Ever wonder why watching porn and masturbation(fapping) feels so good? Why it’s so addictive and hard to quit? Why it gives us pleasure for a short amount of time and leaves us craving for more?
In this article, I’m gonna answer all these questions and explain to you how porn and masturbation(PMO) damages your brain from a scientific point of view.
Before i start answering all these questions, you need to understand what Dopamine is and what role does it play in our body because understanding dopamine and it’s functions is important to understand all the above questions.
What is Dopamine?
Dopamine is a type of neurotransmitter. Your body makes it and your nervous system uses it to send messages between nerve cells.
It is known as the “feel good” neurotransmitter. It plays a role in how we feel pleasure.
Dopamine is released when your brain is expecting a reward. When you see a delicious food,your brain releases dopamine which excites you and motivates you to eat that food. When you see an attractive woman, your brain releases dopamine which motivates you to get to know her and reproduce(mate) with her.
Dopamine is also released when you eat food that you crave or have sex. That’s why you feel pleasure during those activities. Releasing dopamine is the brain’s way to reward you for accomplishing those activities.
Dopamine is the reason you feel excitement and joy after seeing a delicious food or an attractive woman.
Summary:- Dopamine is known as the “feel good” neurotransmitter. It is the reason you feel excitement and joy after seeing a delicious food or an attractive woman.
Porn, Masturbation and Dopamine
Watching porn and then masturbating also releases a huge amount of dopamine. Your brain doesn’t differentiate between having real sex and watching virtual sex(porn). When you engage in porn, your brain thinks you are having real sex and releases dopamine to reward you and when you masturbate your brain again releases dopamine because it thinks that you’ve reproduced and passed on your genes. That’s why you feel pleasure just after ejaculating. Releasing dopamine is your brain’s way of rewarding you for passing on your genes.
You might be wondering why does our brain reward us for eating a delicious food or passing on our genes? Here’s why:- Our ancestors were hunter gatherers and it was necessary for them to feel motivated enough to look for food and pursue members of the opposite sex to reproduce and pass on their genes. That’s why, over time, brain created a system to motivate them to pursue things which are necessary for existence(food and reproduction) and reward them whenever they accomplish those activities by releasing dopamine.
It should also be noted that masturbating without porn with the help of your imagination also releases dopamine because your brain thinks you’ve just passed on your genes and rewards you for doing that.
Take a look at the comparison of dopamine release during various activities
Since your brain can’t differentiate between having real sex and ejaculating after watching porn. It considers both activities as same.
Although cocaine and various other drugs release more dopamine than sex, with cocaine and other drugs your dopamine spikes for a short period of time and then comes back to normal and spike again when you take another dose of that substance. But, with porn, you can keep your dopamine level high for a very long period of time by watching different porn videos. Due to the easy availability and unlimited no. of porn videos available on the internet, you can keep your dopamine level high as long as you want, that’s not the case with drugs due to its high cost and limited availability. So, in a way you can say that excessive porn addiction is even worse than drug addiction.
When you click on a new porn video, you are literally controlling your dopamine levels with the click of a button and keeping your dopamine level high by watching new videos one after other.
The Problem
The problem is that when your brain releases dopamine, it desensitises your dopamine receptors, reducing your no. of dopamine receptors. Due to desensitisation, your dopamine receptors will now need more dopamine to get the same pleasure level. That’s why after watching porn of a particular category for sometime, you don’t get excited anymore and you feel the urge to switch to more “forbidden” or “hardcore” category of porn. For example, After a while, watching a “normal” 1-on-1 porn doesn’t excite you anymore and you feel the urge to switch to gang bang or BDSM category of porn to boost declining dopamine level.
The Unending Cycle
Because of the huge amount of dopamine released by your brain while watching porn, your dopamine receptors become desensitised and that huge amount of dopamine becomes the new normal. Now, you need a relatively more amount of dopamine to give you the same pleasure. More and more desensitised your dopamine receptors become, more and more dopamine they need to give you the same pleasure as before. As a result, you start searching for activities which will give you a huge rush of dopamine and activities which don’t give you that huge rush of dopamine, don’t excite you anymore.
As a result you start loosing interest in activities which you once enjoyed and keep searching for activities which will give you a huge rush of dopamine and after a while those high dopamine activities stop giving you the same pleasure due to your dopamine receptors becoming desensitised and you search for even higher dopamine releasing activities. It’s a never ending cycle.
Normal v/s Porn Addict Brain
According to a study conducted at Cambridge University in 2014, researchers compared the brains of healthy volunteers and those with excessive porn addictions. The results of the study were alarming.
Those bright green things you see inside the brain are “reward centre”. The reward centre of porn addicts lit up when they were exposed to porn, this was not the case for the group who was not addicted to porn. It is similar to other studies on drug addicts where the reward centre of drug addicts lit up when exposed to drugs.
Want to know more about how internet pornography changes your brain and how you can quit it, check out the book “Your Brain on Porn” by Gary Wilson on Amazon. It’s the best book I’ve read on the topic.
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Conclusion:-
When you watch porn and masturbate, your brain releases a huge amount of dopamine as a reward for passing on your genes as it can’t differentiate between real sex and porn. That huge rush of dopamine, in turn, desensitises your dopamine receptors and that high level of dopamine becomes the “new normal”. Now, you need relatively more dopamine to give you the same pleasure as before, as a result, you search for an even “hardcore” type of porn to give you the same pleasure as before. Its a never ending cycle.
Also, daily activities which can’t provide that huge amount of dopamine, don’t excite you anymore and you start losing interest in daily activities which you once enjoyed. You lose motivation to do things and keep coming back to porn to give you pleasure.
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