Your Brain on Porn

As the old Chinese proverb goes: be careful what you wish for; you might get it.

Nowadays sex is everywhere. It is unavoidable. Images of every kind of sex act are readily available on line. Young people, having learned about sex by watching porn, have become incipient porn stars. Apparently, large numbers of them have at one time or another sent pornographic images of themselves to… whomever.

For those who have been militating for a more open and honest relationship to sexuality it’s a dream come true. Or, at least it will be unless it becomes a nightmare.

Naturally, porn has its defenders. The Daily Mail reports the case for and against porn watching:

But while X-rated images and films can help boost your libido, and many report it improves relationships, there is another side affecting your health.  

From releasing mood-boosting hormones to triggering addictive tendencies, porn can have a sinister effect on our brains.

It’s the dopamine, dope.

Watching a lot of porn produces repeated and artificial surges  in dopamine. The effects are not entirely beneficial:

Both having sex and watching porn causes dopamine, the neurotransmitter responsible for reward and pleasure, to be released.

But repeatedly causing this surge in dopamine – by regularly watching pornography – means the brain become desensitised to its effects.

A study published in JAMA Psychiatry in 2014 found regularly viewing pornography seemed to dull the response to sexual stimulation over time.

One has suspected this for some time. Part of it sounds like the behavioral approach to treating phobia. Gradual desensitization through controlled exposure to the feared object or situation.

Too much porn makes people less sensitive to sexual stimuli. What happens then? Nothing good. The Daily Mail summarizes:

This means the brain needs more dopamine in order to feel the same ‘high’, which causes a person to watch more porn, German researchers found.

And a 2011 study, published in Psychology Today, found that these dopamine spikes mean porn-users start needing increasingly extreme experiences to become sexually aroused.

After being exposed to so many lurid images in films, men have become de-sensitised and are increasingly unable to become excited by ordinary sexual encounters.

Pornography is creating a generation of young men who are hopeless in the bedroom, the report concluded.

Uh, oh. Too much porn can cause sexual malfunctions. This causes people to go into default mode: kinkiness and various other forms of exotic erotic situations... anything to overcome the desensitization.

And porm can also, some research suggests, shrink the brain. To be fair, the researchers note that those who watch a lot of porn might have born with a predisposition to addictive behavior.

The newspaper explains how porn can be addictive:

When porn addicts watch X-rated material, the ‘addiction’ part of the brain lights up on scans, Cambridge University researchers discovered in 2013.

The brains of young men who are obsessed by online pornography ‘lit up like Christmas trees’ upon being shown erotic images, a pioneering study has found.

The area stimulated – the part of the brain involved in processing reward, motivation and pleasure – is the same part that is highly active among drug and alcohol addicts.

A year later, another study by the same University found sex addicts who watched porn from an early age had three regions of the brain that were more active than their counterparts who were not addicted to sex.

The ventral striatum, dorsal anterior cingulate and amygdala – were active in the sex addicts – and experts said these are the regions that are also particularly activated in drug addicts when shown drug stimuli.

The ventral striatum is involved in processing reward and motivation, whilst the dorsal anterior cingulate is implicated in anticipating rewards and drug craving.

The amygdala is involved in processing the significance of events and emotions.

Sex used to be shrouded in mystery. It used to take place in the dark. It used to be the ultimate private act. Somewhere, someone decided that we cover up sexuality because we are ashamed of it. They insisted that it was a natural human bodily function that we should enjoy openly, honestly and shamelessly.

The advent of readily available  internet porn has given them more than they ever dreamed of. They might he noted that the fact that porn is there for the taking does not mean that anyone has to take it. You are free to watch, but you are free not to watch. Just don't think that just because it's free, there is no cost.

It was a utopian fantasy. It was certainly not the only utopian fantasy that civilization has suffered. For now, like many others, it seems now to be producing a dystopia.