Introducing Pornography to the Brain
What happens when we don’t obey the natural design of our bodies—namely, our brains? When we aren’t true to our original purpose of creation? It may be helpful to consider a few common examples of what happens when we don’t use our bodies as designed. One example is when people become obese or consume larger amounts of foods with high sugar content. In this case, type 2 diabetes is frequently experienced. Another example is of Olympic gymnasts. The toll on their bodies because of the excessive impact causes joint problems, early onset of arthritis, and other health problems for years to come.
LIke a Screwdriver in a Microwave
These are examples of our bodies reacting to being used in ways they were not intended. Misusing the body—that is, our brains—by consuming pornography yields a similar destructive result. A more radical example would be what would happen if you put a screwdriver in the microwave and turned it on? What happens, in this case, is obvious when we use things as they are not designed!
When we lust, look at pornography, masturbate, and behave in other inappropriate ways, we are engaging in false stimulation and unnatural stimulation. Such acts, especially internet pornography, elevates dopamine levels in the brain to a spiked level for an abnormally long time. This creates an elevation that boosts pleasure centers to a level that becomes intensely addictive.
Overstimulating the brain in this way creates a situation where the dopamine receptors are supercharged or overloaded. When this happens, they begin to shut down—triggering the desire and a need for more stimulus in order to maintain the same dopamine levels. This supercharged state makes us feel good and the brain wants more of it.
Your Brain Keeps Shutting Down When You Watch Porn
The problem is that with some of the dopamine receptors shutting down, it takes more and more to reach the same state of feeling “normal.” In effect, our pleasure center is set to an unnatural elevated level. This also creates a situation where even other experiences in life that once delivered pleasure begin to feel subdued or don’t create the same feelings of pleasure they once did, leading to depression, isolation, and mood changes.
We need a higher level of dopamine to feel pleasure or, for that matter, to even feel normal. To achieve this, we need more stimulus—more porn, harder porn, riskier behavior, and, in some cases, even violent sexual behavior. Our compass for risk, moral judgement, and tolerance becomes clouded. Add in the fact that during sexual activity the oxytocin hormone is also introduced for bonding, but the brain has difficulty bonding to an inanimate object or image on the screen. (Note: Oxytocin, in neurological circles, is also nicknamed the “cuddle drug” as it is instrumental in the relational bonding of two people during sex).
In essence, we create a “false bond” so we are left unsatisfied, thus compounding the need to repeat the behavior to attempt to feel satisfied. Further, our attachment system is left “stunted.”
As discussed in “Your Brain On Porn Part 1” [hyperlink], our self-worth system needs these attachment and romanticism systems. We attempt to seek pleasure through behavior that is designed for personal bonding, emotional connection, and self-worth, but instead, we are left with a pleasure spike from dopamine and other endorphins. And yet the entire process is destructively incomplete, leaving us to want or even “need” more of the experience to feel satisfied. In reality, we are unsatisfied and left still craving to seek the insatiable need for peace and harmony as God created us to experience. We never achieve this harmony through pornography, thus fueling the addictive process.
What Is Addiction?
So what is addiction? The clinical definition of addiction is: A chronic and relapsing brain disease that is characterized by the compulsive seeking and use of a drug or behavior, despite negative or harmful consequences.
Neural Pathways Rewritten
When we repeat the process I just described, our neural pathways are rewritten—rewritten from the God-designed state from which we were created. Repeating this behavior over and over creates deep paths in our brain as if we were walking across grass repeatedly, turning it to dirt, then to a rut.
In most cases, we find that this euphoric experience of pornography and orgasm feels so good that we seek it for pure pleasure—just like some seek drugs or alcohol. It is so pleasurable, in fact, that we begin to substitute this pleasure as our outlet for all kinds of behavior and needs.
It easily becomes our “medication” and escape from negative life events and even our reward for positive events. In most cases, we aren’t even aware that we are using pornography in this way. Since we consider sex to be a natural human experience and because the porn experience is pleasurable, plus it doesn’t leave us “seemingly” mentally or physically inhibited afterward like drugs or alcohol, we are blind to the effects.
Neural Pathway SuperHighway
Each time we seek pornography after an unpleasant life experience, we deepen the neural pathway of desiring pornography as a medication to offset a negative life experience. Additionally, the experience of effectively using a person, particularly in fantasy, for your own pleasure trains your brain to use real-life people as objects for your pleasure.
This pornography use creates a new neural pathway. Think of it like a freeway with multiple “on-ramps” within a short distance. The freeway itself is engaging in porn and each on-ramp can be viewed as a road taken to search for a porn scenario or scene to act out. Also, engaging in real-life experiences, such as lusting after a woman you see, also creates an on-ramp. Each experience of pornography engagement widens a particular on-ramp. And each time you experience a new fantasy flavor (a certain scenario in porn consumption), it creates another on-ramp. This also happens each time you engage in a lusting experience in real life (like lusting after the barista at Starbucks). Repeating this process in effect creates multiple on-ramps to the neural pathway “superhighway.”
Here’s what ultimately happens: When a trigger is experienced, such as seeing a young girl in tight jeans, your brain nearly “automatically” jumps to an “on-ramp”—that is, the dopamine begins to flow, sexual pleasure is craved, and the overwhelming desire to look at pornography and sexual release is experienced. You are training your brain to go from a glance at a woman to “needing” pornography. These on-ramp triggers begin to also link to unpleasant life experiences, such as being criticized by your wife or being cut off on the freeway.
Feelings of worthlessness, anger, and so on, then the need for pleasurable escape is desired; and without realizing it, you turn to pornography for escape or basically to medicate the negative feelings.
You not only used pornography as an escape, but you just created a new on-ramp to the porn neural pathway superhighway. So, next time, you feel the same way, your brain says, “I know how to deal with this unpleasantness and the feelings I am experiencing” and off to the computer you go. Maybe this feeling will come on when you are in the bathroom while on a break at work, maybe late at night when everyone else has gone to bed, or maybe even in a week from now…but it all plays a role in building the porn neural pathway superhighway.
These on-ramps and resulting behaviors developed by the porn highway are, in reality, dysfunctions in brain circuits. This dysfunction results in a person pathologically pursuing neurological rewards.
Now an important note: This phenomenon can happen with any activity, including alcohol, drugs, gambling, even exercise, and gossip. It can happen with any behavior that creates a “happy place.” Not all of these behaviors are bad, of course, which is a hint to how we go about healing from addiction—by rewiring our neural pathways for a positive effect.
What we must realize is that our pathways are triggered by outside stimuli and events—any attractive woman, seductive TV commercial, negative feelings, a bad day at work, really anything that flags old feelings quickly and instantly drops us into the neural pathway rut. The only way to correct this is to ‘write’ new neural pathways. Consistent engagement in the new healthy neural pathways takes advantage of the brain’s neuroplasticity, allowing the old paths to fade. Note, the Restoring God’s Foundation program goes into more detail on exactly how to accomplish this.
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Greg Mancini
Excellent, excellent, EXCELLENT!