Book Time: 4 Mind-Blowing Insights I Got From This Little-Known Book About P*rn Addiction
~ It’s hard to imagine that people chain-smoked cigarettes without having any idea how bad it was
Last month I read Your Brain On Porn by Gary Wilson.
It’s been recommended by loads of people, saying it’s a great lesson into addiction, and why it’s hard to control ourselves in the world of too-much-all-the-time.
There is a lot of interesting stuff in the book. Sometimes it goes deep into the science (which I understand nothing about). But most of the time it provides simple explanations as to why we do the things we do.
These are the mind-blowing insights I got from the book about how addiction (and porn) works.
1) Your brain doesn’t know what porn is
What is porn?
Can you describe it?
Is it 2 people having sex? Or naked people? Or hot models on TikTok?
Your brain doesn’t know. And it doesn’t matter because the goal of this type of content is the same: to get you horny with pixels.
If you have a p*rn addiction, switching from adult websites to social media doesn’t change anything. Social media is less explicit. But you’re still doing the same bad habit. Like an alcoholic switching from Vodka to wine. Same difference.
What matters is the level of excitement you’re getting. And how much dopamine your brain is producing.
If you want to stop a bad habit, you gotta stop all activities associated with it. Deep down you’ll know if you’re cheating yourself or not.
2) 4 signs that something is dangerously addictive (and why p*rn is the most dangerous)
2 years ago. I’m at the airport waiting for my flight to Spain. Bored.
I decide to walk 2 minutes to buy some food. Between 48 options, I decide on Pringles (I love it too much). They have 2 packages. 40g for 2 euros. Or 200g for 3 euros.
“200g it is!”
I go back to my gate, sit down, open the package, and eat until there’s nothing left.
Can you guess the 4 things that make junk food so addictive?
It’s an exaggerated version of something humans want. At the airport, I could’ve picked fresh fruit (lol) I didn’t. I chose the exaggerated version of food. Deep fried and with too much salt. If something is better than the natural version, it’s the first sign you can get addicted to it.
It’s easily available everywhere. I had to walk 2 minutes to buy junk food. It’s also your case if you live in a mildly developed country. In nature, there’s scarcity. In modern society, not so much. When you have access to too much of something that feels good, getting addicted isn’t hard.
You have too many options to choose from. I had to choose between 48 different junk food options. The same thing happens when you’re at the supermarket. Or scrolling through Uber Eats. Too many choices. Your brain can’t deal with the endless novelty. It thinks it has to try everything. That’s why you can get addicted fast.
You can easily consume too much. I ate the entire tub of Pringles. That’s about 1,000kcal. Same as 3kg of broccoli. No wonder it’s so easy to gain weight. When you can consume something without a limit, you can easily consume too much (and get addicted).
P*rn is the most dangerous drug
Junk food. Video games. Social media.
All very addictive because:
It’s an exaggerated version of what humans like
It’s everywhere
It has so much novelty your brain keeps wanting more
It’s very easy to consume too much of it
But why is porn the most addictive?
Because humans evolved to seek mainly 2 things:
Food
Sex
Food is very addictive (40% of global population is fat). But food has friction points:
You have to spend money to get it.
There’s a limit to how much you can eat
P*rn is different.
There’s no limit to the exaggeration. (Self-explanatory)
There’s no friction to get it. You pick up your phone. Google it. And consume it. For free.
There’s too much novelty. There is a p*rn category for everything imaginable (and even what you can’t imagine)
There’s no limit to how much you can consume. You can watch p*rn 8 hours straight with a single 2-minute bathroom break.
Every month something new is released to the masses. Pay attention to these 4 signs if you don’t want to fall into the addiction cycle.
3) Dopamine is responsible for your addiction (and why you keep feeling like shit)
Back in 2021 I bought an entire vegan chocolate cake at the supermarket.
I ate a slice at lunch. 2 hours later, I had 2 more slices. By dinner I ate until half the cake was gone. I couldn’t stop myself. So I knew there was only 1 solution. To throw half the cake in the bin.
Why?
Because you can’t reason with your brain when it’s flooded with dopamine.
Dopamine makes you keep chasing what feels good. The last bite of ice cream. The last round of a video game. The next episode of a TV show. The next p*rn video.
And feeling pleasure all the time screws you over in the long run. The more dopamine you produce, the harder your brain has to fight to keep the balance. So it underproduces dopamine (since you’re getting it from everywhere, all the time) from normal activities.
So when you stop the dopamine frenzy (from TikTok for example), your baseline drops below normal, into the “feeling like shit” area.
But dopamine is also what keeps you alive and motivated to live.
In a study done in rats, scientists genetically removed dopamine production of some rats. They discovered that rats would just lie there waiting for death. They would not eat, even putting food an inch away from their mouth.
Too much dopamine is bad. No dopamine is also bad.
Balance is key. It’s the difference between addiction and healthy habits. If your balance is tipped too much to the pleasure side, try to reset it by running towards the pain.
4) People can’t quit porn because their environment is creating cravings
At work, there’s a system to order lunch online.
Every day at noon the office assistant goes downstairs with a trolley to pick up everyone’s lunch. And every time she comes back, I start salivating. I know it’s time to eat.
If this sounds like like one of Pavlov's dog, it’s because I am.
Pavlov taught dogs to associate a bell with food. So when he rang the bell, dogs salivated waiting for food. I’ve been conditioned to associate trolley and food the same way.
And it can also be applied to porn (or any other bad habit, really).
Back in 2016 scientists did an experiment that went like this:
They showed subjects a random image of a square before showing an arousing image
After doing this repeatedly, subjects were aroused by looking at a square
This association was stronger and faster with porn addicts.
So if you watch porn every time before you go to sleep, now bedtime is associated with it (and it’s probably affecting your sleep). Or maybe you’re used to watching porn when your parents leave the house. So when you hear the lock when your parents are leaving, you get cravings and spikes of dopamine, as this user put it:
One day I am browsing when my parents decide to go out. I didn’t want to go, so I keep doing my stuff. When they close the door, something clicks in my head.
Suddenly, a big desire for porn pops into my mind. I was turned on by the closing of a door! That was the first time I realized that ‘parents leaving home’ is a trigger for me.
Obvious, but I hadn’t noticed it. Now, every time my parents leave the house, I go out for a walk, call a friend or just stop using my computer and do something useful.
Your Brain On Porn—p. 161
But if you’ve been conditioned to a certain habit, you can also be unconditioned.
Pavlov was able to stop dogs from salivating when hearing a bell. He did this by sounding the bell and not giving them food (many times).
For example, if you’re addicted to eating sweets every day at 3 pm, you can train yourself to stop the cravings. You can stop reinforcing it by doing something else (easier said than done, I know).
If you try this, keep in mind you’ll feel like shit for a few weeks. Then the association will die. And you won’t feel the need to engage in the bad habit anymore.
5) The science on porn addiction and it's effects on the brain are not clear
There is not a single guy, with internet access, that hasn’t watched porn by the age of 20.
This makes impossible to see the effects porn has on the brain.
It’s like if every human started to smoke by the age of 5. People would die from lung cancer all the time. But because everyone would a smoker, it would be considered normal.
But studies done on subjects who quit porn showed quitting improved their lives.
If you’re still skeptical because of the science, keep in mind that trends work like this:
Companies introduce something exciting to make money, but know it’s bad in the long-term
People get addicted
It takes decades of scientifically backed-up research to show how bad something is.
Addicted people start to learn about the problem
These people start to quit
This is exactly why you can't wait for scientific research to provide all the answers.
As author Brian McDougal (Porned Out), put it:
It’s hard to imagine that a whole generation chain-smoked cigarettes without having any idea how harmful they are, but the same thing is happening today with online pornography.
What was the most surprising fact for you?
Thanks for reading!
If you’re interested in the full book summary, subscribe below and I’ll send you the link (for free).
Great stuff...thanks for sharing this.