You might be reading this articule because you're curious why hundreds of thousands of porn users around the globe are experimenting with giving it up.

But more likely you're reading it because you are engaging with pornographic material in a way that you find troubling.

• Maybe you have been spending more time online seeking out graphic material than you want to, despite a settled determination to cut back.

• Maybe you are finding it difficult to climax during sex, or you're plagued by unreliable erections. Maybe you're noticing that real partners just don't excite you while the online sirens beckon constantly.

• Maybe you've escalated to fetish material that you find disturbing or out of alignment with your values or even your sexual orientation.

If you’re anything like the thousands of other people who have realised that they have a problem, it has probably taken you a while to connect your troubles with your porn use.

-You might have thought you were struggling with some other disorder.

-Perhaps thought you had developed unaccustomed depression or social anxiety or, as one man feared, premature dementia.

-Or maybe you believed that you had low testosterone or were simply getting older.

-You might even have been prescribed drugs from a well-meaning doctor.

-Perhaps your physician assured you that you were wrong to worry about your use of pornography. There are plenty of authoritative voices out there who will tell you that an interest in graphic imagery is perfectly normal, and that therefore internet porn is harmless.

While the first claim is true, the second, as we shall see, is not.

Although not all porn users develop problems, some do. At the moment, mainstream culture tends to assume that pornography use cannot cause severe symptoms. And, as high-profile criticisms of pornography often come from religious and socially conservative organizations, it's easy for liberally minded people to dismiss them without examination.

But for the last seven years what people say about their experiences with pornography is worrying. I am here to tell you that this isn’t about liberals and conservatives. It isn’t about religious shame or sexual freedom. This is about the nature of our brains and how they respond to cues from a radically changed environment.

This is about the effects of chronic overconsumption of sexual novelty, delivered on demand in endless supply..

Psychiatrist Norman Doidge explains in his bestseller The Brain That Changes Itself: The men at their computers looking at porn ... had been seduced into pornographic training sessions that met all the conditions required for plastic change of brain maps. Since neurons that fire together wire together, these men got massive amounts of practice wiring these images into the pleasure centres of the brain, with the rapt attention necessary for plastic change. ... Each time they felt sexual excitement and had an orgasm when they masturbated, a ‘spritz of dopamine’, the reward neurotransmitter, consolidated the connections made in the brain during the sessions.

Not only did the reward facilitate the behaviour; it provoked none of the embarrassment they felt purchasing Playboy at a store. Here was a behaviour with no ‘punishment’, only reward.

The content of what they found exciting changed as the Web sites introduced themes and scripts that altered their brains without their awareness. Because plasticity is competitive, the brain maps for new, exciting images increased at the expense of what had previously attracted them – the reason they began to find their girlfriends less of a turn-on .

As for the patients understood the problem and how they were plastically reinforcing it. They found eventually that they were attracted once again to their mates. At last they understood how porn had hijacked the primitive appetite mechanisms of their brains. These ancient brain structures urge us toward evolutionarily beneficial behaviours including an appreciation of novel mates, helping to discourage inbreeding.

CONSEQUENCES

However, our behavioural choices in turn affect our neurochemical balance in these same brain structures. This is how chronic overconsumption can have unexpected effects.

-It can make us hyper aroused by our favourite enticements, such that immediate wants weigh heavier than they should relative to longer term desires.

- It can also sour our enjoyment of – and responsiveness to – everyday pleasures.

-It can drive us to seek more extreme stimulation.

-Or cause withdrawal symptoms so severe that they send even the most strong-minded of us bolting for relief.

-It can also alter our mood, perception and priorities – all without our conscious awareness.

-Delayed ejaculation.

-Anorgasmia.

-Erectile dysfunction.

-Loss of attraction to real partners

- Reduced grey matter and decreased sexual responsiveness.

Persistent porn-induced ED in young men caught the medical profession by surprise, but this year doctors have finally begun to acknowledge it.

Harvard urology professor and author of Why Men Fake It: The Totally Unexpected Truth About Men and Sex, Abraham Morgentaler said, ‘it's hard to know exactly how many young men are suffering from porn-induced ED. But it's clear that this is a new phenomenon.

Another urologist and author Harry Fisch writes that porn is killing sex. In his book The New Naked, he zeroes in on the decisive element: the internet. It ‘provided ultra-easy access to something that is fine as an occasional treat but hell for your sexual health on a daily basis.

In May, 2014, the prestigious medical journal JAMA Psychiatry published research showing that, even in moderate porn users, use (number of years and current hours per week) correlates with reduced grey matter and decreased sexual responsiveness. The researchers cautioned that the heavy porn users' brains might have been pre-shrunken rather than shrunken by porn usage, but favoured degree-of-porn-use as the most plausible explanation.

Then in July 2014, a team of neuroscience experts headed by a psychiatrist at Cambridge University revealed that more than half of the subjects in their study of porn addicts reported that as a result of excessive use of sexually explicit materials, they had ... experienced diminished libido or erectile function specifically in physical relationships with women (although not in relationship to the sexually explicit material).

fortunately , brain plasticity also works the other way. Many young guys quit porn and months later, realise that the fetishes they thought were indeliable had daded away. They can not believe they once got off to X.

Adolescent sexual conditioning also accounts for the fact that young men with porn induced erectile dysfunction need months longer to recover normal sexual function than older men do. This might be because the older men did not start out wiring their sexual response to screens, and still ossess well developed real partner brain pathways, or brain maps.

Typicall y they had relable erections with partners for years before they met high speed tube sites.

Biochemical system in our brain

Some researches verify that sex with ejaculation shrinks (for a week at least) the cells that pump dopamine throughrout the reward circuit. The same with heroin addiction. Just as drugs can activate the sex nerve cells and trigger a buzz without actual sex, so can internet porn. Pleasures like golf, sunsets, laughing, old rock and roll because they are something pleasurable does not mean it is addictive. Sexual arousal is nature´s number one priority and raises dopamine the highest lf all natural rewards.

All addictions, despite their differences, chronic dopamine elevation tips specific neurochemincal dominoes, which bring about a set of core brain changes and show up signs, symptoms and behaviours listed and known as the 3Cs´.

1. Craving and preocupation with obtaining engaging in or recovering from the use of the substance or behaviour.

2. Loss of control in using the substances or engaging in the behaviour with increasing frequency or duration, largar amounts or intensity, or in increasing the risk in use and behaviour to obtain the desired effect.

3. Negative consequences in physical, social, occupational, financial and psychological domains.

Example: Today´s high fat sugar foods have hooked far more people into destructive patterns of behaviour than have illegal drugas. 70% of American adults are overweight, 37% is obese. We don´t know how many people are being affected by internet porno, given the secrecy that surrounds its use, but the parallels with junk food are highly suggestive and troubling.

Dopamine ” The pleasure molecule”

Primitive circuits in the brain govern emotions, drives, impulses, and subconscious decisionmaking. They do their jobs so efficiently that evolution hasn't seen the need to change them much since before humans were human.

The desire and motivation to pursue sex arises from a neurochemical called dopamine.Dopamine amps up the centrepiece of a primitive part of the brain known as the reward circuitry. It’s where you experience cravings and pleasure and where you get addicted.

This ancient reward circuitry compels you to do things that further your survival and pass on your genes. At the top of our human reward list are food, sex, love, friendship, and novelty.

The evolutionary purpose of dopamine is to motivate you to do what serves your genes.

The bigger the squirt the more you want something. No dopamine and you just ignore it.

High-calorie chocolate cake and ice cream – a big blast. Celery – not so much.

Dopamine surges are the barometer by which you determine the value of any experience. They tell you what to approach or avoid, and where to put your attention. Further, dopamine tells you what to remember by helping to rewire your brain. Sexual stimulation and orgasm add up to the biggest natural blast of dopamine available to your reward circuitry. Although dopamine is sometimes referred to as the ‘pleasure molecule’, it's is actually about seeking and searching for pleasure, not pleasure itself. Thus dopamine rises with anticipation. It's your motivation and drive to pursue potential pleasure or long term goals.

The pleasure of climax appears to arise from opioids, so think of dopamine as wanting and opioids as liking.

As psychologist Susan Weinschenk explained, ‘dopamine causes us to want, desire, seek out, and search’. Yet ‘the dopamine system is stronger than the opioid system. We seek more than we are satisfied. ... Seeking is more likely to keep us alive than sitting around in a satisfied stupor.’ Addiction may be thought of as wanting run amok.

The Power of Novelty

Dopamine surges for novelty. A new vehicle, just-released film, the latest gadget…we are all hooked on dopamine. As with everything new the thrill fades away as dopamine plummets.

Does this sound familiar? When Australian researchers displayed the same erotic film repeatedly, test subjects' penises and subjective reports both revealed a progressive decrease in sexual arousal.

The ‘same old same old’ just gets boring. Habituation indicates declining dopamine. After 18 viewings – just as the test subjects were nodding off – researchers introduced novel erotica for the 19 th and 20 th viewings. Bingo! The subjects and their penises sprang to attention. Yes, women showed similar effects.

Internet porn is especially enticing to the reward circuitry because novelty is always just a click away. It could be a novel ‘mate’, unusual scene, strange sexual act, or – you fill in the blank. And the most popular sites – the so-called tube sites – build this pursuit of novelty into their layout. Every page presents dozens of different clips and genres to choose from. They are engrossing precisely because they offer what seems like inexhaustible novelty:

Testimony:

I always opened several windows in my browser, each one with many, many tabs. The main thing that arouses me is novelty. New faces, new bodies, new ‘choices’. I very rarely even watched a whole porn scene, and can't remember when I saw an entire movie. Too boring. I always wanted NEW stuf .

With multiple tabs open and clicking for hours, you can 'experience' more novel sex partners every ten minutes than your hunter-gatherer ancestors experienced in a lifetime. Of course the reality is different. What feels like a cornucopia of riches is only countless hours spent in front of a screen, seeking a reality that exists elsewhere.

Supernormal Stimulus

Erotic words, pictures and videos have been around a long time –as has the neurochemical rush from novel mates.

So what makes today's porn uniquely compelling?

Not just its unending novelty. Dopamine fires up for other emotions and stimuli too, all of which often feature prominently in internet porn:

• Surprise,shock (What isn't shocking in today's porn?)

• Anxiety (Using porn that isn't consistent with your values or sexuality.

• Seeking and searching (Wanting, anticipating)

  In fact, internet porn looks very much like what scientists call a supernormal stimulus.

Supernormal stimuli are exaggerated versions of normal stimuli that we falsely perceive as valuable.

When we make an artificial supernormal stimulus our top priority it's because it has triggered a bigger blast of dopamine in our brain's reward circuit than its natural counterpart.

Bingeing on porn feels like a promise of pleasure, but recall that the message of dopamine isn't ‘satisfaction’. It's, ‘keep going, satisfaction is j-u-s-t around the corner’:

I would arouse myself close to orgasm then stop, keep watching porn, and stay at medium levels, always edging. I was more concerned with watching the porn than getting to orgasm. Porn had me locked in focus until eventually I was just exhausted and orgasmed out of surrender.

I went through a period of being single, stuck in a small town where there were very few dating opportunities, and I began to masturbate frequently with porn. I was amazed at how quickly I got sucked in. I began losing days of work surfing porn sites. And yet I didn’t fully appreciate what was happening to me until I was in bed with a woman and caught myself furiously trying to recall an exciting porn image in order to get hard. I did not imagine that it could happen to me. Fortunately, I had a long foundation of healthy sex before porn and I recognized what was going on. After I quit, I started getting laid again, and often. And shortly after that I met my wife

Sexual Conditioning and Addiction

What’s a brain to do when it has unlimited access to a super-stimulating reward it never evolved to handle? Some brains adapt – and not in a good way. The process is gradual. At first, using porn and masturbating to orgasm resolves sexual tension and registers as satisfying. But if you chronically overstimulate yourself, your brain may start to work against you. It protects itself against excessive dopamine by decreasing its responsiveness to it, and you feel less and less gratified.[68] This decreased sensitivity to dopamine pushes some users into an even more determined search for stimulation, which, in turn, drives lasting changes, actual physical alterations of the brain. They can be challenging to reverse.

Improvements since quitting:

- Social anxiety improved drastically – includes confidence, eye contact, comfort interacting, smoothness, etc.

- More energy in general

- Clearer, sharper mind, more concentration

- More vibrant looking face

- Depression alleviated

- Desire to interact with women

- Boners are back!!

Another guy described himself during his porn use:

My friends were drifting away. I gave up socialising to sit in my room and pleasure myself.

- My family loved me unconditionally, but did not enjoy my company. - I had trouble focusing on my job and as well as my classes at my university.

- I had no girlfriend.

- I had an enormous amount of anxiety with human interactions in general.

- I worked out furiously, but never seemed to gain anything.

- Everyone told me I was mentally checked out. I even caught a glimpse of me in a video and you could see a blank stare in my eyes. No one was home. Definition of space cadet. - No ENERGY, no matter how much I slept, NONE. NOTHING. AT ALL. Always tired. Bags under my eyes, pale, acne, and dehydrated.

- I was terribly depressed.

- I had porn-induced ED.

- I was stressed, anxious, confused, and lost.

- I was not living life, but I was not dead either. I was a zombie.

More people's accounts of what they're experiencing.

• Interfering with life, losing control

  Life's natural rewards, such as friendship, exercise and accomplishment, can no longer compete. Your brain now believes that porn is an important goal, and equates it with your survival.

  Testimony:

  Most days I would wank so much that by the end of the day when I orgasmed nothing would even come out. ED my first time sent me into a porn spiral. I would literally wake up, roll over and masturbate, masturbate all day, then at night masturbate and go to sleep. 6 times a day or more, no joke. Safe to say my life was an absolute mess, all the bad ef ects of porn x 10. I knew that the porn and masturbation was af ecting me but I was in denial, masturbation is good for you right? You can’t be addicted to porn. * My lowest point was when I lost out on my pharmacy diploma and lost my girlfriend on the same day, due to porn and procrastination. * I used transgender porn to get hard so I could finish with heterosexual porn. Without realizing, I was soon watching a lot of taboo and extreme porn that I never would have considered a couple of years ago. I couldn’t believe I let myself get to this point. I just couldn’t stop myself.

• Inability to orgasm during sex

  Years of porn use can cause a variety of symptoms, which when examined, lie on a spectrum. Often porn users report that delayed ejaculation (DE) or inability to orgasm (anorgasmia) was a precursor to full blown erectile dysfunction.

  Any of the following may precede or accompany delayed ejaculation and erectile dysfunction:

  -Earlier genres of porn are no longer exciting.

  - Uncharacteristic fetishes develop.

  - Porn use is more sexually exciting than a partner.

  - Sensitivity of penis decreases.

  - Sexual arousal with sexual partners declines.

  - Erections fade when attempting penetration or shortly thereafter.

  - Penetrative sex is not stimulating.

  - Porn fantasy is necessary to maintain erection or interest with partner.

  A few examples:

  I'm so happy right now! I'm a 25-year old male and until last night I had never orgasmed in the presence of a female. I have had sex but never, ever been close to climaxing through any stimulation whatsoever. I started out like most of you, using internet porn from around the age of 15. If only I'd known what I was doing to myself.
  
  

  * (Age 29) 17 years of masturbation and 12 years of escalating to extreme/fetish porn. I started to lose interest in real sex. The build up and release from porn became stronger than it was from sex. Porn of unlimited variety. I could choose what I want to see in the moment. My delayed ejaculation during sex became so bad that sometimes I couldn't orgasm at all. This killed my last desire to have sex.

  
  

• * I’ve lived with delayed ejaculation all my life and I’ve never found anyone (including docs) who are familiar with the dysfunction or have any suggestions for improving it. I began using Viagra and Cialis to help me keep it up long enough to have an orgasm – often well over an hour of intense stimulation. I thought regular doses of porn were also necessary.

  Good news:

  by staying away from porn, I am now experiencing some of the most satisfying sex of my life with no ED meds; and I’ve got two decades on most of you. My erections are more frequent, firmer and longer lasting, and our lovemaking is relaxing and lasts as long as both of us want it to.

  * (4 months without porn) Yesterday was my birthday, and my girlfriend and I had sex. We've been sexually active for months, but I had never orgasmed once during sex, until yesterday. It was the greatest feeling ever. It's a huge weight lifted of both my shoulders and my girlfriend's, as she was feeling rather self-conscious about the issue.

  * I had some pretty bad delayed ejaculation problems with my previous girlfriend. I'm talking 2-3 hours of sex for me to be able to get of (so usually I ended up just stopping and going home and fapping).

  * My success continues in week 10 of my reboot...an even better session with the missus tonight. Not only did I blow my load relatively quickly (defeating DE), I did it without having to go as vigorously as I usually would to finish. I went slow all the way, like never before, and it was brilliant. I could even say that I tried to back right of towards the end as I didn't want to finish so soon! Not bad for someone with a bad case of DE for a number of years.

• Unreliable erections during sexual encounters

  A man who masturbates frequently can soon develop erection problems when he's with his partner. Add porn to the mix, and he can become unable to have sex.

  A penis that has grown accustomed to a particular kind of sensation leading to rapid ejaculation will not work the same way when it's aroused diferently. Orgasm is delayed or doesn't happen at all.

  In 2014, a Canadian sexologists' study showed that problems in sexual functioning are curiously higher in adolescent males than in adult males (which are already rising).

  Said researchers: 53.5% [of male teens] were classified as reporting symptoms indicative of a sexual problem. Erectile dysfunction and low desire were the most common. High rates of limp penises and low sexual desire in teenage males should make everyone take notice as being extremely surprising.

  The recent Cambridge study by addiction neuroscientists found that almost 60% of the addicts they examined, ‘experienced diminished libido or erectile function specifically in physical relationships with women (although not in relationship to the sexually explicit material)’ as a result of excessive porn use.

  Testimonies

  My lowest point was when I couldn't get it up for my girlfriend (now ex-girlfriend) not once, but repeatedly over the course of our three-year relationship. We also never orgasmed from vaginal intercourse. I was visiting doctors; buying books on penis exercises; trying to change habits by masturbating to POV porn (instead of the extreme porn I was addicted to).

  She was totally supportive of me the entire time (this girl really loved me with all her heart). She even bought nice lingerie and made ef orts to be the ‘slut in the bedroom’. BUT even with that, I wasn't turned on because the porn I was into was much more extreme than that (rape, forced sex).
  
  
  

  * I never had a problem getting hard for porn, but when it came to the real thing, I started taking Cialis. Over time, I took more, and even then there were times when it would only partly work. WHAT? Yet I could still get hard to porn.

  In contrast, most older guys began their solo-sex careers with a catalogue, a magazine, a video, grainy TV porn, or amazingly (to today's young guys), their imagination. They also generally had some sex, or at least courtship, with a real partner before they fell under the spell of high-speed porn. Their ‘real sex’ brain pathways may temporarily be overwhelmed by hyperstimulating internet porn, but those pathways are still operational once the distraction of porn is removed:
  
  
  

  (Married, 52) I have many decades of porn under my belt (so to speak). I have not looked at any porn or masturbated for nearly 4 weeks, and all I can say is the change is dramatic. This morning, I woke up with one of the most intense erections I have ever had. My wife noticed, and was nice enough to give me a wonderful BJ, all before 7 AM! Prior to this, I cannot remember ever waking up like this, except when I was a teen. Plus, the feeling was very intense, much better than any porn release I remember.

  * (Married, age 50) I never thought I had ED. I managed to have sex with my wife. Boy, was I wrong! Since my recovery, my erections are way bigger, fuller and longer and the head is flared. My wife comments each time. I also remain erect even after orgasm, and think I could keep it up for a loooong time. My morning wood is also bigger and fuller. I really had ED and was too caught in my addiction to realize it. Keep in mind I am 50, though in pretty good shape for my age and clean living.

  * The reward for 4 months of no porn has been an improved sex life with my wife, and after nearly fifteen years of being together, that is a considerable reward. Hurrah for plain ‘vanilla’sex. I seem to feel more than I used to.

  I masturbated a lot from 13 and used porn from 14. Gradually, it took more to turn me on: bigger fantasies or harder porn, and I stopped getting hard without touching. During sex I would struggle to get an erection or keep it, especially for intercourse. Over the past 7 years I haven't held down a relationship, and the main reason for me has been this problem. Now, the good news: When I realized the cause, I immediately gave up porn. Over the last 6 weeks I held of masturbating as much as I possibly could.

  (My best record was 9 days!) It all paid of . I just went away with a girl for the weekend and it was the best ever. I still get pretty anxious from all the bad experiences over the years. But I just wanted to tell you all it can work, and it's well worth it!

  What about women?

  Porn use also seems to affect the sexual responsiveness of some women: For us girls a moderate porn-related ‘ED’ is tough to spot, but I feel it the same way as guys describe it. There is desire but no arousal. No throbbing, pulling, overwhelming, pleasurable sensation in the clitoris and the lower abdomen, only a kind of mental push towards climax. And I too have PE [premature ejaculation], except it might more accurately be described as PO [premature orgasm]: orgasming while excitation is low, with the quality of the orgasm quite mediocre and unannounced except for a kind of anxiety-like tension localized in the genitals.