Can porn addiction cause brain damage?
2009 March 9
Yes indeed, says Donald Hilton Jr., a neurosurgeon from Texas.
“Just like other addictions, pornography addiction will interrupt dopamine, which functions as a neurotransmitter, and it will cause a part of the brain to shrink,” Hilton claims. The shrinkage occurs in the Ventral Tegmental Area, or VTA, at the front of the brain.
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Hi,
I think this is just totally typical American hysteria & utter twaddle. I think this is pseudo medico-scientific non sense. Such hyped up non sense helps nobody. In fact it makes me furious because it makes out that watching porn is then something that the person (male or female) has absolutely no control over. Oh! dear its my addition and I cannot stop!! this is totally NOT true. Watching porn or using porn is NOT an addiction like chemical substances it is an obsession (words may be but there is a significant difference between addiction & obsession or habit or compulsion). There is No! hard evidence that using porn is an addiction on the same level as a physical drug addiction.
Alan
There is NO! scientific causal link that shows viewing porn can cause any kind of brain damage. This is scientific SCARE MONGERING!! in my opinion. I have used porn for many years and I can tell you I DON’T have any kind of mental, emotional or psychological impairment as a consequence. Its like saying little children must NOT watch the Telli Tubbies because it could turn them into gays?!! Its just non sense, its just lies at worst.
Thanks Alan – I wondered what sort of comment this post would receive, and you’ve really nailed the issue!
And I’m in agreement. I’d suggest that Hilton’s claim gets off to a fundamentally bad start with “Just like other addictions…”.
It really would be good to know whether people struggling with porn were specifically studied by Hilton, or whether he has made a broad assumption based on ‘addicts’ as a whole. I suspect the latter?
If this was true and viewing pornography caused brain damage then that would imply that if I objectified my girlfriend as a sex object I would be damaged by her and by doing this. No! utter rubbish!!
Men & women have enjoyed each other sexually for millions of years without any brain damage resulting. How did they reach this weird conclusion? Only human beings with degree’s in twaddle could invent such irrational non sense!! Its just laughable and show’s they have a poor grasp of the real problem that pornography presents. Its NOT a medical or neurological problem its more of an emotional issue in my view.
Porn leads to NOT NORMAL and EVOLUTIONARILY UNPRECEDENTED sexual behaviour, Alan.
Furthermore, it is COUNTER-EVOLUTIONARY.
Mass porn is a new issue, so you’re assertions about “men and women enjoying each other sexually for millions of years without any brain damage resulting” is nothing but hogwash.
“Its NOT a medical or neurological problem its more of an emotional issue in my view.”
What a foolish statement. Emotional issues are nearly always related to neurobiology.
YES! I agree that porn & porn useage has become an unpreciented phenomenia due to the internet revolution over the last 30years. i.e. the sheer scale of porn use is new and therefore the more people using porn and the more people who are finding problems with its use is new too.
**All I’m saying is that I don’t think you can medicalize a porn problem its NOT a disease. Its NOT like menigitis it cannot be treated with drugs. I don’t beleive using porn causes brain damage I think this is highly misleading, extremely over the top. I’d like to see the actual research and how these weird conclusions were arrived at.
**OK!! so you don’t agree with my point of view but I don’t beleive what I have said to be foolish or hogwash. Aren’t your statements rather reactionary?
**OK!! How are emotional issues direclty related to neurobiology, come on how? what proof have you for such a statement as if it was fact?
Alan
It appears to me that the article is quite straight forward and not misleading. Pornography addiction can cause alterations in dopamine which can lead to alterations in the structure of the brain itself (shrinkage).
It seems very viable to me.
“How are emotional issues direclty related to neurobiology, come on how?”
Very extensive proof actually. Sadness, aggression – emotional states – all correspond to neurobiological patterns.
I.e. certain things happening to brain cells in regions of the brain.
Sorry! but I have to say I still remain totally unconvinced by any of these arguements. My mother has epilepsy and that affects her dopamine system but I have yet to see or hear about how epilepsy shrinks a suffers brain.
**I have used porn alot over the years and I don’t believe my neurobiology has been changed by this, nor has my brain shunk. It still have the same exceptional level of talent, creativity & intelligence I always had. Porn or no porn.
**Neurobiological patterns in themselves prove nothing in my opinion. This doesn’t prove brain damage, whats the actual causal link here please?? lets be specific.
Alan
There are those who watch porn once in a while w/ their mate & it’s fun and arrowsing, but clearly that’s not the majority of watchers out there. To add my 2 cents, I’d say pornography is just flat out a bad habit! And as you get older it becomes like any other negative addiction… it becomes a sickness. I’ve been addicted to porn for 25 years now, & I’m disgusted with myself. What I’ve concluded is it just has to get out of my life completely, & I’m not sure I can do it alone. That’s how sad I’ve gotten with it. It’ just too easy today thanks to all these pay-per view porn sites out there. That’s how I feel about it, which is why I’ve arrived on this website. Thank you!
watching porn once a month is not bad, but watching it everyday does cause brain damage. So if you don’t want your brain to be damaged, then quit watching porn.
One easy way to quit is to get a girlfriend or a hobby to do when you are bored.
Alan saying your mother has epilepsy but you had yet to see shrinkage sounds a bit biased. How can you see a brain shrink? I can’t. Neither can you unless your dr can provide some results via cat scan . Perhaps you can review the catscan results to see how the frontal lobe is doing, and if it is of an average healthy size to being with.
I’m fairly certain pornography altered my brain chemistry – not in a good way, either. I remember a few years back, after having had a problem for a long time, I remember during on marathon porn session I actually felt something shift in my head. It was a different feeling than before. I knew I watched too much porn but I’d never started feeling shame/guilt because of it. I didn’t feel good, per se, and I knew it wasn’t good for me, but never the sense that it was truly damaging me.
After that, it did start to feel different, slowly, bit by bit, I started to get worse and worse. The day after a marathon session, I’d lie in bed, feeling horrible. Then I’d recover. Then, it would take two days to recover. Then a week, then two weeks, then I just stopped recovering and went into a deep depression that I’m still in recovery from. (Other factors in my life played a role, too, but pornography was a major factor).
I’m fairly certain the part of my brain that regulates emotions was damaged by pornography – specifically, the trauma caused by the horrific images I ended up getting used to seeing (I never went looking for them, but when looking for free porn some horrible shit pops up. At first, it was gross and I clicked off, and the images didn’t linger. After a while, I still would click off but the images would linger in my head long afterwards). I would also say the words used to describe the clips were harmful too. At first, I wouldn’t click on clips with descriptions using ‘bitch’ or ‘whore’ … or similar degrading words. After I while, I’d clip on a couple, figuring, ah, they don’t mean it, it’s just play (hey, maybe it is for some people). Then, I started to feel awful about sex, whereas I had been in a place of, for me, moderate sexual health for a couple of years.
So, by continuing to watch these clips, I was getting more and more numb. And more and more sexually unhealthy, feeling a lot of anger towards my self.
I don’t think it’s possible that no damage was done to my brain by the experience of watching porn. Damage was probably done to the sexual part and the (I believe it is called) the hippocampus, which regulates emotion and decision making. After my sex-breakdown, I started doing things I never would have done before – unsafe sex with people I don’t know or trust, having sex with women I wasn’t attracted to, having sex when I didn’t even feel like it, prostitutes (no moral judgment on prostitution, however I felt awful because it was clear the young woman did not want to be there).
The only person responsible for these actions is myself, however hard it is to accept that. However, for sure, in retrospect, something had fundamentally changed in my brain.
I think people who don’t want to acknowledge the possibility porn can change the brain are simply afraid it might happen to them. Lots of people watch porn and don’t feel damaged or get damaged … it isn’t the porn itself doing it. It’s the motivation behind watching the porn, the reasons I was watching it. Not for arousal, or fun, or exploration, or with a partner, but for unhealthy reasons. That must have led to trauma.
One major point that seems to be over looked is the use of the word addiction. People are addicted to caffeine, sugar, work, lifting weights, so on and so forth. All food and drink we consume alter our bodies, and our day to day physical fitness levels do so as well. This is not a legitimate statement, unless enough evidence is provided to prove that pornography alters the mind more than an everyday consumed product.