Pornography: The Drug Of Generation X
The nineteen sixties, a time of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Drugs became prevalent, acceptable and easily accessible. In 1966 Richard Goldstien's expansive expose featured in the Saturday Evening Post uncovered the prevalent drug use in top tier "ivy covered campuses" (Goldstien 40), schools like Harvard, Berkley and Columbia University. "The long haired element those who were usually called 'ethnic,' 'beatnik,' 'folkie' or 'fringe,' [were] often a major source of marijuana but is a grave mistake to assume that these students [were] the only one's who used drugs. Drugs [began] to invade 'respectable' areas of campus life" (Goldstien 40). There was no end to the variety or the accessibility of drugs on college campuses in the sixties.
In 2010, a new drug assaults college campuses of "Generation X" or "The Internet Generation." The youth of this generation are the children and grandchildren of the sixties cohort. Unlike the drugs used by their parents this drug is not injected, inhaled or even swallowed this drug is ingested through the eyes. More additive than heroine, crack and cocaine; very few addicts to this drug will ever recover (Hess). What is this drug? This drug is pornography!
Pornography's pervasive popularity far exceeds that of the drugs available to previous generations because it's cheap and easily accessible. One needs only to turn on a television or have access to the internet.
With the advent of the computer, the delivery system for this addictive stimulus has become nearly resistance-free. It is a though we have devised a form of heroin 100 times more powerful than before. Useable in he privacy of one’s home and injected though the eyes. It’s now available in unlimited supple via a self replicating distribution network “ (Jeffery Satinover quoted in Hilton 49). The user doesn’t have to contact a dealer to get a fix.
Compared to the drugs used in the sixties pornography is far worse because only five percent of college students were experimenting with marijuana, today however, one hundred percent of high school seniors have been exposed to pornography(Hilton 32). The average boy has seen some form of pornography by the time he is seven(Hess). 57 million people a day use the internet for sexual purposes(Manning). That's equivalent to 33 percent of internet users in the whole world. In an average college classroom of approximately thirty people, nine regularly use the internet for sex. "The internet provides everyone with easy access the most vile, raunchy, and degrading images available"
(Manning 18). Because of wireless internet and cell phones this drug can be accessed and used anytime, anywhere, making pornography more accessible than traditional drugs. The pornography user doesn't have to contact a dealer in order to get a fix.
Pornography pushers are far more aggressive than the neighborhood drug dealer, assaulting the innocent with unwanted images, spamming e-mails, popping up during internet usage and via phone's through texting and sexting. It's akin to thousands of drug dealers niggling into your home tricking you into trying their wares, entrapping you, ever confident that the curious titillating sample will often lead to dependence. Every second $3,075.64 is spent on internet pornography (Manning 20). In 2006 the pornography business generated over 97 billion dollars worldwide. Right now the pornography industry is making more than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, E-bay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and Earthlink combined (Manning 26, 27)! Making pornography the most profitable industry in the world. As the user begins to crave new and raunchier material or interactive pornographic media there are soon fees attached and the punter suddenly becomes a client.
Like traditional drugs pornography is used by all walks of life and has no stereotype. Pornography addiction and drug addictions share three major connections: tolerance, withdrawals and excessive use. Drug use and pornography use share the tolerance factor. “Pot smokers find their vice ‘enjoyable’ and ‘harmless.’ They deny that [student] users usually graduate to heroin” (Goldstein 40) It is estimated that thirty percent of heroin users started with marijuana(Goldstien 40). Like soft core drug use often leads to hard drug addictions,soft core porn usually lead to hard-core pornography use. Pornography users experience withdrawal symptoms similar to those experienced by drug users. Coming clean from pornography is comparable to coming clean from drugs. “many report headache, irritability, restlessness, sleeplessness, anxiety and other symptoms during the first week of abstinence.” However, because pornography is “resistant to treatment, entails significant risks and has high relapse rates,” (Hilton 70). pornography addiction is far more difficult to treat than drug addiction.
Hard core drugs like heroin, crack and cocaine are extremely addictive, pornography is even more addictive. When does normal use of substance or an activity for personal gratification become compulsive”(Bostwick, 3)? It becomes compulsive when it becomes an addiction. “Addiction is defined as compulsive behaviors that persist despite serious negative consequences for personal, social or occupational function" (Bostwick 3). Like traditonal narcotics recreational use of pornographic material can quickly turn into addiction.
What makes pornography so addictive? So much more is going on during pornography viewing than just another "happy ending" to a "hard day." During a pornography session the pornographic images enter the brain, through the eyes. The brain unable to discern fiction from reality, begins to react to what it's seeing, neurons begin firing, and the brain begins releasing petrochemicals (or natural brain-drugs). These chemicals normally heighten energy and focus, trigger feelings of attraction, relaxation, excitement and manufacture a high which provides an all around good feeling.(Hilton 61)
Dopamine, triggers feelings of ecstasy. Release of dopamine is what causes cravings and dependency in drug addictions. The brain requires more and more dopamine to achieve the same result. The releasing of high levels of dopamine in pornography addiction is why porn addicts experience withdrawal symptoms when porn use is discontinued.(Hilton 71)
Norepinephrine: Increases energy by giving the body a little dose of adrenaline and also increases memory capacity. In a natural relationship, Norepinephrine enables the couple to recall intricate details of each others appearance. Norepinephrine enables porn users to recall pornographic images with photo perfect clarity years later. Thus allowing the pornography user to "carry in [the] mind private porn library [accessible] at any time"(Kastleman 5).
Testosterone: The key hormone in triggering men's feelings. During pornography viewing, testosterone levels increase dramatically causing a self-sustaining building cycle. Testosterone increases the desire for more porn triggering the release of more testosterone, which then increases the desire for more pornography, so on and so forth (Kastleman 4).
Oxytocin: The most powerful of all the chemicals in the brain. oxytocin is the bonding chemical. During sexual activity oxytocin bonds the partners together like an emotional superglue (icare 11). Oxytocin is the chemical in the brain that bonds parent to child. When a man uses pornography his brain still produces oxytocin but instead of bonding in a loving relationship the oxytocin forms a bond, in his brain, to the pornography. Eventually this breaks and reroutes the bonds previously made to the man and his wife and children. Pornography can change the users feelings for partners and children by altering the chemical paths in the brain.(Hilton 72)
Serotonin: is released at the end of a sexual experience. Serotonin brings a deep feeling of calmness, stress release and satisfaction.(Kastleman 4) Pornography also triggers a release of serotonin. Porn users begin to turn to porn to escape the pressures of life. Using pornography and the resulting release of serotonin as a form of self medication to combat the daily stresses of everyday life.(Hilton, 72)
Drug abuse is: “The use of illegal drugs or the use of prescription or over-the-counter drugs for purposes other than those for which they are meant to be used, or in large amounts Drug abuse may lead to social, physical, emotional and job-related problems” (www.mdanderson.org). Norepinephrine, Dopamine, Serotonin and Testosterone, all synthesized by pharmaceutical companies, can be obtained from a pharmacists with a prescription from a qualified physician. Epinephrine (also called adrenaline), given to patients who’s hearts are stopping, is also carried in epi-pens by patients with life threatening allergies and used to counter act anaphylactic shock. Doctor’s prescribe dopamine to Parkinson’s patients, testosterone for diabetes and hormone imbalances and good old serotonin is found in common anti depressants. Doctors and pharmacists consider all of these to be drugs and so does the FDA. It is incorrect to assume nerochemicals are not drugs simply because they are endogenous within the brain. Using pornography to trigger natural brain drugs, in large amounts for purposes other than those for which nature intended equates drug abuse (Hilton 50,51). Therefore, pornography use is a form of drug abuse.
Pornography use leads to addition of endogenous drugs because a pornography user becomes addicted to his own neurochemicals and over time becomes tolerant of them, Subsequently craving more and more pornography. The key factor in pornography addiction lies within the brains natural cycle of dopamine regulation. Dopamine produces feelings of ecstasy and euphoria. Pornographic images enter the brain, triggering dopamine production within the neurons. The dopamine, then travels along (axons), little wires that carry dopamine to the pleasure center (nucleus accubens) of the brain. The pleasure center receives the dopamine through little branches or fingers (dendrites) that branch out from the center of the nucleus accubens causing the viewer to experience pleasure. "Because pornography is a much more powerful stimulant that natural sexuality in the sensitized brain"(Hilton 61), pornography "over stimulates” the nucleus accubens with excessive and repeated hits of dopamine, much more than the normal pleasure response is designed to receive. There are inhibitory nerve cells, which produce inhibitory neurotransmitters. Designed to protect the brain form too much dopamine, these inhibitory cells send the message back to the dopamine cells warning that the dopamine levels are too high (Hilton 62) The dopamine cells stop producing dopamine and actually shrink. The poor little shrunken producers can no longer make dopamine as fast as the stimulated brain is demanding it. The gluttonous cells in the pleasure center begin to think they are starving and demand more dopamine. In an attempt to get a hold of more dopamine the pleasure center expands, growing more branches or fingers (dendrites), thus expanding the dopamine receiving area and causing even greater cravings. However, the modified brain, unable to receive the same amounts of dopamine as before, will do anything for it's drug and the addict views pornography again. Nevertheless,this time the addict needs a stronger stimulant to trigger the same pleasure response within the brain. This means he must find harder porn than before; something newer, more erotic, violent and sensational to generate the same amount of pleasure experienced before(Hilton 71).
See figure one.
Figure 1 Adapted by Jenny Jackson (Hilton 71)
The abused and damaged pleasure centers in the brain no longer recognize normal pleasures as desirable and “the chemically altered brain is left to crave what can never fully be satisfied” (Hilton 5). The porn user can no longer be contented by sex within a normal healthy relationship. Because
“pornography is not some titillating feast for the eyes that gives a momentary rush of excitement. It has the effect of damaging hearts and souls to their very depths, strangling the life out of relationships that should be sacred, hurting to the very core those you should love the most” (Hinckley, 59),
as they (loved ones) become an obstacle to nourishing the dependence.
The most disturbing parallel between drug addiction and pornography addiction is the similarity in brain morphology caused by both. Recent high tech brain imaging shows that Pornography addicts have a significant reduction of gray matter in the brain these reductions are almost identical to gray matter reductions caused by drug use (Zhou Y 3). Pornography damages the brain in the same way that dugs do. The images below are brain scans from patients with internet and sexual internet addictions. A healthy normal brain is gray, without the spots seen in the images below. (The damage to the addicts brain have been highlighted in yellow for ease of viewing.) The damaged areas occur in the back left side of the brain, (left anterior cingulate cortex, left posterior cingulate cortex, left insula and left lingual gyrus). .These parts of the brain are associated with the ability to control urges and regulate emotional behavior, emotional states, mood and motivation. "Disruptions of these functions could impair an individual's ability to monitor and inhibit appropriate behavior" (Zhou Y 4). Individuals with brain damage in this area often have behavioral and emotional problems. The same morphology seen below in pornography addicts is also found in chronic cocaine users and schizophrenics(Zhou Y 3).
Images 1-4 Brain Injury caused by sexual addiction.
Because of the similarities, pornography addiction is treated the same way that drug and alcohol addictions are treated. The addicted follow a twelve step program and meet with therapists and support groups. Rehabilitation centers for pornography addictions are becoming more and more common. Doctors treat pornography addiction with the same drugs previously used to treat drug and alcohol addiction. One of these drugs, Naltrexone, “Prescribed for treating alcoholism, [naltrexone] blocks opiates capacity to augment dopamine release.” Therefore “Blocking the capacity of endogenous opiods to trigger dopamine release in response to reward, naltrexone helps extinguish that reward‘s addictive power.”(Bostwick, 1).
Marijuana was the drug of the sixties, pornography, the drug of their children; the internet generation. Because of it’s addictive patterns, brain morphology and treatment options there is no argument
The addictiveness of Internet pornography is not a metaphor. Not all addictions are to drugs or alcohol...All addiction involves long-term, sometimes lifelong neuroplastic change in the brain...Pornographers promise healthy pleasure and relief from sexual tension, but what they often deliver is an addiction tolerance and an eventual decrease in pleasure (Hilton 51).
as the morphed, damaged and abused brain is left with a thirst that can never be quenched. The solution our pornography problem is the same as the solution to drug problem of the sixties. Education. Teach our youth about the dangers of pornography. Starting with: “This is your brain, this is your brain on porn, any questions?...”
Lol I figured out where all my works cited info went. I kind of deleted the file marked "Works Cited for all Articles." Oops
jenny this is very insightful and job well done
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