Understanding Porn Addiction and the Brain

If you're addicted to pornography, you’re probably wondering how it happened. How did viewing pornography become something that controls your thoughts? The answer to this question is in the understanding of porn addiction and the brain.

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The Brain’s Reward System

The brain has an internal reward system to help people learn what feels good. Essentially, when you do something pleasurable, your brain’s reward system triggers, telling you that it feels good and making you want to do more of that thing. 

Dopamine is the neurochemical the brain’s reward system releases. The brain releases dopamine in anticipation of something feeling good and during that activity. Therefore, you perceive and remember the experience as pleasurable. 

When your brain releases dopamine, tiny bursts of it go into receptors. Dopamine receptors receive and process dopamine at a regular rate. But, when you get dopamine too frequently from the same source, it shuts down these dopamine receptors. This shutdown means you have to do more of what initially made you feel good to get the previous good feelings.

This is how pornography addiction forms. Initially, you may have viewed porn as a way to get a dopamine hit — to feel good. Your brain remembered this positive feeling, and it made you want to look at porn again. Then you started looking at porn habitually. Eventually, you stopped getting that positive feeling as your dopamine receptors shut down. Then, you needed to look at more porn and more extreme porn to get the same release. The need for dopamine created the addiction. But why did you crave dopamine so much in the first place?

Dopamine and Trauma

Sex and pornography addictions are frequently the result of unresolved trauma. A person can use pornography and the associated dopamine release to soothe or calm themselves in stressful or challenging situations — to make themselves feel better emotionally. It serves as a temporary escape.

Causes of pornography addiction include:

• Coping. Porn can make you feel better temporarily, but it’s not a permanent solution. The longer you continue using porn as a coping method, the higher your tolerance becomes.
• Avoiding. People who use porn to avoid feelings of intimacy may have difficulty forming or maintaining intimate relationships. Detaching from true intimacy and preferring porn to real life is at the core of avoidance.
• Escaping. Someone who experienced abuse, neglect, bullying, or other trauma may use porn as a way to escape and feel safe.

Understanding Porn Addiction: Chemical Dependence

You can develop a chemical dependence on dopamine, even though the brain creates it naturally. This dependence causes you to seek out things that trigger a dopamine release — pornography, sex, or drugs, for example.

Responses to dopamine chemical dependence include:

• Needing More. When you experience stress or anxiety, you’ll seek out things that give you a sense of control and release. You are attempting to feel better through the only coping mechanisms you know.
• Downregulation. You’ll start to experience downregulation, which is when receptors make your brain and body less receptive to the substance you’re seeking. Essentially, you build tolerance by shutting down the receptors in your brain.
• Higher Risk. As dopamine receptors shut down, a person’s sexual behavior escalates. This escalation is because of the effect porn addiction has on the brain. Watching porn won’t be nearly as exciting as it used to be. Therefore people begin to view more “hardcore” porn.

As your dopamine receptors shut down, you’ll crave more of the release. That’s because an addiction has formed, and you are chemically dependent on the feeling just to feel “normal.” Unfortunately, at the same time, the release became more difficult to achieve because you’ve used the method so frequently.

Repercussions of Porn Consumption

The untreated trauma and dependence on dopamine that results in addiction have repercussions. Those repercussions go beyond the addiction itself and affect all areas of your life.

Repercussions of porn addiction include:

• Relationship Issues. People who are accustomed to watching pornography to regulate their nervous system gravitate toward it. They may ignore romantic relationships, even if they’re already in one, in pursuit of porn. This decision causes problems within relationships or developing relationships.
• Sexual Dysfunctions. As the brain becomes more desensitized to pornography and similar stimuli, it may result in difficulty ejaculating, struggling to experience an erection, or even disinterest in a human partner. These struggles often lead to low satisfaction with one’s sex life.
• Mental Health Concerns. People with porn addictions are more likely to develop other mental health disorders, like depression or anxiety. People addicted to pornography become dissatisfied with their lives and embarrassed by their behaviors.
• Lack of Joy. For habitual porn users, their first thought in stressful times is to turn to pornography. They watch porn instead of doing something that would bring them joy, like seeking comfort from a loved one, exercising, or meditating. This habit makes them less able to experience happiness and true joy.
• Normalizing Violence. The normalization of sexual violence goes hand-in-hand with the escalation of porn usage. The majority of pornography features sexual violence. A regularly-exposed person may perceive this violence as typical and even come to expect it in their own lives.

Understanding Porn Addiction and Its Treatment

Begin Again Institute specializes in treating sex and pornography addictions. BAI is the oldest sex addiction treatment facility in the United States. We have a proven track record using the TINSA® (Trauma-Induced Sexual Addiction) model, a perspective for the treatment of sexual addictions that focuses on treating the root of addiction rather than the symptoms. 

Begin Again Institute offers a 14-Day Men’s Intensive to help you stop destructive behaviors, heal from the root cause, and jumpstart your recovery. If you’d like a faith-based recovery option, try our Boulder Recovery 14-Day Christian Men’s Intensive. It provides the same foundational healing methods but is steeped in the Christian faith.

BAI also offers a free virtual Partner Support Program to help your loved ones heal from the betrayal caused by addiction.

Healing your brain from pornography addiction is possible. Contact us today to learn more.