With the rise in high-speed internet pornography, more and more people are finding themselves addicted to porn and masturbation. Porn and masturbation addiction is taking a toll not only on their mental health but also their social life and overall well-being.
Various research has shown that porn and masturbation can negatively impact your mental health. In this article, we’re gonna take a look at 5 ways porn and masturbation can negatively affect your mental health.
Effect of Porn And Masturbation on Your Mental Health
Here are the 5 ways porn and masturbation negatively impacts your mental health:-
1. Depression
Excessive porn usage or PMO(porn, masturbation, orgasm) addiction can cause depression. Some people believe that PMO addiction can worsen your depression but it can’t cause it. However, many PMO addicts admit that PMO addiction indeed caused their depression.
You can read one such story of a PMO addict on Reddit by CLICKING HERE.
PMO addiction desensitizes the dopamine receptors in your brain making you not enjoy little things in life. As a result, you won’t enjoy socializing, working, exercising, etc. In some extreme cases, you won’t even feel like bathing, brushing your teeth, combing your hair, etc. Daily life activities will start feeling like a burden, which is definitely a symptom of depression.
Many PMO addicts have said that they didn’t even feel like taking a shower, brushing their teeth, combing their hair, going out of the house, etc. All they did was lay in their bed and watch porn. As long as they watched porn, they felt “normal”, and the moment they stopped watching porn and start doing something else, they started feeling extremely sad.
Once your get addicted to porn and masturbation, nothing feels pleasurable. Porn and masturbation screw up your brain and make you dependent on it.
I asked a question to my Instagram page(@the_fapstronaut) followers whether they felt depressive symptoms due to excessive use of porn and masturbation or not. Let’s look at the results.
96% of people said that excessive use of porn and masturbation gave them depressive symptoms, while 4% said it didn’t.
My Instagram page is about nofap(no porn, no masturbation) lifestyle. People following the page are practicing nofap and have experienced the harmful side-effects of porn and masturbation. So, they are perfect candidates for taking this survey.
2. Anxiety
PMO addiction can also make you socially anxious.
PMO addicts have often reported that they didn’t feel like going outside their home, didn’t feel like talking to anybody, not even to their parents.
Even when they talked to somebody, they felt extremely anxious and couldn’t hold eye contact with the person. A PMO addict always tries to avoid social gatherings and makes every possible excuse to avoid a conversation.
Social anxiety make it harder for them to make new friends and enjoy life. As a result, PMO addicts suffer in silence.
I asked this question to my Instagram page(@the_fapstronaut) followers. Let’s look at what they say.
91% of people said that porn and masturbation made them socially anxious, while 9% said it didn’t.
Many PMO addicts have confessed that their social anxiety was caused due to porn and masturbation and their anxiety went away once they stopped watching porn and jerking off. You can read one such story on Reddit by CLICKING HERE.
3. Social Isolation
Watching porn and jerking off make you isolate yourself from the rest of the world. The more you indulge in PMO(porn, masturbation, orgasm), the more you feel socially isolated.
PMO addicts often report that they lock themselves up in their room and avoid going outside. As a result, they lose their friends and many opportunities in life.
Porn and masturbation are highly addictive behaviors. Once you get addicted to it, it’s harder to get rid of it. The secrecy involved with porn and masturbation makes it harder for others to identify a PMO addict.
There aren’t many support groups available for PMO addicts unlike alcohol and drug addicts. So, a PMO addict doesn’t know where to get help from.
This Covid-19 Pandemic is making it a lot harder for people. It has pushed many to porn and masturbation addiction and it has become even harder to seek help.
4. Brain Fog
Excessive use of Porn and masturbation can cause brain fog.
With brain fog, a person might feel less mentally sharp than usual. Thoughts and emotions may feel numb, and everyday activities may seem to require more effort. Some people describe it as a foggy haze that makes it harder to access their thoughts or plan ahead. You may feel confused or disorganized or find it hard to focus or put your thoughts into words.
Brain fog is also linked with anxiety and depression, meaning brain fog could be a symptom of anxiety or depression.
PMO addicts often report that they can’t think clearly. They also say that their brain feels heavier and denser. As a result, their grades go down and they start lacking behind in their work.
Many teenage PMO addicts have said that they couldn’t focus on school due to porn and masturbation addiction. They lost all interest in school and either their grades dropped or they dropped out of school.
We don’t give proper attention to porn and masturbation addiction. Some “experts” even say that there are no such things as porn addiction or masturbation addiction. They even claim that porn and masturbation are good for you. As a result, people often can’t associate their symptoms like anxiety and depression with their usage of porn and masturbation.
Let’s look at what people say about this.
95% of people said that excessive use of porn and masturbation gave them brain fog, while 5% said it didn’t.
Many people have claimed that they experienced brain fog due porn and masturbation and their brain fog went away once they stopped watching porn and jerking off. You can read one such confession on Reddit by CLICKING HERE.
5. Homosexual Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder(HOCD)
Porn addiction can make a person question their sexual orientation.
Homosexual Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (HOCD) is marked by excessive fear of becoming or being homosexual. The subjects often experience intrusive, unwanted mental images of homosexual behavior. The excessive uncontrolled thoughts/doubts are very distressing and lead to compulsions in form of checking.
The genre of porn people watch escalates very quickly. After some time, normal porn doesn’t give the same kick to people, so they shift to some extreme genre of porn to get the same kick as before and after a while, even that genre of porn stops giving them pleasure. This is because your brain gets desensitized to the dopamine released by that genre of porn and now you need to switch to even more extreme stuff to keep feeling pleasure.
This running behind pleasure makes people switch to homosexual or gay porn because heterosexual porn couldn’t give them enough pleasure. heterosexual males often find themselves looking at homosexual porn to get the “kick” or to keep getting pleasure. As a result, they start questioning their sexual identity and taste.
There are many such stories on the nofap forum on Reddit, you can read one such story by CLICKING HERE.
Why Do Some “Experts” Say Porn & Masturbation is Normal?
I asked people the question whether they think porn and masturbation negatively affected their mental health or not. Let’s look at what people say
97% of people said that porn and masturbation negatively affected their mental health, while 3% said it didn’t.
If porn and masturbation have a lot of harmful side effects and it can negatively impact your mental health, then why do some experts say that it is normal and even healthy?
Well, this is because high-speed internet pornography is a relatively new phenomenon. It’s hardly been 15 years since the widespread use of high-speed internet pornography. So, there is not much research done on this topic.
Before the internet, people used to jerk off with their imagination or playboy magazines and if you only jerk off with your imagination or magazines, it’s hard to get addicted to it.
But with high-speed internet pornography, you can watch as many videos as you want for as long as you want. In just a click, you’ll come across a new video more extreme than the previous one. It’s very easy to get addicted to high-speed internet pornography.
But, people are slowly realizing. More and more people are coming out with their porn and masturbation addiction and people are slowly beginning to realize that porn and masturbation can get addictive and ruin their life.
If you’re experiencing the negative side effects of porn and masturbation and are trying to it, I recommend reading the book “Your Brain on Porn” by Gary Wilson. It explains the scientific reason behind porn affecting our brain negatively and what you can do to quit it. It’s the best book I’ve read on the topic. It is available on Amazon.
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Conclusion
Here are the 5 ways porn and masturbation can negatively impact your mental health:-
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Social Isolation
- Brain Fog
- Homosexual Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder(HOCD)
If you indulge in porn and masturbation and are experiencing the above-mentioned symptoms, give up porn and masturbation for 30 days and notice the difference.
It’s important to note here that porn and masturbation are not the only reasons behind the above-mentioned symptoms, there could be many more reasons. To know whether your symptoms are due to PMO or not, give up porn and masturbation for 30 days and notice the difference.
If you feel improvements in your symptoms, you can keep doing nofap(not watching porn and jerking off). If you don’t feel any improvements, this means your symptoms are not due to the excessive usage of porn and masturbation and you can go seek professional help.
