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Video Transcript:
Inspired by the last talker I’m going to have a little song about Internet porn. No I’m just kidding.
The widespread use of Internet porn is one of the fastest moving, most global experiments ever unconsciously conducted. Nearly every young guy with an internet access becomes an eager test subject. Canadian researcher Simon Lajeunesse found that most boys seek pornography by age 10 driven by a brain that is suddenly fascinated by sex. Now users perceive Internet porn as far more compelling than porn of the past. Why is that? Unending novelty.
In this Australian experiment it’s not mere nudity but novelty that gets arousal skyrocketing. Subjects watched 22 porn displays. See that Spike? That’s where the researchers switched to porn the guys hadn’t seen before. What happened? Their erections and their brains fired up. Why all the excitement? Mother nature likes to keep a male fertilizing, willing females as long as any new ones are around. In that top line the ram, he needs more and more time to mate with the same old ewe. But if he keeps switching females, the bottom line, well it’s just not the same. He gets the job done in two minutes flat and keeps going until he is utterly exhausted. This is known as the Coolidge Effect. Without the Coolidge Effect there would be no Internet porn.
This old mammalian program – the Coolidge Effect perceives each novel female on a guys screen as a genetic opportunity. To keep a guy fertilizing the screen his brain releases the go get it neural chemical, dopamine, for each novel mate or image. Eventually the RAM will tire but as long as the guy can keep clicking he can keep going and so will his dopamine.With Internet porn a guy can see more hot babes in 10 minutes than his ancestors could see in several lifetimes. The problem is he has a hunter gather brain. A heavy user’s brain rewires itself to this genetic bonanza so it carefully, his brain becomes associated with this porn harem . Such behaviors that are associated with this are being alone, voyeurism, clicking, searching, multiple tabs, fast forwarding, constant novelty, shock and surprise. As one young guy once asked, are we the first generation to masturbate left-handed?
Now, real sex in contrast is courtship, touching, being touched, smells, pheromones, emotional connection, interaction with a real person. Now what happens when our guy finally gets with a real mate? Well, researchers don’t know much about the effects of Internet porn for several reasons.
In 2009 when Lajeunesse tried to study porn’s impact, he couldn’t find any college age males who weren’t using it. So the first serious dilemma is that studies have no control group. Now this creates a huge blind spot. Imagine if all guys started smoking at age 10 and there were no groups that didn’t. We would think that long cancer is normal for all guys. Undaunted by his lack of non-users Lajeunesse asked 20 male students – Is Internet porn effecting you or your attitudes towards women? Their answer – No, I don’t think so. But they have been using it for about a decade then, pretty much nonstop. This is like asking a fish what it thinks about water. Which brings us to a second problem.
Now researchers haven’t asked porn users about the symptoms Zimbardo described in the demise of guys. Arousal addiction symptoms are easily mistaken for such things as ADHD, social anxiety, depression, concentration problems, performance anxiety, OCD and host of others. Now healthcare providers often assume that these conditions are primary, perhaps the cause of addiction but never really the result of an addiction. As a consequence they often medicate these guys without really inquiring about if they have an Internet addiction. So guys never realize that they could overcome these symptoms simply by changing their behavior.
Now, the third problem is, it’s hard to believe that sexual activity can cause addiction because sex is healthy. But Internet porn is not sex. Internet porn is as difference from real sex as today’s video games are from checkers. Watching a screen full of naked body parts won’t automatically protect one from arousal addiction. In this Dutch study, – here’s the title [“Predicting compulsive Internet use is all about sex!”] they found that in fact of all activities on the Internet porn has the most potential to become addictive. Here’s why, this ancient program, The Reward Circuit, evolve to drive us towards natural rewards such as sex, bonding and food. As a consequence extreme versions of natural rewards have a you unique ability to capture us. For example high calorie foods or hot novel babes give us extra dopamine. Too much dopamine though can override our natural satiation mechanisms. For example give rats unlimited access to junk food and almost all of them will binge to obesity. This is also why four out of five Americans are overweight and where half of those are obese that is addicted to food.
Now in contrast to natural rewards drugs such as cocaine or alcohol only hook about 10% of users whether they are rats or humans. This binge mechanism for food or sex was once an evolutionary advantage. In essence it is getting it while the getting is good. Now you can think of wolves packing away 20 pounds of meat per kill or it’s mating season and you are the alpha male. What if mating season never ends all those hits off dopamine’s can tell your brain to do two things. First they say – Man you have hit the evolutionary jack pot! Second, they kick in a molecular switch called Delta-FosB, I know it’s a fancy word, but dopamine kicks in Delta-FosB and that starts to accumulate in the brain’s reward circuit. Now with access and chronic consumption of drugs or natural rewards this buildup of Delta-FosB starts to alter the brain and promotes a cycle of binging and craving. If the binging continues the Delta-FosB builds up and it can lead to brain changes seen in all addicts. So the dominoes are excess consumption, excess dopamine, Delta-FosB, brain changes. One of the first changes is a numbed pleasure response, it kicks in and so everyday pleasures really doesn’t satisfy a porn addict.
At the same time other physical changes in the brain makes the brain hyper react to porn. Everything else in the porn users life is sort of boring but porn is super exciting. Finally his will power erodes as his frontal cortex changes. I can’t emphasize this enough, all addiction shares the same brain changes and the same molecular switch that kicks them in, Delta-FosB.
Now scientists have used brain scans to measure these changes in drug addicts. Up here these scans show up reduced pleasure response in drug addicts. These and several other changes have also been seen in gambling addicts, food addicts and very recently in video game addicts and now in Internet addicts. I apologize for filling up the slide with brain studies just notice the dates but I want you to know that they exist. So far all brain research points in only one direction constant novelty of the click can cause addiction. Now we know this because when scientists examine former Internet addicts they find that these brain changes were reversing themselves. Unfortunately none of these studies isolate porn users but they do include them.
Here is the game changer. At last we have a group of guys who are no longer using Internet porn. That’s right heavy users are voluntarily giving it up by the thousands. These guys are the missing control group in the great porn experiment. They are showing experts what changing one single variable can do. I call it the resurrection of guys as opposed to the demise of guys. Now before I continue you probably want to know why any porn loving guy in his right mind would give it up? Two words – erectile dysfunction. Internet porn is killing young men sexual performance. Now, Zimbardo said young guys are flaming out with women.
This survey by an Italian urologists confirms what we have witnessed over the last few years. Now sexual enhancements drugs often stop working for these guys if they ever did because the problem isn’t below the belt where Viagra works nor is the problem really psychological. It’s due to physical changes in the brain, those addiction related changes. Their numb brains are sending weaker and weaker signals of their bananas. As Dr. Foresta says “It starts with lower reactions to porn sites, then there is a general drop in libido and in the end it becomes impossible to get an erection”.
There are three takeaways from this. First Foresta is describing a classic addiction process, gradual desensitization. Second Internet porn is qualitatively different from Playboy. Widespread useful ED has never been seen before. And finally ED is often the only symptom that get these guys attention. The question is what less obvious symptoms are they missing? Most don’t figure that out until after they quit. Here’s a guy in his late 20s. I’ve been to psychologist and psychiatrist for the last eight years and had been diagnosed with depression, severe social anxiety, severe memory impairment and a few others have tried effexor, ritalin, zynic, paxil. Dropped out of two different colleges, been fired twice, use pot to calm my social anxiety. I’ve been approached by quite a few women, I guess due to my looks and status but they quickly flew away due to my incredible weirdness. I’ve been a hard core porn addicts since age 14. For the last two years I’ve been experimenting and finally realize that porn was an issue. I stopped it completely two months ago. It has been very difficult but so far incredibly worth it. I have since quit my remaining medication. My anxiety is non-existent. My memory and focus are sharper than they’ve ever been. I feel like a huge chick magnet and my ED is gone too. I seriously think I had a rebirth. A second chance at life.
This is why pockets of guys are appearing all over the web, bodybuilding sites, sports sites, pick a party sites, wherever men congregate. In essence they are seeking a nueral chemical rebirth. Here’s a group on Reddit.com that call themselves fapstronauts. Fap being a slang for solo sex but what they really mean is giving up porn. They’ve added about 2000 members since I’ve captured this picture a month ago. This movement to unhook from porn is growing rapidly, in fact groups are springing up all across the web and in Europe too. But there’s a bizarre fly in the ointment.
Guys in their early 20s aren’t regaining their erectile health as quickly as older guys. How can a 50 year old get his mojo back quicker than a twenty something? The answer, even though older guys have been using porn a whole lot longer they didn’t start on today’s Internet porn. Now we know this is a key variable because the older guys did not started having sexual problems until after they got high-speed Internet. Now today’s young teen start on high-speed Internet when their brains are at their peak at dopamine production and neuro-plasticity. This is also when they are most vulnerable to addiction but there is another risk. By adulthood teen strengthen heavily used circuits and prune back unused ones. So by age 22 or so a guys sexual taste can be like deep rut in his brain. This can cause panic if a guy has escalated to extreme porn or porn that no longer matches his sexual orientation. Fortunately brains are plastic so his taste can revert once he quits porn.
As a guy returns to normal sensitivity his brain looks around for the rewards it evolves to see. Such as friendly interaction and of course real mate. Here is one more example of what we hear every day. I feel like the next the Sir Isaac Newton or Leonardo da Vinci. Since I quit a month ago I’ve literally: started a business, taking up piano, been studying French everyday been programming, drawing, writing, started managing my finances and I have more awesome ideas that I know what to do with. My confidence is sky high, I already feel like I can talk to any girl. I’m the same guy who took 2 1/2 extra years to graduate from college because of procrastination and depression. I’ll conclude with a wish, I would like to see some Bartow’s guys who are wiping out and their caregivers and experts listen to the thousands thousands of men who are teaching us about arousal addiction by escaping it.
Thanks for listening.
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I remember watching the TED talk a while ago.
Anyways, great post mate.