August 20, 2020 4 min read

Are You Suffering from Porn Addiction? Here is What You Need to Know

Over the years, pornography has become a massive problem for men and women of various age groups. However, men seem more affected by this addiction than women. Now, watching porn is not something that will end your life. 

At times, you might get tempted to watch it. But, if you have an urge to watch porn and you cannot control it, and every time you have to watch porn out of compulsion and not because of need, it is a dangerous problem.

Porn addiction is not so much talked about, and many people have tried to hide it as well. But, avoiding the addiction is just like adding fuel to the fire. You will keep getting more and more into the habit. Porn addiction can have several implications in your life. 

But, the first step to getting rid of this addiction is accepting it. Unless you accept the addiction from the bottom of your heart, you will never start working on it. Once you have admitted that you are indeed a porn addict, here are some things that you should know about porn addiction.

Is There Any Link Between Pornography and Depression?

You might think that watching pornography regularly would lead to a state of depression. It is quite a common notion. But, the real fact is, pornography will not lead you to any depression. After several studies, there has been no link established between porn and depression.

Now, you will be wondering, what about the other way round? Can depression cause porn addiction? Here is an interesting 2017 research that tells us porn consumers can have symptoms of depression, especially if they consider it wrong morally. 

Also, as per the study, a depressed person will watch more and more pornography to cope with depression if the person doesn’t consider porn an immoral thing. What we can understand by this study is a depressed person will be more inclined to watch porn.  

What are the Dangerous Porn Side effects?

Watching porn has multiple side effects. However, you will not realize the implications, and when you understand its harmful effects, it might be too long to recover. So, here are 3 of the most dangerous side effects of watching porn.

     1. Kills the Moral Values of a Person

If you are watching porn as a way of attaining sex education, it can be very dangerous. Frankly speaking, sex is not what you see in porn videos. It’s just an exaggerated version of the entire act. Also, losing control of your sexual urges might seem cool in porn but in reality, a man or a woman should control his or her sexual needs. Porn truly has devastating effects on moral values. 

     2. Compulsive Nature Prevents Goal Setting

Goal Setting is perhaps the most primary thing for those who want to do something great in life. However, if you are watching porn regularly, then you are getting into a habit of self-gratification. Also, you develop a compulsive attitude towards porn, which compels you to watch it whenever you have the urge. So, it is not good because such a compulsive attitude will never allow you to follow your goals. 

     3. Makes a Person Socially Isolated

When you are watching porn, you would want to be socially isolated. You cannot watch porn while being surrounded by many other people. Human beings are social animals genetically. So, porn is killing off your natural instinct of being a social animal. It encourages you to be isolated and can cause problems for you in your life in the long run. 

How Porn Affects Relationships

As you watch porn, you will see that in those videos or movies, if you are committed to your partner, then you are a fool. They encourage you to do things that the performers are doing in the porn video. 

Your commitment to your relationship, with your partner, becomes weak as you see such videos because your animalistic self comes to the fore instead of your compassionate nature. You don’t feel the passion for having intimacy with your partner anymore. 

Also, porn creates a false outlook on sex and what to expect from a partner. Therefore, sexual dissatisfaction is growing so rapidly among couples. In this way, porn is damaging relationships from the core, and these damages are mostly irreversible. 

What Porn Does to Your Brain

When you start watching porn, you feel happy. The same happiness you get when you are taking any addictive substance or having sex. This is an uncanny nature of our brain, but sexual desires and activities stimulate the production of dopamine, and thus, we feel happy about it. 

Dopamine plays a big role in decision making for us. It makes us compulsive because when we go in dopamine overdrive, we generally make irrational decisions based on our urge to find gratification at that moment, and we end up regretting those decisions later on. 

Something like that also happens when you start watching porn regularly because you keep on making irrational and compulsive decisions that are totally out of context. In result occurs because of the overproduction of dopamine in your brain due to watching porn. 

Can Porn Cause Erectile Dysfunction

Takeesha Roland-Jenkins, MS, says erectile dysfunction generally happens to men after a certain age. However, in many cases, watching porn gets directly connected with erectile dysfunction. To a certain extent, you can see a connection between erectile dysfunction and watching porn.

If you are someone who watches hardcore porn regularly, then the things that used to arouse you sexually will not have the same effects on you anymore. Therefore, you will struggle to have or keep an erection when you are having sex with your partner, and all this is because of watching porn regularly. 

The Bottom Line

Finally, you can start recovering from porn addiction from the moment you accept that you are a porn addict. Being a porn addict is not a crime, but knowing that you are addicted and not doing anything to make your life better is a foolish attitude. As you now know how harmful porn can be for you and your life, hopefully, this article will motivate you to deal with your porn addiction. 


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