Are you willing to admit that your addiction is actually a disease?
If so, how does this change in viewpoint affect the way you deal with it?
How Men and Women Become Addicted to Pornography
To understand any addiction, we need to view it as two sides of a coin. On one side is the physical addiction, where a person becomes physically dependent on the substance in question, whether that be drugs, alcohol, or pornography. On the other side of the coin is the emotional addiction, where the substance is used to cope with deep emotional wounds or conflicts (“self-medicating”).
Let’s explore both sides of the coin as they relate to pornography addiction and see how they work together to leave people trapped in this addiction.
The Physical Addiction
One thing we need to understand here is that men’s and women’s brains are wired differently. All humans (men and women) are wired to be attracted to that which is new, different, exciting, and novel. Men, however, tend to be more visually stimulated than women. This is why men usually prefer visual pornography (photos, videos, and anime). Women, on the other hand, are more relationally stimulated. Thus, they are more attracted to pornography that depicts a relationship.
Because of their attraction to relationship, the types of pornography that women are drawn to are more varied than men. In addition to visual pornography, women are also attracted to pornography in written forms. This can include racy romance novels, erotic literature, and sexual blogs. It also includes social media, sexting, emails, and chat rooms. In most written pornography, a woman participates vicariously in a sexual relationship through her reading. In a chat room, a woman directly participates in sexual fantasy through live interactions with male partners. Through these pornographic chats, it’s as if a woman is writing her own romance novel and she is the star. The fantasy can be intensified if she and her partner are using webcams. The visual pornography industry understands women’s attraction to relationships and has developed a new form of pornography that feeds this attraction. It’s called femme-porn. Rather than showing women being abused and exploited, femme-porn depicts women as objects of desire who are slowly seduced into having sex with men.19
Social media is also a way that women participate in relational pornography. Through outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Snapchat, they can exchange both visual and written forms of pornography. In these cases, it’s often their own amateur pornography that they share. They can even engage in pornography in virtual reality. Through video games and virtual worlds, such as Second Life, they can create characters, called avatars. These characters engage in sex with other characters.20
For both men and women, viewing pornography has a tremendous impact on the brain. The constant stream of sexually enticing images offered by internet pornography feeds the human need for things that are new, different, exciting, and novel.21 It directly impacts the reward center of the brain (the nucleus accumbens). This triggers the release of several chemicals in the brain:
• Dopamine: a neurotransmitter that produces intense pleasurable feelings and prompts cravings for more. It instills memories of sexual encounters in the brain and directs a person back to pornography when a “fix” is needed.
• Delta-Fos-B: also known as iFos-B, this is a protein that desensitizes the brain neurons to dopamine, which makes the brain need more of it to experience the desired pleasure. It also hyper-sensitizes the pleasure center of the brain (nucleus accumbens) to the effects of dopamine, creating a desire for more of it.
• Serotonin: a neurotransmitter released in small packets in the brain that increases excitement.
• Norepinephrine: a neurotransmitter and hormone that affects the brain like adrenaline, ramping it up for sexual release. It also locks in the erotic image in the brain and activates the autonomic nervous system. So, while someone is viewing pornography, their heart will start to beat faster, breathing will get heavier, and some people may even begin to sweat.
• With all this neurochemical activity going on, a message is sent down the spinal cord to the genitals for sexual arousal.
• Endogenous Endorphins: all the neurochemical activity creates a tension that can only be relieved with an orgasm. So, the person masturbates. With the orgasm, opiate chemicals, endogenous endorphins, are released into the brain causing a sense of euphoria.
• Serotonin: after the orgasm, serotonin levels increase, providing a sense of relaxation.
• CRASH: after the orgasm, the period of intense relaxation can be short-lived. Then the “crash” occurs. The high levels of dopamine drop dramatically, creating a “dopamine hangover.” Symptoms of this can include irritability, depression, and anxiety. This can last up to two weeks.
• Return to Pornography: not liking the dopamine hangover, the brain will try to escape it. Dopamine and iFos-B will direct the brain back to pornography to return to the pleasurable sensation it has previously experienced.22
Ultimately, the largest sex organ in the body is the brain. All of the other physical and emotional sensations (sexual arousal, orgasm, euphoria, etc.) are reactions to what goes on in the brain. This leads people to return to pornography repeatedly to get that blast of neurochemical stimulation that produces the pleasurable sensations. When viewing pornography, the high levels of dopamine released into the brain stimulate the brain’s reward system, increasing the craving for more. The other chemicals and the orgasm reinforce this process. The ultimate crash then leads a person back to pornography to avoid the negative effects of the dopamine hangover.
As these behaviors are repeated, the brain is conditioned to return to them repeatedly, creating neural pathways that make it easier to go back to pornography and masturbation. Scientists call this neuroplasticity — reinforcing behaviors based on experiences.23 Think of it this way: “neurons that fire together, wire together.”
You may wonder if this same process occurs when a healthy husband and wife engage in sexual intercourse. It does, but it is a bit different. There are two additional chemicals released in the brain during this type of sexual encounter: oxytocin and vasopressin. These are hormones released during sex that bond a husband and wife closer together in their relationship. These chemicals, along with the healthy intimacy of the loving relationship, prevent the crash. Instead of dropping rapidly, dopamine levels decrease gradually back to a normal state. There is no dopamine hangover. The couple experiences love and contentment. There is no oxytocin or vasopressin with pornography. This is why sex with pornography (cybersex) can never satisfy. Instead, it constantly leads a person back to pornography and masturbation.24
As with any addiction, a tolerance develops. More of the substance is needed to get the same effect. Thus, “soft” porn becomes boring and no longer stimulating. Here men and women may move on to more hardcore forms of pornography, including pornography that depicts deviant and violent forms of sexuality. They also begin to spend more time viewing pornography. Instead of viewing pornography for twenty minutes once a week, many addicts end up spending several hours a day viewing it. For some, the tolerance grows to the point where just viewing pornography is no longer satisfying. Now they want to experience it live.
At this point, some men begin to frequent strip clubs. Eventually this can lead to acting out sexually with strippers and prostitutes, which increases the risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections.
When women reach this point, they
