Your Brain on Porn

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[link to yourbrainonporn.com]

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Many symptoms, one cause

People arrive here with lots of different symptoms, which they're not always sure are due to their heavy porn use. Confusion is understandable because the symptoms look so different:

•distress about escalation to more extreme porn
•copulatory impotence (can get it up for porn, but not partners)
•frequent masturbation, little satisfaction ("feeling like a lust-ball all day")
•severe, worsening social anxiety
•growing erectile dysfunction, even with extreme porn.
•morphing porn tastes that don't match sexual orientation (HOCD)
•inability to concentrate, extreme restlessness
•Depression, anxiety, brain fog
There's good reason to believe these symptoms arise from addiction-related brain changes, as the reward circuit contains structures that influence emotions, moods, stress response, the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system. The physical and biochemical adaptations caused by long-term overstimulation can be reversed.

Rebalancing the brain

If this phenomenon is underlying your symptoms, you need to restore the sensitivity of your reward system, weaken addiction pathways, and strengthen executive control. We call this process "rebooting." The best way to reboot is to give your brain a rest from all intense artificial sexual stimulation— including porn, fantasizing about porn, chat rooms, erotic stories, surfing for pictures—until it bounces back to normal responsiveness.

Those addicted to porn often find the rebooting process easier and faster when they drastically reduce or eliminate masturbation. This abstinence from masturbation & orgasm isn't a lifestyle - it's a temporary method for deepening recovery and reducing relapses into porn. Obviously, this process is initially very difficult. The brain can no longer rely on the artificially intense "fix" of dopamine (and other neurochemicals) associated with heavy porn use.

In addition to desensitization, porn use strengthened nerve connections linking the short-term relief of Internet porn with any other trigger your brain associates with porn (sensitization). Triggers such as being home alone, sexy images, or stress and anxiety, can activate your brain's porn rut. The only way to weaken these subconscious links is to stop using (reinforcing) that brain pathway, and seek your mood medicine elsewhere. Eliminating porn and porn fantasy leads to rewiring and eventual weakening of sensitized pathways and cravings.

The other half of the rewiring process involves strengthening your executive control, which resides in your frontal cortex (behind your forehead). Assessing risk, making long-range plans, and controlling impulses, are under the control of the frontal cortex. The term hypofrontality is often used when describing how addictions weaken and inhibit these self-control circuits. It takes time, and consistency, to return these circuits to full working order.

Remember: Your freedom lies in balancing your brain. Then you can choose whether you will take your porn-arousal pathway or some healthier pathway. Needless to say, rebooting doesn't guarantee you can safely use Internet porn in the future. The human brain remains vulnerable to a downward spiral from too much of any intense stimulus, and your brain has a strong porn pathway, which will always be easy to reactivate.

Many have stopped using porn and recovered their lives. So can you.

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