Your Brain on Porn – Why porn is so addictive
First in a series of understanding porn addiction and putting together your battle plan to get free.
Remember your first exposure to pornography? I do. I remember the rush that overcame my body. I knew it was ‘dirty’ and wrong, but I was very excited and felt my heart beat faster and a high like I had never known before. Right in front of me was a magazine that had a nude woman in it. It was the glimpse that every pre-teen boy daydreamed about.
That first impression for you probably made you feel the same way – a rush of adrenaline that sped your heart up. It doesn’t matter how old you were at that first peek. Even now, years latter you still feel that rush when you expose yourself to porn.
Little did you and I know that at the first exposure we were opening ourselves up to a world that would suck us in and toy with our minds and bodies. That exhilaration we felt and still feel when we take a look at porn is caused by a chemical reaction in the brain. That chemical reaction released endorphins and other potent chemicals that are the same as when a drug addict takes a hit. We have become addicted to that high feeling we get when we take a hit of porn! This chemical reaction not only gets us high, but also is strong enough to imprint the images we are viewing into our minds!
You now know why porn is highly addictive and why we cannot escape the images of sex in our heads! I bet you can recall some scenes from the first porn movie you watched or the pictures out of that magazine you saw years ago.
Pornography is highly addictive because of the addictive chemical properties. We love to feel good don’t we? Alcohol, drugs, porn, or any other addictive substance all alter our state of mind and give us feelings of pleasure and let us escape from our daily grind. Let’s face it, life is tough and many of us use different ways to unplug and get away. Porn makes us feel high and when you combine it with masturbation; you get a double feel good experience!
Those images that get imprinted into your mind also further the addiction. Sex on the brain is the running joke brought against men anyhow. When you imprint sex scenes into your memory banks, they will pop up when you want to recall them and even when you don’t. When you don’t want to recall them they will clamor to get in to your conscience thinking and try to control you. Ever see a pretty girl with a nice body and then BAM, your mind takes you back to the porn scene you watched previously? Now, when you get this scene flashed in front of you, the chemical reaction starts to rev you up and you need an outlet for this energy. You will then turn to porn and masturbation to relieve it. This cycle continues and before you know it, you are spending hours a day feeding your porn habit.
The cycle of porn continues in your life until you decide to do something about it. You know how the cycle goes. A trigger goes off in your head and causes you to get a craving, you try to deny the craving but it won’t go away. Now you figure the only way to get rid of this craving is to give in to it, so you go and use porn. Afterwards you feel so ashamed and guilty. You say to yourself; ‘Why did I go and do that again? I won’t do it again. From here on out, no more porn!’ It isn’t long till one of your triggers knocks at the door. You try to ignore it. It won’t go away. So you give in again.
Next time we will talk about why it is so hard to break free from a porn habit.
If you can identify with any of the above, then you will need stay tuned as we dig deeper into porn addiction and how you can get yourself free from it. Subscribe via RSS, add you your Yahoo page, and bookmark this site.
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