On Pornography

Wow this is a taboo topic that’s a bit uncomfortable to talk about. But it’s prevalent, present and affects all of us and our systems.

I probably first encountered porn when I was about 14 or 15 yeas old. I remember we got our first family laptop and I discovered Limewire, a household name and a downloading service in the early 2000’s that was a treasure trove of music, movies and the holy grail of pornography at the time. I’d download images and videos, watch them, then delete them off the laptop, hiding my shame. My guilt. The dirty feeling of secrecy and pleasure all wrapped into the body of 15 year old Brian.

There was the 900 channels on our Sky boxset (which still exists I think). There was eurotrash on latenight television. I remember dreaming of coming across someones stash of pornography at a sleepover at a friends house or in a field and basking in the clandestine glory of it all. Looking back, I’m realising how early my brain was being wired towards instant hits of dopamine and the images of the female form. Masturbation really is this secret wonder of discovery for a teenage boy who’s filled with hormones and pimples and desires and curiosity.

For the record, I don’t think there’s anything objectively wrong with pornography. As long as the video or images were made with the full consent of the people in them, and they’re adults, not under the influence of intoxicants. Curiosity and sexual pleasure are a natural part of humanity, observing and exploring the flesh of the human form. It’s also been an important part of my healing from porn addiction, the releasing of the shame and guilt and grossness I felt after watching it. In retrospect, I’ve realised that shame is an inherent and integral to any compulsive behaviour. It’s important to take the action down off its pedestal of sin. It’s not evil. It’s not all-powerful. It’s the naked human form and we have natural sexual desires that are screaming to be fulfilled. And with the proliferation of the internet, and the easy access that it gives us access to, its’ natural for curious adolescents and adults to google things that they are sexually curious about.

But there’s so much that’s broken and toxic and tainted and manipulative and exploitative about the porn industry. That’s important to mention. There have been countless complaints against sites like Pornhub for not having adequate checks and balances in place to make sure their content doesn‘t have underage people in their content, or that the people in the videos gave their consent to the videos being made, shared, or distributed. Also, the porn that’s promulgated throughout the Internet is endemic of our patriarchal society, objectifying women and proliferating dominant, abusive attitudes and behaviours towards women. I recently read a cross-European study of six countries that links pornography use with damaging attitudes towards women and sexual standards in general.

All that is so problematic it is difficult to think about. The grand scale of people who’ve been exploited for clicks and to sell advertisements for the pleasure of random people all over the world is intensely problematic. In saying that, I don’t necessarily blame the users of pornography. They are just looking for a temporary bit of relief of pain, or pleasure, or distraction, or numbness through the use of pron. And because of a lack of education, or ignorance, or how society is further isolating us and capitalising on us, it’s apparently worsening. The companies and people who exploit, harass, abuse, denegrate and delude people through pornoraphy need to be held accountable.

All that said, what’s my relationship to pornography now? I don’t watch it anymore. I’ve realised it was too easy. It was like eating donuts everyday, a delicious, easy-to-reach hit of pleasure and dopamine, but in the long term, detrimental to my health. Gabor Maté uses that as a definition of addiction: anything that we do for short term pleasure that is detrimental to our wellbeing in the long run. A friend recently gave me an additional definition - Any substance or behaviour that you’ve tried to give up a few times and have failed. Drinking alcohol, smoking, gambling, cocaine all fall into that category, along with any behaviour that we do from an unhealed, clinging, craving mind: shopping, sex, coffee, exercise, anything can become the conduit for a process addiction. A process addiction is where the act or behaviour doens’t have inherent chemically altering qualities for our brains but can still turn into an addiction that harms us in the long run. Drugs and Alcohol and smoking all immediately alter our brain chemistry and our body composition, to give us a chemical high, which can also lead to a behavioural addiction. Things like gambling, pornography, shopping don’t have the same instant chemical, physical impact or interaction with our brain chemistries but can still heavily affect what goes on in our brain, through dopamine and serotonin release during extreme moments of pleasure, excitement, distraction and intensity. Porn falls into this category of process addiction.

I still sometimes feel the feeling in my body when I find myself clicking on photos of scanitly clad or suggestive content on my instagram foryou page. There’s a warmth and excitement that starts in my stomach and builds to my chest and throat, anticipating the pleasurable moments of watching the female form in whatever scenario, story or position that the video or image delivers. That intense feeling is so strong that it can completely take me away from my logical mind and into an animalistic desire for that pleasurable moment watching that pornhub video or onlyfans site. It’s chemical. It’s powerful. It’s addictive.

As with any addiction, the shame sets in after the act is done and the cleanup happens. It may not always be immediately but it slowly grows as self-disgust, shame, self-beration and inner critical voices and narratives. What are you doing, what a waste of your life force, what a gross person you are getting off on this filth, the list of shame-filled inner narratives goes on. After a few days of this, the shame around women creeps up. What would they say if they knew what I was watching. All sexual desire dissipates towards other human beings. The allure of the perfect female form or perfect video is far more attractive to the mind that the imperfect human form in reality. Alternatively, I find myself hyper sexualising everyone I meet. Cue more shame, more self-disgust, more self-criticism. This cycle repeats until the next nights I’m laying in bed and start to fantasisze about that euphoric momentary feeling of watching another porn video. Or the anticipation of searching for the next perfect video in the perfect category with the perfect mix of fantasy and something that could actually happen. That high is probably even more euphoric compared to last time. It not only has given me a high, but it’s also temporarily given a me relief for all the heavy emotions of shame and guilt I’m feeling. Are you starting to see how this viscous cycle is self-perpetuating? It’s incessant, insidious, and as I said before, I don’t believe there’s anything inherently wrong with it, but it doesn’t benefit me in my life. When I’ve gone through long periods of not watching porn, months on end maybe - I notice my creativity come back, my natural attraction to humans who I meet comes back, I even feel a charisma and charm return to me, and there’s a magnetism to the joy and comfort I feel within myself. It’s subtle, and happens over a long time, and it’s hard to remember that’s due to the abstinence.

The benefits of not watching porn are so gradual, subtle and compounding over time, that’s its so tempting in a momentarily lapse in memory or a slip of self-awareness to slip back into the cycle of pleasure, shame, pleasure, shame.

I’ve never been in treatment for an addiction, but since learning more and more about it, I’ve come to believe that we’re all on a spectrum of addiction. We all have our crutches, our substances or behaviours that we use for temporary respite from reality, or rewards, a soothing feeling after a difficult day, a moment of temporary connection to ourselves. You can replace porn with alcohol or weed, or whatever your chosen habit might be. Maybe it’s scrolling tiktok or instagram or youtube. Maybe it’s online games, maybe it’s smoking. Again, I hope it’s clear that I’m not ascribing morality to any of these substances or behaviours. I’m pointing to my own realisation of the unhealthy cycle that pornography was for me. The reduction in sexual drive when I’ve been in relationships, the negative effects of all that shame and guilt in work or anywhere where I need to perform at my best. Addiction, of any kind, can corrode away at our natural light, our profound creative and spiritual energy, reducing us to robots of our urges, slaves to whatever substance of behaviour there is.

I hope this has given you some insight into the male psyche when it comes to porn. But also, I hope that it’s given you pause to think about your own soothing or escape mechanism, and a moment to think about the affect it might be having on your life or your relationships.

For me, I don’t judge anyone who likes to watch porn. There are some ethical porn sites out there that are made by women, who are trying to change the industry from the inside, which I commend them for. And there’s lots of educational content online like OMGYes. Which can enhance the connectivity between couples and educates us around pleasure and sexuality and connectivity. There’s a treasure trove of knowledge out there to improve sexual experiences in real life for both men and women. I have to be careful with sites like that, because addiction can be a slippery slope. And it ultimately comes down to bodily awareness, emotional awareness, and a long journey of healing to know what behaviours are benefitting us and what are detrimental to us. Go easy. Go carefully. And go lovingly, into whatever path life takes you. Just remember, does that behaviour or substance benefit you and your loved ones in the short term AND the long term? If not, I hope this article gave you a moment to see a potentially more wholesome way forward. Namaste. Brian