Imagine you are in your room, lights are turned off and you have completed your studies for the day.
Your laptop is still out in the open.
Suddenly you get a temptation to open the incognito mode, to study about the basic human biology with your penis out in the open.
Ringing a bell?
So, let’s dive into the habit of watching something so exciting and pleasurable which you had never thought of becoming something like an addiction.
| P.S. It may or may not be an addiction but it is definitely a bad habit. The key difference between a bad habit and an addiction is the fact that addiction threatens the health of the individuals involved as well as those around them. |
I have a ton of friends who have, shamefully but, admitted to being porn addicts. They’ve wanted to come out every other day but, they find themselves watching the same shit again and again and before they know it, they have masturbated, and then the guilt of falling into the same trap of watching it keeps on haunting them.
A modern invention of watching naked girls having sex on screen is now turning out a new addictive drug.
The enthusiasm to watch something this open is natural when you are in your teens or a child. It’s natural to see something that is basically what we are born to do…
(To REPRODUCE so that our species can keep on living)
But this instant gratification of watching Porn and the act after it, creates a shortcut in the brain, releasing happy hormones called dopamine, about which I will talk with you in a short while.
Porn is a new drug and it is consumed by millions of people every single day and that’s terrifying because they don’t even know what it is doing to their brain in the long term.
SO, LET’S TAKE THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED…
Before starting the discussion on porn;
Do you know the percentage of web searches regarding porn?
It’s a whopping 25% which includes direct and related searches. And almost 20% are accessed from mobiles.
That means a large section of men and women watch pornographic materials.
A common question, can we call it an Addiction then?
Let’s investigate.
For a while, I want you all to peek inside, in your brain, and starting looking for the parts which arouse you when you eat, win a cricket match, speed your bike at 120 km/hr, have sex or just surfing through some free porn or explicit graphic images of MILF, teen, BBC or latina.
The pre-frontal cortex, hippocampus, substantia nigra, striatum are some weird biological names of parts of the brain which constitute the reward system of the brain.
They are the major dopamine pathways inside the brain.
‘Whoa…Whoa…calm down neurologist. What’s with all this brain stuff anyway? I don’t get it’, you’d say.
*See, I can sense the questions that’s popping in your head before you know it.
Allow me to explain it.
You know, our brain is a kind of supercomputer and for the sake of our survival, it releases happy hormones i.e. Dopamine, indicating us that we should often do the activities that promotes our chances of living.
Chemicals like dopamine, makes the brain interprets what pleasure is. This neurochemical ensures our survival as a species. It dictates the things which we need to do to stay alive and that should be pleasurable.
Which are basically the primary needs like eating, having sex, sleeping, feeling of warmth, attracting the opposite gender or the same gender in the case of being gay.
Now the reason to teach you kids about our brain biology is that porn releases dopamine, not a little amount to be precise but a lot of it.
Researches that analyses the brains of porn viewers reflects the presence of dopamine pathways when they are exposed to these explicit pornographic materials.
Hence, the conclusion is PORN INDUCES BRAIN TO RELEASE DOPAMINE, making porn a pleasurable act to watch.
So what? What is wrong in watching something pleasurable?
*See, again I know what you guys are thinking*
To answer this existential question of what is wrong with us, I would like to notify an important feature of our brain, that it is PLASTIC in nature.
Neural plasticity is real.
What it means is that our brain can mold itself according to its environment and reshape itself to make the ends meet.
In short, porn triggers the hyper release of dopamine, which leads to a lower sensitivity of reward systems.
So to attain the same pleasure levels, higher dopamine levels are required.
In short, porn makes the users less likely to be socially active and happy because even if they want to, it is embarrassing to discuss.
You would need a higher will-power to do the same.
The thing about the reward system is that after a small dosage of porn you’d need more explicit porn materials to attain the same level of excitement or orgasm or pleasure.
*Like you start with stripping videos, then soft-core porn after a few days and then suddenly one fine day you are looking for BDSM kind of stuffs*
Do you want to know a coincidental surprising fact?
These same things happen with, literally, all types of addictions. Be it drug addiction, alcohol addiction or nicotine addiction.
So, Porn leads to addiction.
Being morally destructive might act as the last nail in your coffin and it’s not surprising that almost all of the serial killers, sexual offenders, child molesters, rapists, and domestic violence perpetrators, have a thing in common and that’s PORN!
Porn in a way makes the notion of violence and grotesque, a quite sexy and acceptable thing to do.
What it does not ensure that whether the other person likes it or has consent for it, among which, in general, women become the victims.
Porn creates an idea among the viewers that,
1. Women are always horny.
2. They like dominance.
3. Women love hard-core intercourse.
4. Women can be objectified and still that’s fine as long as I am getting my share of excitement.
The list goes on and on.
One study finds that the people who are exposed to violent porn are 6 times more likely to commit rape.
Sounds surprising but I have a ton of interviews of serial killers, rapists, and sexual offenders that would prove it, but for your sake;
I would like to bring the interview of one of the most charming serial killer of America, Ted Bundy.
Now, for those of you who have been only watching Crime Patrol and CID, Ted Bundy was the notorious and yet charming serial killer who ravishingly lured his victims to their demise.
(Mostly young girls and women)
One day before he was to be seated in the electric chair, a final interview was taken to know more from his side of the story.
He expressed his condolences to the victim’s families and discussed pornography as the lead cause of his demonic behaviour.
“I was essentially a normal person, I had good friends, I led a normal life except for this one small but very potent, very destructive segment of it that I kept very secret and very close to myself and I didn’t let anybody know about it,” he said.
Bundy said he first discovered “soft-core pornography” in grocery stores, and was compelled to consume more and increasingly violent, forms.
“…like an addiction, you keep craving something harder, which gives you a greater sense of excitement, until you reach a point where the pornography only goes so far.”
It was an “indispensable link in the chain of behavior” that led to the assaults and murders that he carried out on dozens of victims, he said.
It also was a common factor among other violent offenders that he encountered during his stay in prison.
“I’ve lived in prison for a long time now and I’ve met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence just like me and without exception, every one of them was deeply involved with pornography. Without question, without exception, deeply influenced and consumed by addiction to pornography,” he added.
When asked about his fate, he said: “I think society deserves to be protected from me and others like me. That’s for sure.”
Ted Bundy was not the only one to be blamed and thought he committed rapes and murders, his violent behavior came from watching explicit materials.
Getting towards the last part of this article; India has been banning some porn websites ( 857 to be exact) which even remotely is involved in the circulation of child pornography.
It’s way too difficult to ban something which doesn’t guarantee a violent crime to be committed from just watching it.
Even still, in October 2018, the Government directed internet service providers to block 827 websites that hosted child porn.
The court cited the rape of a 10th standard girl from Dehradun by 4 of her seniors. The 4 accused told police that they raped the girl after watching porn on the internet. Porn and masturbation go hand in hand.
The serious consequences of masturbating would be covered in the upcoming article.
**Stay tuned for the upcoming articles FROGFACE**
The need for this hour is to understand and aware people, what porn can do to our mind, to us and people around us.
The irony is that, even though sex education is considered immoral for children in India, porn is just a click away and it’s FREE.
References:
1. The little-known final interview of Ted Bundy: Porn motivated me.
2. Telecom department asks internet providers to block 827 porn websites.
Akash Rout is a jolly old fella who writes non-fiction as well as fiction. He is known for his rebellious yet subtle form of satires and humor. An aspiring stand-up comic with a science background. So, give him a break, will you!
Cool enough. Let’s work on some parts of it, k?
Porn is increasingly being consumed as a drug and indeed it is addicting to many people. Kudos to you for addressing this issue!
Porn is really a sin as to watching it and fapping is the biggest sin a man can commit.