What is the price of taking emotion, human contact, and connection out of sex? Is pornography harmless or toxic? We will take a light journey through the answer to that complicated question. Our last post was a personal account of what porn can do to your life, even if you aren’t the one using it. To follow that up, it only seems fair to look at what pornography does to its users. Our goal is to explore the effects of pornography in unsophisticated terms. We will learn how it alters the brain of its viewer. In the last of the three-part series on pornography, we will dig into the peer-reviewed studies. This article is titled Giving Pornography Truth Serum We will show the far-reaching effects on the porn consumer and its toll on their personal lives. There is some debate on this subject; after all, according to Covenant Eyes, it’s a 13 billion dollar industry. It is naive not to expect resistance. After all, remember the cigarette industry? They said menthol cigarettes were healthy even when you are pregnant. 

Does Pornography Really Do No Harm?

Honest people ask honest questions, and they don’t hide from the answers. Let’s look at what pornography can do to the end-user. Let’s start by looking at how the brain responds to pornography and how that plays out in everyday life.  For this purpose, we will use two web sites.  Both are very easy to use and understand: https://yourbrainonporn.com/ and  https://fightthenewdrug.org/overview/. If you can find better sources to answer if pornography is harmless or toxic, please leave them in the comments so we can all check them out.   We will cover the high points of this subject to give a big picture.  I offer if you have questions about the science of pornography, it is worth your time and effort to visit these sites.  They will prepare you to steer others to pertinent information, helping us all make healthy judgments on pornography. The pornography industry is growing and pushing into mainstream culture.  It will take more than research to change societal behaviors. Change requires a personal connection to the truth.

Humans Crave Acceptance, Intimacy, Comfort, and… Porn?

We are hardwired to seek acceptance, intimacy, and comfort at a primary level.  Our drive for sex is fueled by all three of these desires.  When we pursue sex, we are linked to others for sharing life and relationship. How does watching pornography affect that? We live in a free society, and you have the right to indulge in porn.  Again, I think porn has some similarities to cigarette smoking on many levels. It took decades for us to understand the poison we were ingesting. What if porn is just as toxic in different ways? The science is straightforward enough; your brain from about 10 is programmed to seek three things: eyes, skin, and sense attraction. You don’t have to think about it; it is just natural. It is the pathway that leads to a healthy sexual life.  The basic appetites for food, sex, and sleep are balanced in the growing brain.  They provide the future road map for you to fall in love, act on it, and share a life with someone.  What does pornography do to that balance? The first time you watch pornography, your brain is overwhelmed by an overdose of visual stimulus.  Consequently, it’s like an endless buffet of everything you naturally crave. This is how the brain begins to respond in ways that harm the viewer.  We can see if pornography is harmless or toxic as we explore three areas the porn consumer is affected.

Three Areas Porn Consumers are Affected

We naturally crave the sight of eyes, skin, and attractiveness.  As a result, we are drawn into relationship with others. Pulled deeper into a level of connection than a platonic relationship.  These drives ensure you will not live life in isolation. Together they create the best environment for health, happiness, and community.  Each of these ensures our survival as a species.  A strong sexual relationship has numerous physical and mental health benefits. Humans thrive in these conditions. So, how does porn create a problem for any of this? The answer is simple; your brain is wired to protect you and help you engage in behaviors that will be need meeting. Your brain has an amazing ability to alter what you desire to keep you safe. It also guards your ability to pursue comfort and release by encouraging behaviors that lead to success.  Consequently,  your brain is literally rewired to seek a pornographic version of sex that meets your need for release from sexual tension. Consequently, where your brain initially sought out community and relationship to meet your needs, porn creates a neural pathway that seeks sexual release without the need for communication, affection, or caring.  Before you continue, please re-read that last sentence. It has huge implications.

Three Victims of Pornography

If losing a major drive for connection, empathy, and relatedness isn’t scary enough, the kind of sex you will desire is also altered by engaging in pornography.  Studies show that porn escalates from simple sexual images to control and abuse even with moderate usage. We will not cover the progression it takes from there to fetish, violence, rape, incest, and child pornography. To summarize, the science is available and frightening. The escalation that occurs changes what arouses the consumer; it’s no longer shared intimacy and bonding but rather control and domination.  Your ability to achieve sexual release is altered to require more graphic and violent forms of pornography. So the first victim is you. It will strip you, at least in part, of your drive for intimacy, connection, bonding, and empathy. It changes your biological drive for sexual satisfaction. Pointedly, what was originally for two becomes a solo act.  Another outcome is that It sucks the joy out of some of the simple pleasures of a relationship, not limited to just sexual ones.  The joy of holding a warm hand or a soft kiss is robbed of its power.  Porn pushes the drive to be satisfied with more aggressive forms of sexual expression. Your brain does what it does best, protects you from losing what meets your needs. Let’s be honest, when was the last time you heard of a pornographic scenario focused on gentle, caring, and affectionate sex?   To answer,  “Is porn harmless or toxic?” you need to see how porn can rob you of both the human connection and the control over the kinds of sex you enjoy.

How is Your Brain Affected By Porn

In very general terms, let’s look at what your brain is experiencing when you watch pornography, so we understand the changes taking place. When viewing porn, your brain is being supplied Norepinephrine(waking hormone),  Dopamine(satisfaction hormone),  Endorphins(euphoric hormones),  Serotonin(anti-depressant). The simultaneous release of these is what helps build a pathway to keep the user returning to pornography. The release of this cocktail of hormones creates a desire to experience it again and again.  Finally, the drive for porn is very similar to wanting to attain a drug high once you have experienced its euphoria.

Ironically, the very habit you are engaging in to keep control over your sexual activity is feeding an increased compulsion to use porn.  That is shifting your desire for connectedness to control.  Another kicker is that you’re surrendering your ability to control your own actions and desires in the growing desire for control. Pornography takes over the steering wheel. You give away the freedom for pleasure.

The Pattern of Pornography

A pattern will develop with regular porn viewing, and the resulting hormonal tsunami unleashed in your brain will have its effect. Ultimately, the pattern looks like this: sexual frustration, the need for acceptance, loneliness, and even rejection will drive you to a ritual of porn usage to meet your needs. The role of the released hormones is to put you in hyper-focus, and the cycle is complete.  As the brain is re-wired to remember and to focus on the pornography and the needs it meets.  Imagine your empathy, concern, and relatedness are minimized as you repeatedly meet your needs in isolation. It isn’t too much of a leap to think that other relationships could also be affected. If all this wasn’t bad enough, two more hormones could create even bigger issues when combined with sex stripped of human emotion.

Pornography as a Training Ground for Abuse

When Oxytocin and Vasopressin are released in your brain, they will bind you to what meets your needs. In a  healthy relationship, they will connect you to the person you share your life and sex with. They actually deepen your affection, connection, and protection responses. When your needs are being met by pornography, they will bind you to that activity. That isn’t the worst part; however, once bonded, your brain will activate something called mirror neurons. They do what they sound like; you will be compelled to mirror the actions you are bonded to. Stop here and think about that. To YOU WILL MIRROR WHAT YOU ARE BONDED TO. If you are in a  healthy cycle of need meeting with another person, you will mirror the love, affection, care, and empathy that defines a healthy, loving relationship. If you are in a cycle of pornographic sexual need meeting, your clicks will determine what you are imitating.

Porn Progresses Quickly

The progression of pornography usually moves quickly to abuse, control, dangerous sexual acts, racial denigration, and on to even worse from there. Therefore, the experience you choose on your screen will push you to mirror the same things in real life.  If you enjoy watching a woman or man being abused, scared, or injured, you will begin to crave and enjoy that in your actual sexual encounters. What is meant to bond you in a significant way to another person will instead drive you to seek satisfaction at the expense of others. This is porn’s second victim, the person who has no idea they are a stand-in for your pornography habit being played out in real life. The person you care about or even love. The third victim of pornography we will cover is your sex drive.  A number of the latest studies show that ED is growing in the 20-30-year-old age groups. Why? This generation was introduced to a more violent and dangerous form of pornography than previous ones.  It creates a need for more extreme sex to make normal arousal. In brief, during the vital years of formation, young men are disrupting healthy sexual growth and development.

The Hope of Recovery From Pornography Addiction

The studies show that young men who kick the porn habit return to healthy sexual response with a few months, but the pull to pornography takes much longer to heal. Ironic, isn’t it? Ironically, the very thing used to feed your sex drive is what ultimately kills it. In spite of these arguments,  if you think not everyone’s life and sexual expression are ruined by porn usage, you are correct, but the studies show everyone is affected in tangible ways.  Next, we will cover the academic studies on what porn does to sexual expression—emotional and relational attachment in the next post.

Is Porn Harmless or Toxic? 

Modern love has taken the beautiful and powerful bonding properties of sex and twisted them into something that robs us of our humanity, of our empathy and affection. Therefore, there is also no forgetting the tie of porn to the human trafficking industry.  We have handed the porn industry the reigns to pull countless vulnerable young girls and boys, men and women, into its grip and left them wounded, enslaved, or worse. Maybe not have not personally watched the pornography that depicts rape, abuse, or child pornography, but if we indulge in it in even a small way, we feed the system that runs all of it. In the final analysis, each click is fuel for someone else’s suffering and to think otherwise is to stick our heads willfully in the sand.

How Much Damage is OK?

We must ask ourselves if we are willing to continue surrendering our own natural response to sex? Are we willing to allow our appetites for affection and caring to be morphed into a take and take version of sex?  Furthermore, let’s consider how our habits will affect the real flesh and blood people we will share the most intimate moments of our lives.  Ultimately, we can be a voice that sounds the alarm for every person who doesn’t know what pornography will do to them. Let’s raise our voice to protect one more person from paying the price for another’s porn habit. Equally important, let’s help stop them from receiving the abuse the porn user has been trained to accept with every click. We want to offer support and help for those who want to be free of pornography’s grip but don’t know where to start. In the end, you may be thinking, “I use porn and have healthy, caring, and affectionate relationships.”  The looming question is: can you be sure you won’t fall into the eventual slide to more extreme porn? Ultimately, what would your relationship be like if you weren’t a porn viewer? Don’t the people in your life deserve the best version of you you have to offer? Is porn harmless or toxic? Here are the facts, no, you decide.

Love well or not at all.

Finally, To understand the personal toll of pornography, check out this article: https://worththewar.com/what-pornography-stole-from-me-one-womans-account/ If you want to be connected with support groups or informational resources on how to quit the pornography cycle, please use the contact page of this blog. We will cover the studies on how pornography affects you and your relationships in the next post. Thanks for joining in on this journey! This was Revised and updated from 5/18 version 1/21