz we get when we experience something new. It drives us towards novelty and growth…to seek more in life
Now the dopamine system is designed to trigger occasionally when you do something really awesome (as its highly addictive). It’s primary job is to give you the motivation to keep moving.
In ancestral terms, it rewards you when you getup off your ass and go find a new cave, or a new herd of antelope to hunt, or a new mate.
In modern terms it’s what gives you the buzz when you land a new trick in your favourite extreme sport, when your team scores a goal…it’s what makes you seek novelty and makes you want more.
Ok So What Does This Have To Do With Porn?
Well dopamine is also responsible for driving us to seek sexual partners. Once we find one and actually do the deed we get a dopamine reward to ensure we want to repeat this activity. As it’s obviously advantageous to the propagation of the species that we do more of it!
When you watch porn you get the same dopamine response as you do when you have sex. The brain literally thinks you’re having sex with the person on the screen.
The problem with porn is that you’re only a click away from watching a different person having sex. So in one porn watching session your brain thinks it’s having sex with a load of different people…
….and rewards you with a dopamine hit for each different one.
This totally overrides the brains natural safety system, as I doubt there’s many people in the world who have had real sex with 20+ people in 30 mins, and floods the brain with dopamine. (Which also changes the structure of your brain to make it more addicted to dopamine)
This much dopamine causes the dopamine receptors to de-sensitise. So now it takes more and more stimulation (dopamine) to provoke the same response. Not just in porn but in life in general. How do you get more stimulation?
More Novelty…
So now the next time you sit down in front of your computer tissues in hand, rather than just watching normal porn videos you have to seek more novelty to get off. This escalates and escalates and before you know it you’re watching someone getting off with a donkey. Despite the fact that you have zero interest in real life donkeys.
Now this desensitisation of your dopamine receptors means nothing in life excites you anymore. Unless it releases a huge amount of dopamine…
This puts you into a state where you are totally apathetic about EVERYTHING and literally don’t want to do anything. You have no energy and no lust for life, it literally sucks the juice out of life for you (open intended!). As nothing now gives you that dopamine high. As a sidebar it also reprograms your brain to not actually desire a real human so that when you do come to have sex you may face hydraulic issues and a total lack of interest.
What’s This Got To Do With You?
Well most adventurous souls are by default dopamine junkies. It’s why we’re into adventurous stuff in the first place as it releases a tonne of Dopamine every time we head out on our next adventure. This tends to mean we seek dopamine in many other aspects of life. Which leaves us particularly vulnerable to porn addiction and it’s massive dopamine highs.
Secondly, despite the fact that our adventures trigger a release of dopamine, they don’t come anywhere near to the dopamine rush of having sex with 20+ people in 30 mins. So if your receptors have been dulled by a lot of porn use you simply stop getting any sort of rush from almost anything else.
No buzz = No motivation.
So you stop doing it or certainly don’t do it with anywhere near the amount of passion and drive as you should be.
So what to do?
Well the simple answer is stop using porn, the reality is, for most, this is a LOT more difficult than it may seem. A great place to start would be this book. This will give you a really deep insight into what is going on and gives you all sorts of strategies and a support network to help…
Note I’m not just talking to guys here, this is also a huge problem amongst women (and when you add in the desensitising effect of vibrators this gets taken to a whole other level but that’s a chat for a different day!).
