10 Negative Effects of Pornography Addiction
There are more than 10 negative effects of pornography addiction that are affecting our daily lives.
It can vary from physical issues to psychological illness.
The most common negative effects of pornography addiction are given below.
1. Unable to Love
People who watch pornography have reported that their love for their spouse and others are there somewhere in them, but unable to connect or show it.
They can’t connect to their parents, to their wives or girlfriends, to their friends, or with any other individual.
These viewers of pornography are unable to connect on an emotional level with any individual.
Because of this, viewers suffer from bad relationships and failures in other areas of life.
But why does this happen?
Humans are social beings. Our primal brain is designed for society and we greatly enjoy the company of others when we are included and accepted in a group.
But to bond with others, we need to connect on an emotional level. We want to feel the joy to be with others and others also need to feel the same.
But, a pornography viewer doesn’t feel any joy in the small things in any relationships.
He doesn’t enjoy the company of others, he doesn’t like talking, walking, sharing secrets, spending time with important people, etc.
He blames others for a bad relationship, he doesn’t want to deal with the real world because according to his brain, there is a secret world for him, a safe world that makes him happy.
The pornography viewer is attached to the digital fantasy world. The only thing that can make him happy is pornography.
2. Career Failure
The negative effects of pornography addiction don’t end only in failed relationships. It greatly affects your productivity.
To work we need Intrinsic motivation. I have highlighted intrinsic because extrinsic motivation is temporary and it will not lead you to success, except for a start.
Extrinsic motivation like money or other external rewards will energize you for the beginning but soon the motivation will fade away.
If you don’t enjoy your work while doing it, you have to drag yourself to complete it or in other words, you have to use your willpower.
We all know how our willpower works. The result of your work is always unsatisfactory.
On the other hand, if we feel Joy (intrinsic motivation) while working on our task, the quality and quantity of our work improve.
The pornography viewer doesn’t enjoy their work.
They look at the task at their hand as a burden. They force themselves to work on their pending activities, but they can’t.
This leads to frustration, stress, and anxiety. Again, frustration, stress, and anxiety lead to pornography.
The cycle continues and our activities keep getting delayed.
The work that we complete because of the fear of getting fired or any other external force is never satisfied and it leads you to nowhere.
But, why does this happen?
I have discussed the role of brain chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, endorphin, etc in several other articles.
I am not going to bore my readers with these in this article. If you are interested to know, you can visit the following link:
https://basicideaz.com/articles/
But, I will discuss the summary of these chemicals that are affecting our work performance when we watch pornography.
When we watch pornography, our happy chemicals surge and gives us a euphoria moment.
Again, when we repeat the same behavior every day, our brains start to predict the high chemicals hit every day.
If we fail to provide the hit, we get uncomfortable and unhappy.
Our brain doesn’t care for other activities because it knows the level of this chemical hit can only be provided by pornography.
With the hope of getting the same hit every time, we view novelty porn minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, and it takes hours before we find the perfect clip.
Once we are satisfied and rested, the urge to get the hit comes sooner than we think.
There is no release of happy chemicals from our work because our reward system in our brain is exhausted.
The things that we were passionate about once now seem dull and boring.
This is one of the biggest negative effects of pornography addiction that leads me to nofap.
3. Low self-esteem
Self-esteem is having the confidence of completing your work and also having self-respect for yourself. It is the opinion about your self-image that greatly affects your life.
A person with high self-esteem lives a much happier and successful life than a person with low or no self-esteem.
It affects your relationships, career, and all the other aspects of your life.
A viewer suffers from low self-esteem for various reasons.
1. As mentioned above the productivity of a pornography viewer goes down because the internal motivation goes down.
He doesn’t receive any happiness from his work and this leads to frustration and self-loathing.
A person who is unable to perform his most important task has no self- efficacy.
Without self-efficacy, there is no self-esteem.
2. Most of the viewers feel guilty and shame after watching porn, and the self-respect for themselves goes down.
They promise themselves that they will not watch pornography anymore and start nofap, but most of them fail.
This leads to more self-loathing. The virtuous circle of promise and self-loathe continues until it becomes your identity.
A self-image of a loser, who can never be happy in life, and shame and guilt leads them into depression.
These people don’t respect others and they don’t even respect themselves.
When there is no self-respect, there is always low or no self-esteem.
4. Social Anxiety
Social anxiety is one of the most common negative effects of pornography addiction. Several pornography viewers have reported that they find it hard to socialize with real people.
They avoid social gatherings, meeting new people, teachers, friends, and even their parents.
These people have reported having difficulty in making eye contact with others.
But why? What social anxiety has to do with pornography addiction?
People have social anxiety for several reasons. It may be genetic or maybe because of wrong parenting.
Whatever the reason, the baseline for social anxiety is having the self-image of inferiority to other people.
It is much easier to talk to your close friend rather than talking to a stranger. It is much easier to talk to a beggar, rather than talking to a successful person.
A pornography viewer feels inferior to others for various reasons.
1. He is incapable of achieving his dreams. This leads to frustration and self-loathe as mentioned above. He curses himself every time he watches and it converts into a negative self-image in the long run.
The self-belief that he is not entitled to happiness, that he doesn’t belong to society creates an inferiority complex within himself.
The viewer may be aware of this inferiority complex or maybe unaware but your subconscious brain works according to your belief.
2. He is incapable to love.
I know this is the repeated information that is mentioned above.
But it has a direct link to our social anxiety.
A person who cannot love himself is unable to love anyone. The relationships that are based on true mutual love start to shatter.
There are thousands of examples where pornography has ruined marriages, committed relationships, relationships with their parents, relatives, etc.
He doesn’t enjoy anyone’s company but he craves for them. This leads to unhappiness.
When a person is facing unhappiness, the brain thinks that it is a threat to his survival.
It tries to protect us from outside harm by creating fear within us: A smiling stranger, a group of people, the girl you like, public speaking, etc.
The stranger might make fun of you, so does the group of people or the girl you love or the public speaking can be a disaster.
5. Low willpower
The prefrontal cortex is responsible for our willpower. Therefore, willpower is a muscle and like any other muscle, it can be trained and strengthened. The opposite is also true.
Once you stop training, your willpower starts to decrease.
According to Kelly McGonigal, and author of The willpower instinct says willpower is a response that comes from both the brain and the body.
The willpower response is the reaction of internal conflict. You want to do one thing, such as smoke a cigarette or supersize your lunch, but know you shouldn’t. Or you know you should do something, like file your taxes or go to the gym, but you’d rather do nothing.
Training your willpower is resisting your urges for short term gratification.
The pornography viewers often say to themselves after each relapse that they don’t have willpower.
They also say how they are supposed to resist their urges if they don’t have it in the first place.
This confirmation of not having willpower further helps these viewers to relapse.
But, I am not going to talk about how to quit pornography addiction in this article.
In future articles, I am going to discuss the best way to quit porn addiction for good. You will realize that quitting porn addiction doesn’t have to do anything with your willpower.
But, certainly, willpower does help to live a quality life.
People who have higher willpower, have better self-control, better discipline, and achieve success in life.
But why pornography addiction lower our willpower?
1.To exercise our willpower we need energy. A person has limited energy to perform his daily activities.
Shame and guilt waste a lot of mental energy.
If you imagine a pond and the water as the energy of a person, then shame and guilt act as a leakage for the pond.
A depressed person unable to finish his activities properly or if he does finish, the final product is usually bad.
To complete an activity he needs energy, both physical and mental.
A pornography viewer blames himself for his addiction and feels guilty every time he views it. The inability to love or work also creates shame and frustration within himself.
His energy gets wasted in his negative thoughts, and this again leads to relapse.
In other words, he is unable to train his prefrontal lobe.
2. In the study “Brain structure and functional connectivity associated with pornography consumption” published in the psychiatry journal, experts at German’s Max plank Institute found that more porn correlated with less grey matter and reduced reward activity when viewing porn.
In other words, porn weakens the prefrontal cortex, which reduces our willpower.
6. Brain Fog
- You read a sentence but you don’t understand it. So, you read it again.
- You know what you want to do in life, but for some reason, you don’t believe in it. There is no hope that you can achieve your dreams.
- You cannot remember anything for more than an hour or a minute.
- You feel frustrated and inferior that you are unable to focus on anything.
- There are doubts, negative thoughts and every day seem like a chore to be alive.
Brain fog is the opposite of mental clarity. When there is brain fog, your life runs on impulses.
It becomes hard for you to control your thoughts or consequences.
Moreover, it becomes challenging to focus on anything, your memory seems dull because you cannot remember anything for more than a minute or hour.
You cannot think straight and most of the time, thinking becomes tiresome for you.
Here is a small paragraph of a viewer:
“Thinking about complex matters becomes almost impossible. If I try to plan ahead, assess a situation, solve a problem or analyze something my brain stutters, whines and gives up like an old engine on a cold morning.
A few seconds is all I can muster before I give up, lie down and load up Netflix.”
This is how he felt while he was a regular viewer.
But how pornography addiction creates brain fog?
Dopamine imbalance is one of the causes of brain fog. Dopamine is a pleasure hormone because when it releases, you feel euphoric.
Dopamine is also known as the motivation chemical. When there is no motivation to focus on anything, no enjoyment in other activities; brain fog is imminent.
The release of dopamine in pornography is abnormal because of several elements.
- Novelty: Our brain releases happy hormones on novelty. The release of a new iPhone, new clothes, new places, new cars, etc releases happy hormones.
The internet is a treasure for novelty porn. With the high-speed internet on your fingertip, you can surf all day for novelty porn.
The rush of dopamine never stops.
2. Basic Needs: The primary task of our brain is survival and it will do everything in its power to survive our genes. The brain is always looking for a way to feel good because that promotes survival.
The activities that are closer to survival releases more happy hormones than any other activities.
Sure food, sex, and home are the fundamental needs of humans.
The brain of a pornography addict releases an abnormal amount of dopamine thinking it is related to survival.
3. The other elements that cause dopamine imbalance for a pornography addict are fantasy, easy access, stress relief, etc.
7. Girls’ Attraction
A pornography viewer doesn’t only fail to attract girls but anyone that is somehow involved in his life.
Girls’ attraction is one of the most important negative effects of pornography addiction for which guys go into nofap.
Our primal brain seeks physical relationships, social bonding, respect, status, etc. one may say they prefer to live alone, but your primal brain knows the truth.
We feel good when we are respected by our fellow group or from the opposite gender.
But, a pornography addict fails to attract girls or anyone he likes.
He doesn’t become the center of attraction when he walks into the room, nor does he feel any respect for him from others.
Why does pornography addiction decrease girls’ attraction?
The qualities of an attractive male are given below:
- Emotional Independence.
- Not needy for others’ approval.
- Self-confident.
- High Self-esteem.
- Social status & Resources.
- Physically healthy.
The baseline for an attractive male is not neediness. A needy person is unattractive to anyone.
A person who seeks others’ approval, begs for love and acceptance, runs after people who don’t respect him, is emotionally unable, dependent on others for his own happiness is unattractive. This is neediness.
Neediness=1/Attraction.
This is the formula of attraction.
A pornography viewer is emotionally dependent on others because he has low self-esteem. He doesn’t respect himself and he believes he is not worthy of any love.
He fails to socialize himself in the real world because of his digital attachment and view girls as sex objects.
Girls on the other hand can detect these qualities of man from his behavior. No matter how much a person tries to fake, a high esteem girl will detect the flaws of the man.
8. Anger and aggression
Anger and aggression are common when it comes to the negative effects of pornography addiction.
People who are frequent viewers have reported that they are unable to deal with difficult situations and most often find themselves raging and breaking stuff.
This leads to big fights with parents or with their spouse or sometimes with their bosses.
Why pornography addiction leads to anger and aggression?
- Low willpower: As mentioned above people who view pornography lose grey matter in the prefrontal cortex.
Our prefrontal cortex is responsible for our logical thinking and making the right decisions in life. It is responsible for controlling our impulses.
It is also responsible for self-discipline, perseverance, self-control, chasing our dreams, etc.
But when our prefrontal cortex starts to get weak, we easily surrender to our impulses. It becomes hard to control our anger issues and become aggressive to defend ourselves.
2. Mental energy: A pornography addict doesn’t only lose physical energy but also mental energy.
After every relapse, a viewer curses himself for his inability to control his urges and this leads to frustration and disappointment. These negative thoughts drain his mental energy and the viewer remains mentally fatigued most of the time.
When a person is mentally fatigued, it is hard to implement self-control and discipline.
9. Low Energy
For people who are in nofap, almost everyone has reported an increase in their energy level. The pornography addict loses physical strength and it directly impacts their daily work.
People who have joined the gym can experience the level of energy they lose after every relapse.
Besides the physical energy, pornography addicts also reported about mental energy.
As mentioned above, they don’t feel mentally energized to complete simple work like filing their taxes.
Any activity that is mundane or difficult, they try to void consciously or unconsciously.
Why Pornography addiction leads to low energy?
One of the main reasons for low energy is negative thoughts. Negative thoughts drain your energy and lead you to depression.
Moreover, there is no scientific evidence that supports pornography addiction cause less physical strength.
In my opinion, this is something you have to experience on your own.
The nofappers have reported in various forms that the level of physical and mental strength keeps improving day after day during nofap.
Moreover, their happiness and self-discipline have improved.
I believe when a person starts to become happy, his physical and mental energy starts to improve.
10. Rough Skin and Hair Fall
The last but not the least negative effects of pornography addiction are losing your hair and dull skin condition.
People who are on nofap have reported the overall improvement in skin condition and reduction in hair loss.
Again, there is no scientific evidence to support this claim but this is something I personally have experienced.
After a month on nofap, my skin became much smoother and lighter in color. The pimples started to disappear and my pores started to shrink.
My hair fall started to reduce after the third month on nofap.
Why pornography addiction caused skin irritation and hair fall?
As mentioned above, there is no scientific evidence for this too.
But, in my opinion, a pornography addict suffers from hair fall and skin irritation because of the mental stress he goes through in life.
A depressed and unhappy person loses hair and has skin irritation.
Moreover, semen retention has also some benefits in skin smoothness and reduction in hair fall.
Everyone is not the same and you may not experience the same as others. Perhaps, there are some nutritional deficiencies in your body for which you are having acne and hair fall.
In this case, only doing nofap will not cure your acne and hair fall problems.
But, a stress-free and happy life will certainly help.
Why don’t you try nofap for 21 days and let me know the result at admin@basicideaz.com?
I look forward to reading your results.
Conclusion
There are more negative effects of pornography addiction like erectile dysfunction, depression, zero creativity, social isolation, focus and concentration problems, and many more.
Any kind of addiction is bad.
If you are addicted to something, and not only porn, you are surrendering your freedom to your impulses.
You are caged and no one is happy when you live your life in a box.
But, the real question is how to quit porn addiction?
In my next article, I will discuss how I conquered porn addiction and how you too can do it without the help of your willpower.
I will end this article with a powerful quote, “Nofap is not a 90 days challenge, it is a lifestyle.”
Best
Ahbab
