Am I addicted to porn? 6 ways to know from an addict

Viewing pornography is nothing new.

People have been enjoying porn in one way or another for thousands of years. However, you had to do a lot of work.

You had to visit a shady adult entertainment store in a seedy part of town.

Not only did you have to visit a store, but you also had to keep your magazines, VHS tapes, and DVDs somewhere. Most guys my age got their first exposure to pornography by finding a relative’s collection of VHS tapes and DVDs. a.k.a. their “porno stash”.

If you weren’t willing to accumulate a collection of “pornos,” your other option was to visit an “adult theatre” where pornographic films were shown and you could masturbate in a dark crowd.

Because most people were afraid of being labeled a pervert, this risk of public exposure resulted in significantly less pornography consumption. The negative consequences of being caught in one of those places far outweighed the benefits.

In the old days, the amount of time it took to find porn was tremendous. Not only that, but it was also a challenge to keep it a secret.

Then came high-speed, wireless internet, and smartphones. Advances in our information sending capabilities made everyone a big winner.

But there was perhaps no bigger winner than the pornography industry. To celebrate their 10th anniversary, Pornhub, one of the internet’s largest streaming porn sites, compiled a survey about user’s viewing habits from 2008-2017.

• In 2008, 1% of viewers visited the site via mobile phones. In 2017, it was 75%.
• In 2008, 134 hours of pornography were uploaded to the site. In 2017, it was 476,291.
• In 2008, there were 1 million daily visitors to the site. In 2017, 75 million daily visitors.

Even without Pornhub’s data, there are other studies show how pervasive internet pornography is. The numbers don’t lie: 70% of men 18-24 admit to watching porn at least once a week.

The Rising Resistance To The Porn Attack

Men are starting to realize that while pornography is fun in the short term, debilitating long-term consequences and health conditions accompany heavy porn use.

• Men are realizing that porn viewing isn’t harmless. It:
• Causes relationship issues
• Destroys self-esteem 
• Keeps you from having a sex life with real women
• Agitates compulsive behavior in other areas
• Makes substance use and abuse more likely
• Wreaks havoc on your mental health

There has been a massive uprising of websites, tweets, and support groups to help guys with their online porn addiction. There are even some that test those who think they might have an issue with pornography.

Pornography addiction is a silent addiction. Unlike substance abuse, people watch pornography by themselves. 

• You don’t get together with your buddies to view porn.
• No one looks at you after a porn session and tells you that you might need to cut back.
• Loved ones don’t stage porn interventions.
• There are no pornography rehabilitation centers.

Only recently has a movement to recognize that guys are getting addicted to porn. Proponents of the porn industry or guys who have yet to suffer from some of the debilitating side effects of compulsive pornography use say that porn addiction isn’t real, but we know better.

Maybe you’re wondering if you’re addicted to porn. Or perhaps you know someone, and you’re wondering if they’re a casual watcher or a hardcore user.

There are a few different ways to know if you have a porn addiction. I’ve compiled a list of the most common and obvious signs that you have a problem with porn.

You can’t stop watching porn

This one is the most obvious sign, yet it must be stated.

Try to stop watching porn for the next 2 weeks.

This will be nearly impossible for anyone who’s been a daily porn watcher for 5 -10 years.

Years of training your brain to expect pleasure before you sleep or feel anxious have doomed you to a reward loop where you might not even realize yourself being triggered.

The difference between enjoyment and addiction is one of “want to” versus “need to.” While the underlying cause of your problem might be poor self-control, your addiction isn’t an issue until there are adverse outcomes.

Until then, it’s just a fun process.

You spend money on porn

In its 10-year anniversary survey, Pornhub released the data on the number of videos uploaded on their site. By the year 2017, there were:

• 10,059,213 videos uploaded
• 684,352 Gigabytes of video uploaded
• 1,515,217 hours uploaded

To put these numbers in perspective, Pornhub boasts the following:

The first telegraph message was sent May 24, 1844. If you started watching Pornhub then, you would still be watching new videos today.

This seemed like an exaggeration, so I did the math myself.

Indeed, if you somehow managed to do NOTHING but watch videos (not even sleep) uploaded to Pornhub from the day the first telegram was sent to the day the survey was released (May 25, 2017), you would only have watched 1,513,416 hours of porn.

This means there would be over 2000 hours of unviewed footage remaining. And Pornhub also boasts that users uploaded 476,291 hours of video alone in 2016. That is almost double what it was the year before.

That is an astonishing amount of porn, but more spectacular is that ALL of it is free!!

And Pornhub is only 1 of many free streaming sites. There is no logical reason to spend money on pornography. And yet, it’s estimated that pornography generates $6-$15 billion annually.

Even on the low end, that’s a lot of money spent to enjoy something that has more free content than you could ever possibly view in a lifetime–even if ALL you did was watch pornography.

If you start to pay for pornography in any way, you are undoubtedly addicted and need to take action now.

(Read: “How To Quit Porn”)

You show symptoms of mental health disorders

Do you constantly have low energy?

Does the world seem kind of grey?

Well, you’re probably suffering from a common side effect of pornography.

The pleasure you feel when watching pornography is mostly dopamine being released by neurotransmitters in your brain. The kicker is that it’s artificial joy. It’s a simulation fooling your brain into creating massive unnatural releases of happy chemicals like dopamine and oxytocin.

Dopamine is called the “pleasure molecule,” though this is technically inaccurate. Dopamine drives us to seek rewards and we experience that drive via anticipation. Unfortunately, this often becomes an addiction.

Dopamine itself does not cause the addiction, but the role it plays not only makes you addicted but leads to depression. The spike of dopamine you receive from sexual activity and orgasm, however brief, is on par with nicotine or morphine.

After extended porn use, dopamine cells begin to fire more strongly in anticipation of consuming rather than in conjunction with actual consumption. Cues and triggers, such as:

• Hearing a porn star’s name
• Time alone
• Fatigue
• Rejection
• Boredom

Can elicit conditioned, sudden surges of dopamine release. These surges then trigger cravings to use or even binge.

It can take months for your brain to stop responding this way.

Remember, your primitive brain is happy because it thinks that the naked woman you just blasted your load to on the screen is going to bear your children. Of course, it’s not real, but your brain can’t tell the difference at the neurochemical level.

All that dopamine released by the artificial but intense stimulus is so overpowering that the rest of your life will seem pale in comparison. Not only is it not real, but you can also release it on command without doing any of the challenging work required to earn sexual release with a woman.

• You didn’t make any more money.
• You didn’t improve your physique.
• You didn’t get intelligent.
• You didn’t become more attractive.

You got all the good feelings without doing any of the hard work. This is no different from a drug addict who abuses a substance to feel good rather than chase a healthy high from doing meaningful work.

Even worse, because porn allows you to release dopamine on-demand, you build a tolerance to it. Like any other drug addict, you need more to get the same level of enjoyment as you did the first time you used it. As long as you’re on the drug, real life will never compare.

How can walking in a park ever be fun?

How can we appreciate the small things in life?

How can real sex ever compare to digital depravity?

The inability to enjoy even the normally enjoyable things in life is not only a telltale sign of depression but an indication that you are almost certainly addicted to pornography.

You have sexual dysfunction (you can’t get it up)

Porn-induced erectile dysfunction (PIED) is a relatively new diagnosis for Erectile Dysfunction (ED). It’s specifically when men have trouble maintaining erections due to heavy porn use.

It’s one of the most common reasons men take on the no porn pledge. They literally can’t have sex. If this is not properly treated, they’ll stop having sex altogether and just watch porn. It’s easier anyways.

Yet doctors just prescribe Viagra instead of asking them about their porn habits. Welcome to America, where we have a pill for every problem and a problem for every pill.

Even worse, some companies have begun to cater to this audience by making it possible to get Viagra at home, circumventing the potentially difficult conversation you might have with your doctor.

The problem is simple, and no pill can fix it:

You can’t get it up because you masturbate twice a day, every day, to the most exaggerated and unrealistic depictions of sex on the internet.

No human woman will compare to a dozen beautiful naked women performing deviant sexual acts in the best lighting, looking like they’re having a blast—especially when endless varieties of that woman can be accessed on-demand.

The levels of reported ED issues among young men have skyrocketed in recent years. To anyone familiar with the porn epidemic, this is not surprising at all.

• In 2012, Swiss researchers found Erectile Dysfunction (ED) rates of 30% in a cross-section of Swiss men aged 18 to 24.
• A 2013, Italian researchers found that 1 in 4 men under the age of forty have reported some type of erectile dysfunction.
• NHS psychosexual therapists say that “more and more men in their late teens and early 20s are suffering from erectile dysfunction.”

While erectile dysfunction has multivariate causes, it is not an issue that young men typically encounter. However, we already know that pornography wreaks havoc on the brain’s response to dopamine. Sexual desire and getting an erection are all related to dopamine sensitivity.

In the last decade or so, addiction researchers have discovered that too much dopamine stimulation has a paradoxical effect. The brain decreases its ability to respond to dopamine signals (desensitization). This occurs with all addictions, both chemical and natural. In some porn users, the response to dopamine is dropping so low that they can’t achieve an erection without constant hits of dopamine via the Internet.

Of course, men above 40 are less likely to be susceptible to porn addiction since they reached puberty in the age of magazines and not-so-easily obtained videos.

Because who wants to go into a XXX video store and ask the clerk for Anal Busters 4: The Return of Rodney Rod.

It’s embarrassing. But now, you can log on to your favorite porn site and indulge until your heart’s content and the exhaustion of your dopamine receptors.

If you’ve had anxiety while performing, had an issue getting erect, or suffered from premature ejaculation, porn might be the culprit.

The good news is that with time it is reversible. In fact, most guys get over it within 90 days.

Your taste in porn has escalated

Remember when you used to read porn magazines or peek in the Sears magazine lingerie section, and that was titillating.

Then we got VHS tapes, but that’s still pretty inconvenient.

Then came the internet, and that was fun, but damn the speeds were slow.

Then came high-speed broadband, and the seduction of the porn streaming websites was complete.

At first, you might have watched some people having sex, and that was great. But now?

Porn tastes have evolved because people have desensitized their brains to just regular stuff. Furthermore, the combined powers of the Coolidge Effect along with the amount and variety of porn ensures that you’ll never be without a video to satisfy your cravings.

A regular woman having regular sex can never compare to dolled up, edited women all performing exactly what you want, the way you want it, when you want it. Even if they aren’t actually in front of you.

You have brain fog and low energy

It’s difficult for you to concentrate and keep your thoughts in order. You can’t remember what you’re supposed to do or what you were just saying.

It’s starting to affect not only your professional life but your personal one as well.

It’s called brain fog and it’s what people who quit porn describe the feeling they had before they saw the light (life without porn).

The thing about brain fog is that you don’t know it when you have it. Brain fog is when everything seems so cloudy, unsure, and scary. The world always seems like a dark and dangerous place. I’ve talked about a similar state of mind I experienced as an alcoholic.

When you quit watching porn the fear and fog evaporate. This is due to your dopamine levels balancing out.

The surge of dopamine you experience when orgasming to internet pornography will eventually cause your brain to be less sensitive to its mood and cognitive-enhancing effects. Part of the recovery process is that your brain becomes more sensitive to dopamine so you need less of it to get the same effects.

The same reason that regular women fail to excite you while you’re addicted to pornography is the same reason why you experience brain fog, low energy, and feel like shit.

The problem is that you probably don’t realize just how messed you up.

Most of us pick up the porn habit in our early teens. If you’ve been watching porn since before you finished puberty, you would have no idea what you’re supposed to feel like. Your energy and emotions have been under the influence of artificial stimulation for your entire adult life.

If you feel like you’ve been in a fog, mental daze, or simply not sharp at all, then your brain is almost certainly addicted to pornography. It is acclimated to pornography and relies on it just to feel good.

So You’re Addicted To Porn. Now What?

You’ve got the 6 major symptoms of porn addiction:

1. You can’t stop
2. You start spending money on porn
3. You’re depressed
4. Your d*ck doesn’t work
5. Your porn taste has escalated
6. You have brain fog and low energy

At least you recognized it. Many of us don’t even realize how much internet porn has affected us.

Do not despair. All of this can be undone.

The shame. The depression. The ED. The late-night hentai sessions. The low energy.

You can quit porn. You developed this habit and you can undo it as well.

It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.

You’ll come out the other side better and you’ll thank yourself.