A doctor looks at a heroin addict's brain scans. New research
shows men who say they are addicted to porn … develop changes in
the same area – the reward centre – that changes in drug
addicts.' Photograph: Don McPhee for the Guardian
The Cambridge University neuropsychiatrist
Dr Valerie Voon has recently shown that men who describe
themselves as addicted to porn (and who lost relationships
because of it) develop changes in the same brain area – the
reward centre – that changes in drug addicts. The study, not yet
published, is featured next week in the Channel 4 TV show Porn
on the Brain. Neurosceptics may
argue that pictures of the brain lighting up in addicts tell us
nothing new – we already know they are addicted. But they do
help: knowing the reward centre is changed explains some porn
paradoxes.
In the mid-1990s I, and other psychiatrists, began to notice the
following. An adult male, in a happy relationship, being seen
for some non-romantic issue, might describe getting curious
about porn on the burgeoning internet. Most sites bored him, but
he soon noticed several that fascinated him to the point he was
craving them. The more he used the porn, the more he wanted to.
Yet, though he craved it, he didn't like it (porn paradox 1).
The cravings were so intense, he might feel them while thinking
about his computer (paradox 2). The patient would also report
that, far from getting more turned on by the idea of sex with
his partner, he was less attracted to her (paradox 3). Through
porn he acquired new sexual tastes.
We often talk about addicts as though they simply have "quantitative
problems". They "use too much", and should "cut back". But porn
addictions also have a qualitative component: they change sexual
taste. Here's how.
Until recently, scientists believed our brains were fixed, their
circuits formed and finalised in childhood, or "hardwired". Now
we know the brain is "neuroplastic", and not only can it change,
but that it works by changing its structure in response to
repeated mental experience.
One key driver of plastic change is the reward centre, which
normally fires as we accomplish a goal. A brain chemical,
dopamine, is released, giving us the thrill that goes with
accomplishment. It also consolidates the connections between
neurons in the brain that helped us accomplish that goal. As
well, dopamine is secreted at moments of sexual excitement and
novelty. Porn scenes, filled with novel sexual "partners", fire
the reward centre. The images get reinforced, altering the
user's sexual tastes.
Many abused substances directly trigger dopamine secretion –
without us having to work to accomplish a goal. This can damage
the dopamine reward system. In porn, we get "sex" without the
work of courtship. Now, scans show that porn can alter the
reward centre too.
Once the reward centre is altered, a person will compulsively
seek out the activity or place that triggered the dopamine
discharge. (Like addicts who get excited passing the alley where
they first tried cocaine, the patients got excited thinking
about their computers.) They crave despite negative
consequences. (This is why those patients could crave porn
without liking it.) Worse, over time, a damaged dopamine system
makes one more "tolerant" to the activity and needing more
stimulation, to get the rush and quiet the craving. "Tolerance"
drives a search for ramped-up stimulation, and this can drive
the change in sexual tastes towards the extreme.
The most obvious change in porn is how sex is so laced with
aggression and sadomasochism. As tolerance to sexual excitement
develops, it no longer satisfies; only by releasing a second
drive, the aggressive drive, can the addict be excited. And so –
for people psychologically predisposed – there are scenes of
angry sex, men ejaculating insultingly on women's faces, angry
anal penetration, etc. Porn sites are also filled with the
complexes Freud described: "Milf" ("mothers I'd like to fuck")
sites show us the Oedipus complex is alive; spanking sites
sexualise a childhood trauma; and many other oral and anal
fixations. All these features indicate that porn's dirty little
secret is that what distinguishes "adult sites" is how
"infantile," they are, in terms of how much power they derive
from our infantile complexes and forms of sexuality and
aggression. Porn doesn't "cause" these complexes, but it can
strengthen them, by wiring them into the reward system. The porn
triggers a "neo-sexuality" – an interplay between the
pornographer's fantasies, and the viewer's.
Of all our instincts, sexuality is perhaps the most plastic,
appearing to have broken free of its primary evolutionary aim,
reproduction, even though a certain naive biological narrative
depicts our sexual tastes as hardwired and unchanging, and
insists we are all always drawn to the same, biologically fit,
symmetrical features and attributes which indicate "this person
will produce fit offspring". But clearly we are not all
attracted to the same type, or person.
Sexual tastes change from era to era: the sexual goddesses
painted by Rubens are corpulent by modern standards. Sexual
tastes also change from individual to individual: different
people have different romantic "types". Types tend to be
caricatures: the free spirit, the artistic type, the bad boy,
the strong silent type, the devoted woman, and so on. We learn
that types are related to plasticity, when we discover the
individual's history. The woman attracted to "the unavailable
man", often lost her father in childhood; the man attracted to
the "ice queen" had a distant critical mother. There is little
hardwired about the specifics of these attractions. But the
ultimate sign that sexual desire need not be hardwired into
reproduction is the fetishist, more attracted to a shoe than its
wearer.
Sexual tastes change over the course of our individual lives;
not all love is love at first sight, based on looks; we may not
notice someone as especially attractive, until we fall in love
with them and feel such pleasure in their presence, that we soon
"awaken" to their charms. And successfully monogamous couples,
who love and feel attraction to each other over decades, slowly
change their sexual tastes, as their partners age and look
different. Sometimes change comes quickly, but no changes are as
rapid or radical as those occurring in teenagers, who go from
having limited, to all consuming attractions.
Teenagers' brains are especially plastic.
Now, 24/7 access to internet porn is laying the foundation of
their sexual tastes. In Beeban
Kidron's InRealLife, a gripping
film about the effects of the internet on teenagers, a
15-year-old boy of extraordinary honesty and courage articulates
what is going on in the lives of millions of teen boys. He shows
her the porn images that excite him and his friends, and
describes how they have moulded their "real life" sexual
activity. He says: "You'd try out a girl and get a perfect image
of what you've watched on the internet … you'd want her to be
exactly like the one you saw on the internet … I'm highly
thankful to whoever made these websites, and that they're free,
but in other senses it's ruined the whole sense of love. It
hurts me because I find now it's so hard for me to actually find
a connection to a girl."
The sexual tastes and the romantic longings of these boys have
become dissociated from each other. Meanwhile, the girls have "downloaded"
on to them the expectation that they play roles written by
pornographers. Once, porn was used by teens to explore, prepare
and relieve sexual tension, in anticipation of a real sexual
relationship. Today, it supplants it.
In her book, Bunny
Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion,
Izabella St James, who was one of Hugh Hefner's former "official
girlfriends", described sex with Hef. Hef, in his late 70s,
would have sex twice a week, sometimes with four or more of his
girlfriends at once, St James among them. He had novelty,
variety, multiplicity and women willing to do what he pleased.
At the end of the happy orgy, wrote St James, came "the grand
finale: he masturbated while watching porn".
Here, the man who could actually live out the ultimate porn
fantasy, with real porn stars, instead turned from their real
flesh and touch, to the image on the screen. Now, I ask you, "what
is wrong with this picture?"
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