If you were to ask a random man on the street to name his most important sex organ, the answer would be predictable. But sexual desire and arousal do not begin in the genitals. A man’s most important sex organ is his brain.
When changes occur in parts of the brain related to sex, it also changes the nature of our sexual desire and the ability to choose how to act upon it.
In the last decade, the field of neuroscience has exploded our understanding of the human brain. Recent discoveries have led us to understand that online pornography overstimulates the brain for at least four different reasons. I briefly describe each of these below.
Online porn overstimulates the brain by providing nearly constant novelty.
Our brains crave novelty, and the Internet provides an endless variety of novel sexual images. When I was a young man looking at magazine centerfolds, images lost their appeal within a short amount of time. But with online porn, new images are instantly available with the click of a mouse. With each new image, our limbic system releases a burst of dopamine, which tells us we gotta have it.
The connection between novelty and sexual arousal is well established by what scientists call the Coolidge effect. After dropping a male rat into a cage with a receptive female, researchers initially observed intense copulation between the rats. Eventually, the male rat exhausted himself; even when the willing female rat wanted more, he was spent.
Guess what happened next? When the original female was replaced with a new receptive female, the male rat immediately revived and began to copulate again. This pattern was repeated over and over until the male rat was literally exhausted. With the introduction of a novel sexual mate, this process will be repeated again and again until the male succumbs to exhaustion or death.
In the real world, even Hugh Hefner doesn’t enjoy an endless supply of women to revive his sexual capacities at any given time. But in the unreal world of online porn, new and ever more stimulating “mates” provide complete novelty without ever needing to step away from the computer.
As long as the novelty continues, the arousal continues—while dopamine fuels the desire engine. One man I recently spoke with averaged six hours a day viewing porn. In his case, every click on a new image released more dopamine, which inflamed his desire. You can see that a vicious cycle is set in place.
Online porn overstimulates the brain because of an unlimited supply.
Internet porn overstimulates the brain because it provides no limits on the amount we can consume. In food and substance addictions, a person either runs out of the drug or food, or is physically unable to tolerate more. A man can eat only so many pizzas or smoke only so much crack before reaching the obvious limits. With Internet porn an infinite supply is available. And as long as a man has an Internet connection, he can continue to binge. This is why it’s not uncommon for addicted men to stay up all night viewing porn, and even lose track of time.
Online porn overstimulates the brain by sidestepping tolerance.
Tolerance occurs when a person needs more of the substance or activity to get the same effect. Over time, we grow increasingly tolerant to certain stimulants. With drugs and food, tolerance typically means eating more frequently or consuming larger amounts. With Internet porn, a man can overcome the tolerance effect two ways. He can increase the amount by spending more time viewing porn. Or he can overcome his tolerance by escalating the intensity of the images he sees.
It’s for this reason that men often move from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue to soft porn to hardcore porn to degradation, bestiality, rape, or other scenes typically deemed repulsive and shocking. They do this not because they are predisposed to it, but because the strong emotions of shock, disgust, or shame provide the sought-after dopamine burst. Gravitating toward aberrant sexual behavior becomes the only way to get a fix.
Online porn overstimulates the brain because it’s on demand.
Unlike substances that require the user to arrange for a fix, a man carries a forever stash of porn in his mind without even turning on the computer. Every time the images come to mind, he experiences a burst of dopamine in his neuropathways.
Combine these four factors and you have a perfect storm brewing in the neurochemical sea of the brain. Over time, as the brain is overstimulated, physical and structural changes occur, and a man becomes addicted to his own brain chemistry.
In Part 2 I will discuss the impact of overstimulation on the brain, and why it sets up a vicious cycle of addiction.
Question: Have you ever thought about the struggle with porn as having anything to do with the brain? How does understanding porn’s impact on the brain change your perspective about the struggle?