LifeSiteNews reports on recent studies of porn addiction…
“The United States’ massive porn industry has reported a marked increase in sales of DVD’s for home adult entertainment. California-based Adult Video News predicted revenue of $12.6 billion this year [2005] for the industry. Of that number, $4.28 billion is predicted from sales and rentals of porn DVD’s, even though the price of a porn film has dropped 20% in the last year.
“…some retailers of the products have suggested the increase is due to growing social acceptance of adult sexual entertainment.
“That ‘social acceptance’ is in fact a rapidly growing addiction to pornographic material within mainstream society, according to researchers and therapists who work in the field of sexual dysfunction….
“Dr. Mary Ann Layden is co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Cognitive Therapy. Speaking before the 2004 Senate Commerce Committee, she said, ‘Pornography addicts have a more difficult time recovering from their addiction than cocaine addicts, since coke users can get the drug out of their system, but pornographic images stay in the brain forever.’
“Social acceptance of the industry appears to be a blanket of acceptability tossed over the ugly truth of pornography–that the industry degrades the people involved in the production of material, degrades the viewer, and fosters socially deviant behavior.
“‘Those who use pornography have been shown to be more likely to engage in illegal behavior…. Research indicates and my clinical experience supports that those who use pornography are more likely to go to prostitutes, engage in domestic violence, stranger rape, date rape, and incest,’ said Layden….
“Furthermore, research shows that as an addiction, pornography builds upon itself, driving the addict to seek more extreme experiences of visually satisfying material.
“‘Sexual addicts develop tolerance and will need more and harder kinds of pornographic material,’ said Layden. ‘They have escalating compulsive sexual behavior becoming more out of control and also experience withdrawal symptoms if they stop the use of the sexual material. This material is potent, addictive and permanently implanted in the brain.’
“Despite industry defenders’ claims that adult entertainment is a healthy form of sexuality, the porn industry has seen an enormous increase in recent years in ‘extreme’ porn involving violence, the abuse of animals, a focus on fecal and urinary functions, and self-mutilation.
“‘There are no studies and no data that indicate a benefit from pornography use,’ Layden said. ‘If there were a benefit, then pornography users, pornography performers, their spouses and their children would show the most benefit. Just the opposite is true….’
Read the full article.
See also a related article by Dr. Judith Reisman on “The Psychopharmacology of Pictorial Pornography: Restructuring Brain, Mind & Memory & Subverting Freedom of Speech” (PDF).
Dr. Reisman argues that porn retrains brain pathways to mistake states of fear/disgust/humiliation “arousal” for sexual arousal, because both reactions involve release of the same neurotransmitters:
“Through this new technology, scientists suggest that emotion, awareness, memory and behavior are so closely connected in the structure of the brain, that each interacts with the other, a useful concept when addressing emotions triggered by pornography as behaviorally ‘causal’. Pornography will elicit fear, shame, anger and lust in many people. Reed (1990), Coleman (1988, 1990) Carnes, (1983, 1989, 1990) and others have reported that anxiety commonly increases what is mislabeled as ‘sexual arousal’….[14]
“In states of sexual or fear arousal (integral to the pornographic psychopharmacological experience) Margaret Kemeny reports, ‘we get an adrenaline rush, our pupils dilate, and our heart starts to race. That’s adaptive, because it promotes the physiological responses.'[16] Neurobiologist David Felten says: ‘when you’re frightened, for example, there’s a huge outpouring of adrenaline and noradrenaline that form the sympathetic nervous system and the adrenal glands.'[17] But this process is notably anxiety-provoking and maladaptive if it results in mislabeling fear and shame as a sexual high.
“Seeing an object excites a group of cell assemblies that call to memory the attendant excitation experienced by the original event. As fear and alarm are a part of pornographic or sexual abuse experiences, even incestuous memories could trigger unconscious sexual ‘arousal’ due to the association with a victim’s fear of powerlessness, personal harm, and humiliation.”
Dr. Reisman also argues that porn images make such a long-lasting impression because our brain works extra hard to make sense of bizarre and upsetting images, as a survival mechanism:
“Any confusing image or experience is processed as ‘novelty’ and the brain’s response to novelty is attention! All pornography is experienced as provocative ‘novelty’ initially. Note the need to change the novelty stimulus (the ‘centerfold’) and her surroundings and trappings regularly. Once the brain adjusts to one provocative stimuli the pornographer will substitute another and another and another.”