How Pornography Exploits & Damages Men’s Brains- Beat Porn Addiction #mgtow #nofap
As men we must come to terms with the fact that pornography exploits men’s innate desire for sexual gratification and turns it against them.
Understanding the novelty effect in the context of watching porn: What gets you addicted
Essentially in psychology it’s a concept called the “novelty effect”. The novelty effect is our tendency to experience improved performance (in this case, a feeling of well being) by the initial introduction of a new stimulus (in this case, pornography).
This improvement brought about as a result of the novelty effect is almost never an actual benefit of the stimulus introduced, but rather triggered by our innate curiosity to explore the stimulus more and more. In simpler words, engaging in pornography and doing the deed does not inherently benefit your sense of well-being physically. Rather it is the sense of excitement and temporary pleasure that you get from it, that induces a false sense of well-being.
Exploratory Behavior: How to get rid of fetishes and paraphilia
Here’s the thing about your brain and novelty. It can never have enough of the latter.
Any engagement in a novel experience triggers what’s known as “exploratory behavior” wherein you sense an urge to explore the novel experience more and more. In the context of pornography, this is how most young men that start off with regular, heterosexual soft-core porn, within years, end up watching things that may be more extreme, deviated, and perverse.
Sexual deviation can make one cause great harm to oneself, internally and to others, externally. Some moderate to extreme types of sexual deviations and pornography that feature them have been listed below.
- Pornography that dabbles with inflicting or receiving physical pain such as BDSM, sadistic and masochistic pornography.
- Pornography that induces feelings of sexual (gender) dysphoria, such as feminization, female domination (femdom), cuckold, sissy, crossdressing and forced dysphoria (forced bi) pornography.
- Paraphilia that deals on very violent fronts, is immoral and/or criminal, such as pedophilia, necrophilia, anthropophagy and the like.
In most other aspects of our life such as food and entertainment, we are able to regulate these exploratory urges to a fair degree. The difference between those pleasures and pleasures that are sexual in nature is that the latter is a heck of a lot stronger, more gratifying and harder to tame.
Having heard several devastating accounts of victims- many of which are publicly available on mens’ health forums online- there is no doubt that addictions such as these are a steep downward slope to self hatred, gloom and depression.
It’s unfortunate, really. That’s what it is. Addiction to pornography and deviations resulting from it is a major cause behind the epidemic of challenges like erectile dysfunction (ED) and other forms of sexual dysfunction and gender dysphoria that many men are experiencing today.
Understanding Charles Duhigg’s ‘Habit Loop’: How to give up bad habits and addictions
Based on psychological theory, the best way to rid oneself of such addictions and deviations is to be able to exercise self-restraint and self-control firmly.
Our brains function on neurotransmitter-driven loops. That’s how habits and ‘addiction habits’ become fixated. The simplest way to visualize the process of a habit developing (both good and bad) is via Charles Duhigg’s ‘Habit Loop’.
Here’s how it would practically unfold in the case of pornography addiction. (1) You first get a cue of frustration(you’ve had a bad day at work). (2) Your mind then wanders off to find a routine behavior that makes you feel good (pornography). (3) You do the deed and feel good (the reward to your cue).
Over time your mind begins to associate the cue with the reward more and more strongly, until it gets to a point where every time you have a bad day, you will instantaneously feel an uncontrollable urge to engage in pornographic content. A more severe stage of the addiction is when you’re brain intentionally thinks badly of a day so you can reward yourself. Which means you could be having a fantastic day, but your brain tell you that you are not and makes you feel terrible until you reward yourself.
Therefore, the best way to curb your addiction is to do the following;
- Try your best to mitigate cues. Look at what your triggers typically are to watch pornography (work or study stress, social media images, movie scenes, etc.) and refrain from these.
- Try your best to find other solutions to your cues. Mitigating all cues is not possible, as some occurrences are simply beyond your control. Find other methods to ease your stress and urges. Reading, running, weight training, outdoor activities, attending events, board games, cycling, meditation, playing/ listing to music, and interacting with friends are other alternatives you can consider.
- Remember that most likely none of the above-mentioned activities will be as pleasurable as pornography because you are addicted to it. It is a gradual process and you will have several withdrawals, and relapses. But the second you stop trying you’ve lost. Embracing an ideology such as ‘NoFap’ (look it up if you haven’t already heard of them) for medium to long periods of time (6–24 months) will help you quite literally ‘reset’ your mind. There are thousands of positive testimonials to this by now, and I’d highly recommend their ideology.
As far as deviations are concerned, if you are someone that is dealing with sexual deviations and fetishes that may be harmful and/ or immoral, I’d highly recommend you consult a medical professional and seek medical treatment at the earliest.
If you are someone that is dealing with a mild fetish that you do not like, or is affecting your lifestyle, know that you must follow the same above-mentioned steps to quit addiction, but it will be considerably harder for you to conquer your deviations and fetishes. While some recoverers have claimed that curing the addiction has helped cure their fetishes, others yet claim that overcoming addiction hasn’t quite mitigated their fetishes and that they still struggle to experience arousal during regular intercourse. I’d recommend you see which of the two categories you happen to be in, once you’ve dealt with your addiction and then seek more personalized medical consultation from a professional your trust to cure your fetishes and deviations.
I intend to write dedicated, more detailed articles on curing addiction and lay out various methods in details to do so, in future articles. Make sure to follow me on Medium and Subscribe to my YouTube channel to stay tuned.
Until next time.
You may write to me at askalphaspath@gmail.com
Find me on YouTube: bit.ly/alphaspath
Recommended Reading: “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius
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