Have you ever found yourself craving something even though you don’t like how it makes you feel? You find yourself thinking about it all day even though you know that once you get it, you’re going to feel terrible, you’re going to beat yourself up, and you’re going actually to feel worse. The desire to get the thing is so strong that you do it anyway, knowing that you will feel like crap later. I know I’m not alone because many, perhaps all, human beings have felt this way at one point or another. In this article, I’m going to give you a test to determine whether or not you have a problem, which we are talking about is porn. This test is designed to help you determine if your porn use has become problematic, if you’re addicted to porn or if you’re on your way to a porn addiction.
Keep track of your answers. If you answer YES to any of these, it might indicate that you have a problem:
You crave it even though you do not like it and find yourself thinking about it even though you don’t want to.
You crave more and more of it. It takes more for you to feel satisfied.
You find yourself watching porn even when there are other things that you should be doing or at unusual times of the day. You find yourself going to the bathroom during work hours to watch it.
You sometimes lose track of time while watching porn. You look up and realise that more time has passed than you thought.
You feel shame and try to hide it from loved ones.
You have intense cravings. So intense you find yourself thinking about it when even something related pops up, like thinking about your laptop, or you find yourself distracted by cravings. For example, you may be talking to someone, but you’re considering using porn.
You’ve lost interest in sex. If you’re single, going out and getting laid doesn’t appeal to you anymore, or if you’re partnered or married, you feel less desirous of having sex with your partner.
Your Sexual tastes have changed, and they’re putting distance between you and your partner
You find yourself in physical pain, wrist pain, or neck pain from spending a lot of time watching porn and masturbating.
You find yourself losing money, spending money you do not have to keep up your porn habit
You are irritable without it. Even the thought of being away from your Phone or laptop makes you upset, and if you’re forced to go without porn, you find yourself down, angry, irritable and generally in a bad mood if you can’t get access to porn.
The quality of sex when you have it is deteriorating. Symptoms such as numbness, lack of sensation and arousal or erection strength are occurring.
If you answered yes to any of those questions, you might have a problematic relationship with porn.
Now I want to talk to you a little bit more about how this process gets set in stone in your brain and causes this to become a hardwired habit. You see, dopamine, the addiction chemical, rushes in when we think about the thing we want. It exists to help our brain and body get it and is also released when we have sex. So, therefore, the combination of the desire to watch Internet porn, all the triggers around, like the laptop and the Phone available, and the dopamine hit that we get from having sex makes porn pretty damn irresistible to our brains.
The exciting thing about this is the damage that this can do over time. You see, the more dopamine your brain constantly has access to, the more tolerance your brain builds up to dopamine. In combination with the fact that your neurons that fire together wire, your brain figures out a swift direct route to get a blast of dopamine, and it continues to take that route. It becomes a habit. Eventually, this dopamine system becomes damaged, and so you need to take in more and more or more unique and novel things to get the same rush. This is why if you find yourself seeking more extreme versions of porn, maybe more hard-core porn, more aggressive porn or more taboo porn like the incest porn that’s very popular today, it may indicate a damaged dopamine pathway in your brain. There’s also a theory that once the brain is worn out from the dopamine that is released from sexual release, the brain starts to turn towards the other dopamine release pathway that is also very commonly found in porn, which is through aggression, so if you find yourself watching more extreme versions of porn or more aggressive/ violent versions of porn and that wasn’t what you used to be into, that’s another good indication that porn has gotten in your brain. It has started to rewire your brain.
One of the most exciting things about porn is that it’s been proven anecdotally and scientifically that porn can rewire our brain’s circuitry. So it can change what we find sexually attractive, it can change what we find ourselves being desirous of, and it can change the way that our body relates to sexual stimuli. So again, this is why porn is so addictive. It changes your brain.
In the following article, I will give you a step-by-step plan for getting away from porn, breaking your addiction, and developing a healthy relationship with porn.
