A taboo subject: pornoholism

Have we taken the sex out of sex? Stuart Schneiderman asks the question, and links to a Wall Street Journal article by Holly Finn. Finn writes,

Repetitive viewing of pornography resets neural pathways, creating the need for a type and level of stimulation not satiable in real life. The user is thrilled, then doomed. But the evolutionary plasticity of our mind makes this damage reversible. In "The Brain That Changes Itself," psychiatrist Norman Doidge writes about patients who overused porn and were able to quit, cold turkey, and change their brains back. They just had to stop watching it. Completely.

Schneiderman adds,

However much our nation was once in the thrall of sexual censorship, that censorship has broken down to the point where people refuse to say anything remotely negative about porn, for fear of being labeled a psychosexual defective.

Anyway, pornoholics suffer two kinds of desensitization. First, they unlearn their normal response to the stimuli provided by real women. Second, they eventually become numbed to most of the effects of porn and seek out depictions of more violent and deviant acts in order to respond.

While it might make sense for some men to watch porn in moderation, the same does not apply to pornoholics. For a true pornoholic there is no such thing as moderation. It's like a recovering alcoholic who goes into a bar, resolved to only have one drink. You know and I know that this is a virtual impossibility. As 12 step programs insist, alcoholics need to stay out of bars, they need to avoid any haunts and associates who were part of their alcoholism. The same applies to pornoholics.

Finn reports

Today 12% of websites are pornographic, and 40 million Americans are regular visitors—including 70% of 18- to 34-year-olds, who look at porn at least once a month, according to a recent survey by Cosmopolitan magazine (which, let's face it, is the authority here). Fully 94% of therapists in another survey reported seeing an increase in people addicted to porn. It has become a whole generation's sex education and could be the same for the next—they are fumbling around online, not in the back seat. One estimate now puts the average age of first viewing at 11. Imagine seeing "Last Tango in Paris" before your first kiss.

Among the young people I've asked, only teetotalism worked. Otherwise, as one put it, "the creep creeps back."

This rehabilitative mental process, it turns out, is a lot like the one we use when we fall in love, getting over one person and meeting someone new. First we "unlearn" old pathways, cutting and rewiring billions of connections in our brain. Then we make fresh ones. So, in a way, love actually conquers all—even porn. Please tell the nearest teen.