Having sex with a computer screen can be a lot less stressful than the real thing. This I know for sure, honey. There’s no need to shower, no need to worry about looking your best, and no need to stress about him calling you the next morning. If you ask me, it’s the perfect relationship. But even though it seems we can squeeze/release to our hearts content, can a man’s favorite pastime become a hardcore addiction?
Let’s face it. Our fathers and grandfathers never had to deal with this kind of sh*t. While they had to sneak into movie theaters or put their porn up on a projector, we can access it from the privacy of our phones and computers. Porn consistently ranks as one of the top money makers on the web today, and to be honest I’ve given it my fair share of business. We all have.
In gay culture especially, porn is more than just about getting off. Over the past few decades it’s become a representation of what beauty is. In case you haven’t noticed, nearly every flyer promoting a bar or club has a picture of a porn-like dancer or host. Some of the most popular clubs I know frequently welcome porn stars to dance on tables every weekend. Since porn has become more accessible to the every day man, I fear it’s also morphed into a lifestyle. If you don’t look, act, dance, f**k, or give a blowjob like a porn star, you’re secretly pressured to try and catch up.
A porn addiction is more than just about the need to escape to your room and get off before your roommate comes home. It has the power to affect our perception on men and the world around us. Porn is fed into the water supply, which makes it easy to shape our lives around it. But like all addictions, it can go from pleasurable to toxic quicker than you believe. A problem like that will surely begin to affect most aspects of your life.
Is there more to porn than meets the eye, or is it a harmless pastime? When guys watch porn, we’re numbing a crucial neurochemical in the brain called dopamine. Dopamine fuels motivation, desire, and addiction. Each dopamine spike (or ejaculation) causes the brain to grow accustomed to the way these spikes are released. Because it fuels addiction, watching porn can inadvertently convince us that this is the only way to ejaculate. In other words, we need it to get a hard on – similar to how a drug addict thinks they need the drug to feel good. As the porn frequency gets more intense, so does our tolerance.
Of course, the same can’t be said from one guy to another. Our brains are all different and react to different things, but I can tell you right now that there are times I’m more excited to watch porn than I am to have sex. It all has to do with imagination, and boy my fantasies are much more powerful than reality. Who wouldn’t want to live inside that?
Porn isn’t a bad thing at all, but like anything else, if it starts to affect your life in a bad way, i.e. keeping you from your responsibilities, making you late to things, preventing you from making friends, then it’s surely becoming more of a hindrance than anything else. It’s clear that pornography is slowly taking control of your life. That should never happen.
If you or someone you know feels that they may be addicted to porn, you are not alone. Many men have struggled and made it through the other end. Go speak to someone who can help.
The following self-help web resources have more information on sexual addictions, pornography use, treatment for sexual addictions, and help for those affected by another person’s use of pornography:
The Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health (SASH)
www.sash.net
Have you found the right one, or are you still searching?