Your Brain on Porn and Understanding the Sex Addict Hope for Healing Registration Soon! Space Is Limited! Designed specifically for wayward spouses, Hope for Healing is a supportive, nonjudgmental environment for you to heal and develop empathy. Over the years, this 17-week, small group course has helped thousands of people find hope, set healthy boundaries and move toward extraordinary lives. Subscribe to Registration Notifications! This week, we are privileged to hear from Michael John Cusick, who wrote one of my favorite books for gaining insight into the mind of an addict. Michael is a licensed professional counselor, spiritual director, speaker, and author of several books. Having experienced the restoring touch of God's grace in his life and marriage, Michael serves as President and Founder of Restoring the Soul, a ministry offering intensive care to spiritual leaders and emerging leaders worldwide. Michael currently serves as an adjunct professor at Denver Seminary where he teaches on addictions, human sexuality, and spiritual formation. Michael wrote Surfing for God: Discovering the Divine Desire Beneath Sexual Struggle*, which was revolutionary for many men who were struggling with understanding the complexity of sexual addiction and the struggle (and desire) to find freedom from pornography and addiction. I hope you find this article to be both instrumental and encouraging as you (and possibly your spouse) journey through addiction and recovery. If you were to ask a random man on the street to name his most important sex organ, the answer would be predictable. But sexual desire and arousal do not begin in the genitals. A man's most important sex organ is his brain. When changes occur in parts of the brain related to sex, it also changes the nature of our sexual desire and the ability to choose how to act upon it. In the last decade, the field of neuroscience has exploded our understanding of the human brain. Recent discoveries have led us to understand that online pornography overstimulates the brain in at least four different ways. Four Ways Online Pornography Overstimulates the Brain 1. Nearly constant novelty. Our brains crave novelty, and the Internet provides an endless variety of novel sexual images. When I was a young man looking at magazine centerfolds, images lost their appeal within a short amount of time. But with online porn, new images are instantly available with the click of a mouse. With each new image, our limbic system releases a burst of dopamine, which tells us we gotta have it. The connection between novelty and sexual arousal is well established by what scientists call the Coolidge Effect. After dropping a male rat into a cage with a receptive female, researchers initially observed intense copulation between the rats. Eventually, the male rat exhausted himself. Even when the willing female rat wanted more, he was spent. Guess what happened next? When the original female was replaced with a new receptive female, the male rat immediately revived and began to copulate again. This pattern was repeated over and over until the male rat was literally exhausted. With the introduction of a novel sexual mate, this process will be repeated again and again until the male succumbs to exhaustion or death. In the real world, even Hugh Hefner didn't enjoy the endless supply of women to revive his sexual capacities at any given time. But in the unreal world of online porn, new and ever more stimulating "mates" provide complete novelty without ever needing to step away from the computer. As long as the novelty continues, the arousal continues and dopamine fuels the desire engine. One man I recently spoke with averaged six hours a day viewing porn. In his case, every click on a new image released more dopamine, which inflamed his desire. You can see how such a vicious cycle is set in place. 2. An unlimited supply. Internet porn overstimulates the brain because it provides no limits on the amount we can consume. In food and substance addictions, a person either runs out of the drug or food, or is physically unable to tolerate more. A man can eat only so many pizzas or smoke only so much crack before reaching the obvious physical limits. With Internet porn, an infinite supply is available. And as long as a man has an internet connection, he can continue to binge. This is why it's not uncommon for those who are addicted to lose track of time and stay up all night viewing porn. 3. Sidestepping tolerance. Tolerance has been reached when a person needs more of the substance or activity to get the same effect. Over time, we grow increasingly tolerant to certain stimulants. With drugs and food, tolerance typically means partaking more frequently or consuming larger amounts or both. With internet porn, a man can overcome the tolerance effect two ways. He can increase the amount of time viewing porn, or he can escalate the intensity of the images he sees. It's for this reason that men often move from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue to soft porn, from soft porn to hardcore porn, and finally from hardcore porn to degradation, bestiality, rape, or other scenes typically deemed repulsive and shocking. They do this not because they are predisposed to it, but because the strong emotions of shock, disgust, or shame provide the dopamine burst they crave. Gravitating toward aberrant sexual behavior becomes the only way to get a fix. 4. It's on demand. Unlike substances that require the user to arrange for a fix, a man who has viewed porn carries a forever stash of it in his mind without even needing to turn on a computer or look at his phone. Every time the images come to mind, he experiences a burst of dopamine in his neuropathways. Combine these four factors and you have a perfect storm brewing in the neurochemical sea of the brain. Over time, as the brain is overstimulated, physical and structural changes occur, and a man becomes addicted to his own brain chemistry. Every addiction known to man (and woman) occurs because the brain has adapted to being overstimulated—too much dopamine. As a result of porn use, three troublesome changes occur in the brain. Three Changes in the Brain from Overstimulation 1. Cravings Cravings occur when dopamine (the "I want it" neurotransmitter) is released. When more dopamine is released, a person experiences a craving for more. Cravings usually lead to viewing more porn. Viewing more porn leads to more dopamine being released. More dopamine leads to viewing more porn. You get the picture - it's a potentially never-ending cycle. 2. Broken Reward Circuitry In the center of the limbic system—the center of our urges and desires—there is a reward circuit flowing to the cerebral cortex—the rational part of the brain. Ideally, this circuit works in harmony. When the limbic system urges you to have another piece of chocolate cake, the cerebral cortex reminds you that you can't fit into your jeans, so you say, "No, thanks." In the case of a man whose brain is not yet addicted to porn, his limbic system may urge him to Google the words "naked women," but his cerebral cortex reminds him that his wife or girlfriend may not think highly of such an act. Porn, however, throws the reward circuit off balance. When the "go for it" system is overloaded with excess dopamine, the "think about it" system responds by saying, "System overload!" and shuts down. Suddenly, rational thought is usurped by limbic impulse. Rather than complete the circuit in harmony, porn trips the circuit breaker, and disharmony occurs between the two systems. 3. Numbed Pleasure Response Across the synapse—the micro space between neurons—reward cells talk to one another through dopamine signaling. Dopamine, remember, is the message, and the receptors on the receiving nerve cells are the ears. When dopamine is released in large amounts or for long periods of time, two things happen simultaneously. First, the receiving nerve cells get overstimulated and start removing receptors. It's like when someone keeps shouting and you decide to put your hands over your ears. But in this case, the sending cells scream even louder (more dopamine) until they are hoarse, and can now only whisper (amount of dopamine sent is below normal). With the receiving cells half-deaf (fewer receptors) and the sending cells whispering (less dopamine released), you are left with two options: feeling awful or finding more porn, the one thing that releases more dopamine than anything else. Low dopamine signaling leads to a numbed pleasure response and is known as desensitization. What this leads to is an increased craving alongside a decreased ability to experience satisfaction. It is precisely why men feel so helpless and powerless when they try to overcome their sexual addiction. Of course, it is not impossible to overcome a sexual addiction, but it is important to know what happens with your brain chemistry and why it is essential to surround yourself with expert advice and accountability. Join others like you in a safe and anonymous Hope for Healing group where you will develop a solid life plan for yourself to find sustainable recovery and freedom. Addicts are always hungry, but never full. Hope for Healing Registration Soon! Space Is Limited! Designed specifically for wayward spouses, Hope for Healing is a supportive, nonjudgmental environment for you to heal and develop empathy. Over the years, this 17-week, small group course has helped thousands of people find hope, set healthy boundaries and move toward extraordinary lives. "I just finished Hope for Healing and am proud of the changes that I already feel in myself and my marriage. I found Affair Recovery when I was at the darkest point in my life, and this course has helped me to get myself on a true path to recovery." - S., Alabama | November 2020 Hope for Healing participant. Spaces fill up quickly for this course. To learn when registration opens back up, click the button below. Subscribe to Registration Notifications! Sections: NewsletterFounder's LaptopFree ResourcesHot Off the PressRL_Category: Recovery FundamentalsSexual AddictionRL_Media Type: Text
