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The consequences of pornography addiction

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Melissa Killeen

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Melissa Killeen


As a recovery coach I deal with the consequences of addiction on a daily basis. Often times the consequences of a pornography addiction are covered up by the impact of substance addictions. It is important to identify these different addictions, so the recovery can begin. Easier said than done. The ravages of behavioral addictions so closely resemble the destruction caused by substance abuse that it often takes a long time to discern. Often times, a behavioral addiction comes forth when recovery is achieved from the substance abuse…and then the game of “whack-a-mole” between the substance and the behavioral addiction becomes more evident.

A Cambridge University study used brain scans to research pornography addiction in 2014. This is the first study using the new fMRI in a series of studies with pornography addicts. An earlier fMRI study with drug addicts and alcoholics had similar results. This 2014 Cambridge study found that pornography addicts fit in to an addiction model of wanting “it” more, but not liking “it” more. Many can agree that this is what they feel as well when they are under the influence.

Once any addiction sets in, the user has a new set of problems because addiction damages the part of the brain that helps you think things through to make good choices, the area of the brain that sets limits, the frontal lobe.  For more than 10 years, studies have shown that drug addictions can cause the brain’s frontal lobes to shrink. The “frontal lobe” is the part of the brain that controls the decision making to stop addictive behavior. Recent studies have found that it’s not just drugs or alcohol that cause this frontal lobe damage. The same problems show up with behavioral addictions, such as overeating, Internet addictions, and sexual compulsion.

Besides the consequence of damage to the frontal lobe, there are other very serious consequences from compulsively viewing sexually explicit materials. As follows are some of these consequences.

The consequences of prolonged pornography use

  • Sexual dysfunction: Sexual addiction, porn addiction in particular, can lead to various forms of sexual dysfunction. One major study found that 60% of the research subjects, with an average age of 25, had difficulty achieving arousal and erections with real partners, yet could achieve arousal or erections with porn. Men with high rates of pornography use expressed diminished enjoyment in the enactment of sexually intimate behaviors compared to men with lower rates of pornography use. When someone reports they view a lot of pornography, they also report that they don’t enjoy sexually intimate times with their real life partner. Women, on the other hand, reported they needed to view pornography in order to stimulate their arousal with a partner.
  • Distorted views about intimate relationships: Some young men substitute the enjoyment they receive from viewing pornography for the enjoyment they could find in developing a relationship that would lead to a partnership in marriage. A Greek researcher, Artemis Tsitsika, in 2009 found that among Greek adolescents, exposure to pornography fosters ‘‘unrealistic attitudes about sex and misleading attitudes toward relationships’’. Jill Manning, a researcher from Brigham Young University reports that pornography consumption can reduce the happiness and stability associated within existing marriages. Manning, points to a number of factors that link pornography with marital instability, such as decreased sexual satisfaction and intimacy within marriage. Thus, the man or woman who spends 90 percent of their sexual life viewing and masturbating to a constantly changing stream of porn images is, over time, likely to find a real-world partner less sexually stimulating. In addition, Manning’s research has revealed that there is a perception brought forth by the partners of porn addicts that sees pornography consumption as a form of infidelity.
  • Legal issues:Some men and women engage in illegal sexual activities to heighten the pornographic experience. Any possible sexual contact, including hiring prostitutes or being hired as a prostitute, engaging in exhibitionism or voyeurism, or looking at illegal forms of pornography has an outlet connected directly to internet pornography web sites. Oftentimes, the addiction has seduced these users of illegal services or explicit material to such a point that the consequences were over looked and diminished in pursuit of a bigger high. When these individuals are arrested, they are shocked to realize where their addiction has led them. Child pornography convictions today, can mean that a person can spend from 15 years to a life-time of being on a sex offender list, which restricts where you can live and where you can work.
  • Difficulty balancing work or school: When a porn addict is completely focused on sexual fantasies and activities, his or her performance at work or in school inevitably suffers. Pornography use increases the amount of non-relational, isolated and solitary dedication to a computer. Focusing on porn in an office with the door closed impacts the workers performance. Isolating impacts the ability to work as a team member. Withdrawing from relationships during college, the time that long term relationships are established, is self-sabotage. Many porn addicts face reprimands or dismissal as a result. They may also face consequences for acting out sexually while at work or in school while using company-issued or school-issued digital devices.
  • Negative Self Esteem: Pornography use has been shown to have a negative impact on the self-esteem of women and men. Physical insecurities related to sexual performance and body image have been reported by both young men and women in a Swedish study from 2010.  Female consumers of pornography experienced feelings of inadequacyand lower self-esteem compared to women who did not use pornography. Dawn Szymanski, from the University of Tennessee, completed a study in 2012, where women reported their male partner’s frequency of pornography use negatively impacted their relationship quality. Perceptions reported by these women were that they experienced feeling of being “less than” the performers portrayed on the porn sites, and their sexual desirability and performance was not adequately bringing their partners to satisfaction. The feelings of low self-esteem partially had an effect on the relationship between them. Finally, results revealed that relationship length was directly linked between the partner’s problematic pornography use and sexual satisfaction. There was significant dissatisfaction in the quality of the relationship the longer the relationship with the porn addict lasted.
  • Financial Issues:Pornography is more affordable than ever. Porn Internet sites are often free, and GPS based hookup apps are either free or very inexpensive. But this addiction can get very expensive the more involved an addict becomes. Have you ever wondered how pornographers that charge for their material stay in business when there’s so much porn available for free? As Wendy Seltzer, an attorney and fellow at the Yale Law School, explained, the answer is actually pretty simple: once porn users get hooked, they’ll want more and more. “Seeing [free porn] just whets their appetite for more,” Seltzer said. “Once they get through what’s available for free, they’ll move into the paid services.” In a 2012 survey of 1,500 guys, 56% said their tastes in porn had become “increasingly extreme or deviant.” Because porn users’ brains quickly become accustomed to the porn they’ve already seen, in other words: porn addiction escalates. In-person meetings resulting from Internet connections can be costly, considering the money spent on travel, hotel rooms, meals, and gifts. For those who only act out online, paying for membership fees and by-the-minute charges for live video feeds can add up quickly. It is not unusual for sex addicts, in a moment of determination to end the addiction, to cancel their Internet memberships and delete all of their downloaded porn and sexual contacts. Then, within a few days, they will relapse and spend more money to sign back on.
  • Impact on partners of pornography addicts: Partners of porn addicts feel deep embarrassment or hurt because of their partner’s conduct. Partners fear the addict will leave them if they confront the addict’s behavior. Many partners express a sense of responsibility and/or feelings of betrayal or abandonment over their partner’s behavior. So much so they will lie and cover up the actions of the addict, or engage in sex with their addict partner as a means of maintaining peace. Often times, they engage in sexual behavior that they find uncomfortable, unwanted or physically dangerous. Partners will attempt to control the porn addict’s behavior by throwing out a pornography collection or verbally harassing them. Partners of porn addicts think they are unattractive, they question their emotions or their sanity. Partners engage in thoughts of suicide or use drugs or alcohol to cover up their feelings of despair. It is easiest to blame others – friends, colleague, parents, job, society, or religion – for their partner’s addictive behavior. A discussion on how this addiction effects the children of a porn addict is, perhaps, another blog altogether. Yet consistently, pornography addicts attribute the first introduction of pornography through discovering a porn collection or a pornographic web site maintained by a parent, family member or an adult care giver.
  • Porn can lead to violence: Research has also found that watching degrading pornography increases an addicts’ likelihood of objectifying, using dominating and harassing behavior toward women. This also leaves the addict feeling less compassion for victims of sexually violent crimes (there was an Italian rape conviction in 1998 that was overturned because the victim wore tight jeans). Porn addicts will express attitudes supporting violence towards women, which is especially scary since those who support sexual violence are more likely to commit some kind of violence in real life. Obviously not everyone who looks at porn is going to turn into a rapist; but the reality is that studies have shown that even casual pornography use has the power to start changing ideas and attitudes, and changes to behavior often aren’t far behind.

The really scary part is the more porn a person looks at, the more severe the damage to their brain becomes and the more difficult it is to break free. But there’s good news too: neuroplasticity works both ways. That means that the damage to the brain can be undone when someone gets away from unhealthy behaviors.

In next week’s blog, I will explore what life is like when you are free from a pornography addiction.

References used in this blog:

Donald Hilton, Jr, MD.  Pornography addiction – a supranormal stimulus considered in the context of neuroplasticity Socioaffective Neuroscience and psychology Journal.  Volume 3 (2013) Accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3960020/

Artemis Tsitsika, Elena Critselis, Amalia Louizou1, Mari Janikian, Aliki Freskou, Evgenia Marangou, Georgios Kormas, and Dimitrios A. Kafetzis (2011) Determinants of Internet Addiction among Adolescents: A Case-Control Study.  The Scientific World Journal (2011) 11, 866–874. TSW Child Health & Human DevelopmentISSN 1537-744X; DOI 10.1100/tsw.2011.85

Jill Manning (2006). The Impact of Internet Pornography on Marriage and the Family: A Review of the Research of Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity: The Journal of Treatment & Prevention Volume 13, Issue 2-3, 2006 DOI: 10.1080/10720160600870711 Accessed at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10720160600870711#.VLrSJ183OP9

Stewart, D. N.,* & Szymanski, D. M. (2012). Young adult women’s reports of their male romantic partner’s pornography use as a correlate of their psychological distress, relationship quality, and sexual satisfaction. Sex Roles, 67, 257-271. doi: 10.1007/s11199-012-0164-0 Accessed at: http://psychology.utk.edu/szymanski.php and at: http://fightthenewdrug.org

Robert Weiss, (2014) recognizing the Consequences of Sexual Addiction, PyschCentral.com Accessed at: http://blogs.psychcentral.com/sex/2014/10/recognizing-the-consequences-of-sexual-addiction/

Lofgren-Mårtenson L, Månsson SA (2010) Lust, love, and life: a qualitative study of Swedish adolescents’ perceptions and experiences with pornography. Journal of Sex Research. 2010 Nov; 47(6):568-79. doi: 10.1080/ Accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Lofgren-M%C3%A5rtenson%20L%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19731132

And the web sites:

http://yourbrainonporn.com

http://www.addictionresearch.com/resources-and-research/references/pornography/

http://fightthenewdrug.org

        http://en.wikipedia.org

 

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This is your brain on porn….

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Melissa Killeen
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Melissa Killeen

Pornography addiction and the reward pathway

Norman Doidge, author of the Brain that Changes Itself posits that deep inside your brain, there’s something called a “reward pathway.” We all have one, your cat has one, laboratory rats have one —all mammals have them, there is a reward pathway in all of us. The reward pathway’s job is to help keep you alive and happy by doing exactly what its name promises: it rewards you when you do something that promotes your life and well-being, like eating good food or cleaning up your apartment.

The reward pathway releases chemicals in your brain—mainly one that’s called dopamine, but others, as well, like serotonin and oxytocin. For example, when you eat something delicious, your brain releases dopamine, and it makes you feel good. Or if you hold hands with someone you care about, your brain releases a chemical called oxytocin, which helps you bond with people.

A neuron is a brain cell. A neuro chemical, is the chemical a neuron or brain cell releases to send a message to other cells. When a lot of brain cells get activated at the same time by something you see, taste, hear or smell, they release chemicals that help strengthen the connection between themselves and other brain cells (or neurons). Think of these brain cells being cemented together with neuro chemicals to build this reward pathway, in other words a reward superhighway. So, every time you went to visit your Grandma Martha she gave you a big hug, walked out on the porch, sat with you talking about what had changed for you since you last visited, while rocking with you on that big porch swing and she gave you a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup to unwrap. You probably feel pretty great about Grandma Martha. Your brain has built a superhighway connecting thoughts of Grandma Martha with feeling happy, being loved and eating peanut butter cups. You have many of these of brain pathways for all sorts of things: talking to Grandma, riding a bike, eating lunch, walking the dog, and when a person looks at porn, their brain creates a new pathway for that, too.

Viewing porn stimulates the release of these pleasure chemicals. This rush of neuro chemicals happens over and over again, eventually creating a new reward pathway. Ultimately, constant porn use turns the reward pathway into a superhighway directing the viewer’s decision-making brain to want to view pornography for the quick rewards of the dopamine rush, rather than seeking healthy but less stimulating rewards, like eating a piece of chocolate or holding a girl’s hand. This changes the make-up of the viewer’s brain, and eventually results in an ever increasing appetite for porn.

Dopamine is sometimes referred to as the “pleasure chemical.” You may have heard that dopamine controls the “pleasure” systems of the brain, but these are not technically, accurate assumptions. Dopamine is all about wanting, seeking and searching for rewards, the anticipation of getting something.  Dopamine is  the motivation that drives us to pursue potential rewards or long-term goals. Although controversial, research suggests that driving “the want” best captures what dopamine does. The final reward, the feeling of satisfaction, arises from opioids, brain chemicals such as mu opioids and endocannabinoids, which are the brain’s natural versions of heroin and marijuana. As psychologist Susan Weinschenk explained in a 2009 article, dopamine does not cause people to experience pleasure, but drives a seeking behavior. “Dopamine causes us to want, desire, seek out, and search,” she wrote. It is the opioid system that causes one to feel pleasure and satisfaction. Yet, “the dopamine system is stronger than the opioid system,” she explained. We seek more after we are satisfied, we eat when we are not hungry.

Addiction may be thought of as wanting on overdrive. Just like other addictive substances, porn floods the brain with dopamine. The brain gets overwhelmed by the constant overload of neuro chemicals that comes with addictive porn use. It fights back by taking away some of its dopamine receptors, which is like closing the garage door on a neuron cell so that the truck carrying dopamine’s payload can’t come into the loading dock. With fewer receptors (fewer garage doors open), the user can’t feel dopamine’s full effect, even if the brain is producing all that it can. As a result, the pornography viewer isn’t as stimulated as they were before. So they go hunting for more porn, more novelty porn or more hardcore porn with the goal of receiving the same jolt of dopamine they received the day before. As the porn addict’s brain adjusts to these higher levels of dopamine flooding through it, regular activities that would normally set off a burst of dopamine to make the person feel happy, no longer work. Happy moments with their children, watching a football game with friends or a simple walk with their spouse leave the addict wanting a more stimulating jolt. So they return to porn, not more activities with their kids, nor more spousal contact. They go to view more porn because it delivers such a reliable and massive jolt. That’s one reason why pornography can be so addictive.

There is another reason porn is addictive, we get bored with the same old, same old. Researchers tested this theory. They wired up some 45 guys, each one a healthy 25 to 36 years old. Each participant had sensors on their penises that were linked to a computer. Researchers played the same erotic film repeatedly for these dudes. They had to watch porn. The researchers had to watch them watching porn and monitor indications of arousal, yes, in these guys’ man parts. This went on for three days. Torture, right? Well, the reports revealed a progressive decrease in sexual arousal after the 15th viewing of the same tape. The “same old, same old” gets boring. Seeing the same pornographic video, or even having sex with the same partner using the same position, over and over again, reduces dopamine production, and eases the jolt. After 18 viewings of the same erotic video, test subjects were nodding off. So researchers introduced a different, more erotic video for the 19th and 20th viewings. Bingo! The subjects and their penises sprang to attention. And yes, this theory also worked on women, for whom research showed similar effects.

Internet porn is especially enticing to the reward circuitry because a new mate, an unusual scene, a strange sexual act, or—fill in the blank—is just a click away. Something different every click. With multiple windows open and clicking for hours, one can experience more sex partners in ten minutes than our hunter-gatherer ancestors experienced in a lifetime.

Research confirms anticipation of reward and the many varied sexual selections (called novelty by the researchers) can amplify and increase excitement, and begins to rewire the brain—in other words, paves the porn superhighway in the brain. Pornography and erotica have been around forever, yet today’s version of Internet pornography is a completely new animal. Thanks to the power of the Internet, porn now stimulates the most powerful natural dopamine releases through a never ending stimulus cocktail using these elements:

    • Endless novelty, shock, and surprise
    • Strong emotions: surprise, fear, disgust, anxiety
    • Seeking and searching: exploring territories, foods or mating opportunities
    • Anything that violates expectations: unexpected bonanzas or dangers

All of these situations have been scientifically proven to increase dopamine surge. And because Internet porn offers an endless stream of variety, users can flip to a new image every time their high starts to fade, keeping dopamine levels elevated for hours. Virginie Despentes is a French writer, novelist and filmmaker. Her most famous novel, and film of the same name is Baise-moi, a contemporary film with a graphic mix of crime, mystery, violence and very explicit sex scenes. The title translates to: F**k Me. She states:

“Consuming pornography does not lead to more sex, it leads to more porn. Much like eating McDonalds everyday will accustom you to food that (although enjoyable) is essentially not food, pornography conditions the consumer to being satisfied with an impression of extreme sex rather than the real.”

Next week’s post will continue with the consequences of prolonged pornography use.

Resources used in this article:

Doidge, Norman M.D., (2007), The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science, James H. Silberman Books, Penguin Books, New York, NY

Inna Schneiderman, Orna Zagoory-Sharon, James F. Leckman, Ruth Feldman (2014) Oxytocin during the initial stages of romantic attachment: Relations to couples’ interactive reciprocity, Pyschoneuroendocrinology, Aug, 20913 37(8) 1277-1285. Accessed from the National Institute of Health National Library of Medicine at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3936960/

Hilton DL, Watts C. Pornography addiction: A neuroscience perspective. Surgical Neurology Institute [serial online] 2011 [cited 2015 Jan 9]; 2:19 http://www.surgicalneurologyint.com/text.asp?2011/2/1/19/76977

Hilton DL , (2013) Pornography addiction – a supra-normal stimulus considered in the context of neuroplasticity, Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology, Vol 3 (2013) incl Supplements. Accessed at: Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology 2013, 3: 20767 – http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/snp.v3i0.20767

John D. Salamone, Mercè Correa The Mysterious Motivational Functions of Mesolimbic Dopamine (2012), Neuron – 8 November 2012 (Vol. 76, Issue 3, pp. 470-485)Accessed at: http://yourbrainonporn.com/mysterious-motivational-functions-mesolimbic-dopamine-2012

Your Brain on Porn.com web site, the video of Dr Robert Sapolsky describing anticipation and dopamine. Accessed at: http://www.yourbrainonporn.com/dopamine-more-about-anticipation-dr-robert-sapolsky

Your Brain on Porn.com web site featured: Is the Pleasure Molecule Dopamine? (2008), Accessed at: http://yourbrainonporn.com/is-the-pleasure-molecule-dopamine-2011

Susan Weinschenk, PhD. (2009)100 Things You Should Know About People: #8 Dopamine Makes You Addicted To Seeking Information, Team W Blog Accessed at: http://www.blog.theteamw.com/2009/11/07/100-things-you-should-know-about-people-8-dopamine-makes-us-addicted-to-seeking-information/

Kent C. Berridge and Terry E. Robinson, What is the role of dopamine in reward: hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience?: Brain Research Reviews, 28, 1998. 309–369.

Terry E. Robinson and Kent C. Berridge (2008.) The review of the incentive sensitization theory of addiction: some current issues. Philosophical Translations of the Royal Society. B (2008) 363, 3137–3146 doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0093. Published online 18 July 2008, Downloaded from http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on January 9, 2015

Ingrid Meuwissen, Ray Oliver, Habituation and Dishabituation of Female Sexual Around (19 90) Behavior, Research and Theory, Vol 28, No 3, p 217-226 Access at: http://www.mendeley.com/catalog/habituation-dishabituation-female-sexual-arousal/#page-1

Gary Wilson, (2010) Intoxicating Behaviors: 300 Vaginas = A Lot of Dopamine, Your Brain on Porn.com web site featured: http://yourbrainonporn.com/intoxicating-behaviors-300-vaginas-a-lot-of-dopamine

Your Brain on Porn.com web site featured: Novelty increases the mesolimbic functional connectivity of the substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area (SN/VTA) during reward anticipation: Evidence from high-resolution fMRI (2011). Accessed at: http://yourbrainonporn.com/novelty-increases-mesolimbic-functional-connectivity-substantia-nigraventral-tegmental-area-snvta

http://www.Wikipedia.com http://www.yourbrainonporn.com http://compulsionsolutions.com http://fightthenewdrug.org/

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What is Porn Addiction?

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Melissa Killeen
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Melissa Killeen

How bad is pornography use?

“It is as though we have devised a form of heroin . . . usable in the privacy of one’s own home and injected directly to the brain through the eyes.”

—Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, Princeton University

In 2006, the global pornography industry was valued at more than 97 billion dollars, more than the revenue of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple, and Netflix, combined. This is not an inconsequential phenomenon, yet there is a tendency to trivialize the ravages of porn. The sex industry has successfully characterized pornography as a First Amendment right. If pornography addiction is viewed objectively, evidence indicates that it does indeed cause harm to people, their families and their communities. Here are some statistics on the enormity of the pornographic industry:

    • $3,075.64 is spent on pornography every second
    • 28,258 people are viewing pornography every second
    • 372 people are typing adult search terms every second
    • 68 million daily pornographic keyword search engine requests,  which is 25% of all search engine requests.

China, South Korea and Japan are the largest consumers of pornographic material. The Chinese porn industry is roughly $28 billion. This amount can feed 62 % of the world’s hungry. The United States comes up fourth in global pornographic consumption, but is the largest producer of pornographic material. Every 39 minutes a new pornographic video is produced in the United States.

25 % of the pornography viewers in the United States make between $50,000 and $75,000 per year, which means they are engineers, technicians, directors, clergy, doctors, lawyers — educated and upstanding members of any community. Here are some very, scary statistics on illegal pornography use in the United States:

    • 116,000 daily requests for child pornography
    • 100,000 websites offer illegal child pornography
    • 11 is the average age of a child’s first exposure to porn
    • 1 in 7 youths have received sexual solicitation from the Internet; that translates to three kids in your child’s classroom have been approached online

On the surface, heroin and porn don’t seem to have a lot in common. One is purchased in seedy alleyways; the other is free to download. One habit can get expensive pretty fast, while the other is about the price of a high-speed Internet connection. As a recovery coach, I know the painful consequences of either addiction. However today, pornography addiction is an unrecognized epidemic.

Next week, in part 2 of What is porn addiction?, I will explain the scientific reasons proving why pornography is so addictive.

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