Brain on Porn (Social #2) - DeYtH Banger (a book to read TXT) 📗

them to be advocating, but what they’re advocating for is a moral system, not a medical one.1
Dr. Ley appears to be placing a sharp divide between moral and medical systems and how they view the human person and human flourishing.
A couple of matters should be made clear at the outset. First, just because some people oppose porn because it violates the morality taught by their religion does not mean their cause is wrong. During the nineteenth-century movement to abolish slavery, many Quakers opposed the trans-Atlantic slave trade because it violated the precepts of their religion, which teaches equality. Their religious motivation did not make their cause wrong.

 

Second, in a free society people should not be excluded from civil discourse, or

 

 

be discounted as having nothing to contribute to it, just because they accept the morals taught by their religion. Many people who are against stealing and murder were taught the Ten Commandments in their churches or synagogues. Should their upbringing exclude them from public discussions about violent crime?
Stephen Carter of Yale Law School says this kind of privatizing of religion is unjust:
Efforts to craft a public square from which religious conversation is absent, no matter how thoughtfully worked out, will always in the end say to those of organized religion that they alone, unlike everyone else, must enter public dialogue only after leaving behind that part of themselves that they may consider the most vital.2
Every person, whether religious or not, has ideas about what human flourishing looks like, and he ought to be able to share those ideas in the public square.

With these concerns out of the way, we can deal squarely with the myth itself. Is it true that only religious people oppose porn?
Several years ago, the magazine GQ ran a thought-provoking article about why men should quit looking at porn. The same year that GQ dished out provocative photos of the hundred “sexiest women of the twenty-first century”, the magazine also told their readers that masturbating to images of sexy women might be a bad idea. What spurred this advice? Editors of the magazine had stumbled upon a growing group on Reddit.com called NoFap, an online community of (mostly) men who were challenging each other to put away porn and masturbation.
This community began not because of religious motivations, but because its members wanted to see how quitting porn and masturbation would improve their overall health and well-being. About 64 percent of NoFappers had developed tastes for porn that had become extreme or deviant. Among the twenty-seven- to thirty-one-year-olds in the group, 19 percent were suffering from premature ejaculation, 25 percent were totally disinterested in sex with a partner, 31 percent had difficulty reaching orgasm, and 34 percent were experiencing erectile dysfunction. After joining the NoFap community and quitting their porn habits, 60 percent found that their sexual function improved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had the pleasure of conversing with the founder of the NoFap community, Alexander Rhodes, who describes himself as an agnostic. At the time of my interview, most NoFappers considered themselves atheists or agnostics, and currently there are well over 150,000 online members. When asked why he started the community, Rhodes told me, “Love is my motivation.” He wants to see people live porn-free lives because he honestly believes we are better off with out it. Comparing pornography to cigarettes, he said, “It is always a harmful thing to consume.”
Men like Rhodes and the thousands of nonreligious individuals in his online community are not alone in their disdain of pornography. Men with damaged libidos are not the only ones who think pornography is a problem; thousands of women do as well. In the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, the world saw the rise of a new wave of feminists who ardently spoke out against the social ills of pornography—and these same women often also opposed organized religion.
In conclusion, religious people are not the only ones who oppose porn. There are others who oppose it because personal experience, social science, or medical research has shown that porn is not conducive to their well-being.

 

 

 

Chapter 5 - You got Mind Fucked

 24. I will always be addicted to porn.

Not long ago Vanity Fair ran a cover story in which actress Jennifer Lawrence talked about the nude photos she sent to her boyfriend—which were then hacked and leaked to the public. In her interview she defended her original nude selfie by saying, “I was in a loving, healthy, great relationship for four years. It was long distance, and either your boyfriend is going to look at porn or he’s going to look at you.”1
This is a sad statement from a woman who has seemingly given in to the notion—the rather sexist notion—that men are interested in only one thing and incapable of self-control. In the face of raging hormones and the ubiquity of porn, her statement implies, men will inevitably consume porn, and women must become porn themselves to compete. This is the lie that so many men and women believe.
The more we learn about both the pervasiveness of pornography in our culture and the impact it can have on the mind, the more we’re tempted to think that perhaps we’re bound to it.
The fact is, many people are realizing the wonderful truth that life without porn is not only possible but also much more interesting. Those entrenched in porn tend to live suffocatingly small lives, constantly looking for their next fix. Those who begin to find freedom begin inhabiting a larger, more colorful existence.
Studies are showing that the brain can actually heal itself, even after years of consuming pornography. As previous chapters of this book have communicated, porn can and does hijack the neurocircuits of the brain, but with time and effort, the brain can be given space to heal itself. For some this can be a long
road. Therapists Wendy and Larry Maltz in their book, The Porn Trap, state:
Porn’s power to produce experiences of excitement, relaxation, and escape from pain make it highly addictive. Over time you can come to depend on it to feel good and require it so you don’t feel bad. Cravings, preoccupations, and out-of-control behavior with using it can become commonplace. Porn sex can become your greatest need. If you have been using porn regularly to “get high,” withdrawal from porn can be as filled with agitation, depression, and sleeplessness as detoxing from alcohol, cocaine, and other hard drugs. In fact, people in porn recovery take an average of eighteen months to heal from the damage to their dopamine receptors alone.
Practically speaking, although you may feel pornography is simply an undefeatable foe impossible to overcome, the fact is otherwise. If you want freedom, you must fight resolutely, implementing tactics that will enable you to have the time and the space for your brain to heal. You didn’t get hooked on porn overnight; the craving for it won’t go away overnight either .

Understand What You’re Fighting(and Not Fighting)

A few years back, when my wife was pregnant with our third child, I found the book What to Expect When You’re Expecting on the coffee table. I thought it would be fun to peruse the section about the weird cravings pregnant women have—you know, pickles mixed with ice cream and that sort of thing. But there were also some cravings listed that I didn’t expect, such as a hunger for clay, rocks, ashes, hair, and laundry starch. This is a condition called pica, and some speculate that it is due to a nutritional deficiency, particularly of iron.
Suppose I came home from work one day to find my wife sucking on a piece of charcoal—weird thought experiment, I know, but stay with me. There are two unhelpful reactions I could have. I could react in horror, shaming her for her choice in cuisine. “You are disgusting! That’s filthy! What were you thinking?” Or I might go to the opposite extreme,

thinking, “Better not say anything. If she wants to suck on charcoal in the privacy of her own home, who am I to stop her?” As sensitive as it might sound, this is an uninformed response. Depending on what someone is consuming, pica can cause serious medical problems.
The loving thing to do might be to say, “Honey, just put the charcoal down. That’s it. . . nice and easy. Let’s go to the kitchen. I’ve got a nice big steak that I’ll bet you’ll love.”
What does any of this have to do with porn? Well, just as pica is a distortion in our desire for food, pornography use is a distortion in our desire for sex. Condemning pica as an unhealthy condition doesn’t mean I hate food. Similarly, condemning porn as unhealthy sex doesn’t mean I hate sex. A desire to eat is a sign of health. A desire to eat nonnutritive substances such as wood, dirt, or glass is not. A desire for sex is a sign of health. A desire for porn is not.

One of the reasons many people find it difficult to break free from porn and remain free is that they confuse sexual desire with a craving for pornography. Whatever protocols you put in place to distance yourself from pornography, remember: the goal is not the long-term squelching of sexual desire. The goal is the healing of your sexual cravings so that you pursue them in a manner that pushes you toward a healthy and satisfying marital relationship.
Making a U-Turn on the Porn Superhighway
In his terrific little book, Treating Pornography Addiction, Dr. Kevin Skinner outlines what he calls the “activation sequence”. By this he means the sequence of events that lead up to looking at pornography. He outlines six steps in the sequence—the seventh being actually looking at pornography. We might think of this sequence as a highway: knowing

these six mile markers along the pornography highway will not only help us to recognize them when they occur but will also help us to make a U-turn to escape the habit.

1. Trigger or Stimulus

A trigger or stimulus is something that causes something else. When we speak of triggers in connection with pornography or masturbation, we mean those things that initiate the activation sequence. Understanding our triggers will help us immensely in the fight against the temptation and can even stop the temptation to look at porn altogether.
There are obvious triggers, and there are not-so-obvious triggers. Obvious triggers include things such as getting a Victoria’s Secret catalogue in the mail, listening to music with raunchy lyrics, seeing pop-up ads, and so forth. Less obvious triggers include things such as experiencing a frustrating or over
whelming situation, hearing someone make an emasculating or bitter comment about us, or being rejected by somebody.
In his book, Dr. Skinner speaks of a client who, when he was a boy, would hear the sounds of his father beating his mother. To make sure the boy never got into the middle of the abuse, his mother would give her son her husband’s Playboy magazines. She would throw them in his room and say, “Stay here and don’t come out.” This is how this young man learned to cope with high-stress situations. Is it any wonder that today, as a thirty-something-year-old, when he gets stressed out, his body and brain know exactly where to go to feel better?
Anyone who wants to make a U-turn at his triggers first needs