Your Brain on Porn Read Online Free PDF Page A

culprit behind their symptoms until months after they quit:
     
    After years of porn, I was having trouble with erections. It had been getting worse and worse for a couple years. Needed more and more types of porn stimulation. I was really worried, but the anxiety just pushed me deeper into more extreme porn . Now, the more I go without porn, masturbation, fantasy and orgasm, the more difficult it becomes to not get an erection. LOL. No ED problems or weak ejaculations like I had just a few months ago. I have
    healed.
     
    Even after quitting and seeing improvements, many were still sceptical. They returned to internet porn – only to see their problems gradually (or swiftly) recur. And even though anonymous online forums were buzzing, no one wanted to talk about it publicly:
     
    Young guys won't go to doctors talking about ED. Porn-induced ED and porn addiction are our personal secret. We're too anxious, ashamed, confused and angry to create awareness
    of these issues. We hide in the shadows because we individually don't want to be seen to exist.
    Therefore we collectively aren't thought to exist.
     
    For some, quitting triggered distressing, unexpected withdrawal symptoms:
     
    Here's what I'm dealing with: irritability, fatigue, inability to sleep (even sleep aids don't help much), trembling/shaking, lack of focus, shortness of breath, and depression.
    *
    I've battled a few addictions in my life, from nicotine to alcohol and other substances. I've
    overcome all of them, and this was by far the most difficult. Urges, crazy thoughts, sleeplessness, feelings of hopelessness, despair, worthlessness, and many more negative things were all part of what I went through with this porn thing. It's a wicked awful thing that I will never have to deal with ever again in my life – ever.
     
    If you don't realise such symptoms are connected with quitting, but you do notice that returning to porn relieves them, then you are strongly motivated to keep using porn. I'll come back to the withdrawal-symptom hurdle in the recovery chapter.
     
    Most alarmingly of all, those with erectile dysfunction who quit porn often reported temporary, but absolute, loss of libido and abnormally lifeless genitals. Even men with no ED sometimes experienced temporary loss of libido and mild sexual dysfunctions soon after they quit:
     
    I have absolutely no sex drive. No spontaneous erections. It's a very strange feeling when
    you look at a beautiful woman and in your head you have your normal thoughts like ‘Wow, she's beautiful. I would like to get to know her!’ and yet you have no sexual thoughts or intentions. It's a very strange and for me quite a scary experience. It's like you've been castrated.
     
    Unless guys had been warned about this ‘flatline’, fears of permanent impotence sent them rushing back to cyberspace to attempt to salvage their manhood. Escalating to more extreme porn, even with a partially flaccid penis, seemed a small price to pay to stem the total loss of libido. Porn use seemed like a cure.
     
    Many, however, were horrified to discover that they couldn't override the flatline by returning to porn. They had to wait until their libido returned naturally – which sometimes took months.
     
    Interestingly, male rats who copulate to sexual exhaustion also show evidence of a mini-flatlin e[11] before their libido returns. Is the porn-induced flatline biologically related? Researchers study rats because their primitive brain structures are surprisingly similar to ours. As developmental molecular biologist John J. Medina PhD says, animal research ‘acts as a guiding “flashlight” for human research, illuminating biological processes’. [12] In other words, researchers aren't studying rats to help them with their addictions, erections and mood disorders.
     
    Happily, once warned about the possibility of a temporary flatline, most guys powered through it
    with relative equanimity:
     
    About my flatline. When people say they