13 Symptoms Of Porn Addiction | Cause, Treatment & Recovery
The signs of porn addiction can differ from person to person. The common porn addiction signs we can quickly identify are watching excessive pornography and spending hours online.
But, the danger of pornography addiction lies in the subtle signs that are difficult to identify if we don’t pay any attention.
Our life takes a downward spiral, and we wonder what we are doing wrong.
Let’s identify the 13 common signs of porn addiction which usually escape our minds.
Table of Contents
1. Losing Motivation to Work
‘I don’t feel like doing it today.’ Are you saying these words almost every day?
Yes, the most common symptom of porn addiction is losing motivation for your work.
You lose motivation for your professional work and also those activities that gave you joy earlier in your life.
Your only source of pleasure becomes watching more pornography, eating junk food, playing video games, browsing social media, etc., where the pleasure is quick and easy.
2. Increased Isolation
Porn addicts label themselves as introverts and think this is how they are. One subtle sign of porn addiction is that the addict isolates themselves over time as they lose interest or find it awkward to bond socially.
A porn addict builds relationships with his screen because his happiness and pleasure are derived from the digital world.
The more he attaches himself to pornography, the less he gets connected with real people.
3. Relationship Issues.
Once a person consumes pornography daily, his relationship with family, friends, spouse and even with his colleagues starts to deteriorate.
This happens because he loses motivation to keep a healthy relationship with people.
He avoids responsibilities, commitments, and promises.
That creates a negative image of him in people’s minds, eventually leading to conflict in the long run.
A person who doesn’t fulfill his responsibilities and commitments will always have trouble living a happy life.
4. Lack of Intimacy
Lack of intimacy is a common symptom of porn addiction. Viewing pornography regularly rewires a person’s brain.
The more a person consumes porn, the less he finds pleasure or happiness in his love life. This leads to decreased sexual satisfaction with a partner, no libido, or losing interest.
Some even experience erectile dysfunction because of watching excessive porn.
5. Unable to Quit
This should be obvious, right?
Once a person relapses over and over again despite several tries, it only means he is addicted to pornography.
The definition of an ‘addict’ is physically or mentally dependent on something.
If you are unable to quit porn, it only means you are dependent on it. Ofcourse, this is just an illusion, and you are not dependent on anything, but the brain doesn’t know that.
The subconscious brain thinks porn is important for your life, and because of that, whenever you try to quit or stay away from porn, it creates physical discomfort, stress, brain fog, flatline, and many other tricks to get you back into it.
6. Unable to Think Clearly / Brain Fog
Brain fog is a strong sign of porn addiction. Your thinking becomes blurry, you find it difficult to concentrate on simple things, and you find it hard to remember names, dates or events.
Simple things like reading, planning or focusing on your work become difficult. You become mentally tired after a few minutes of working on your projects.
This happens because normal things don’t interest you anymore. You can only focus on browsing pornography videos for hours because that interests you more than anything.
7. No Self-Respect
Are you not happy in life? Do you feel your existence is worthless? Do you keep breaking your promises, like eating junk food during weight loss or procrastinating on priorities?
These are all signs of low or no self-respect.
One of the biggest signs of porn addiction is no self-respect. The more you watch porn, the more compulsive behavior you will develop for yourself.
A compulsive person most likely breaks his promises because he lives according to his subconscious mind, in other words, according to his brain patterns.
8. Withdrawal Symptoms
If you try to quit porn, one easy sign of porn addiction is withdrawal symptoms. You may experience irritability, stress, anger, depression, restlessness, etc. if you try to stay away from porn.
These symptoms of porn addiction are normal and also temporary. Once you move forward on your nofap journey, it will fade away.
9. Fatigue
If you spend time watching pornography, you will experience mental and physical fatigue.
You may lie all day in bed, or everyday work becomes too tedious.
This is because our energy is limited. Once we spend our energy on quick gratifications like pornography, no energy will be left to do other work.
10. No Libido
‘No Libido’ is a common sign of porn addiction. The sexual desire or interest in engaging in sexual activity decreases over time if you are addicted to porn.
This creates conflict in a relationship as the partner thinks something is wrong with her or she is not attractive anymore.
Moreover, it becomes difficult to enter into a relationship when you don’t feel good or motivated to talk with the opposite gender.
11. Shame and Guilt
If you feel shame and guilt after watching pornography but still continue to watch, then there is a high probability that you are suffering from pornography addiction.
Shame and guilt come from your inability to quit porn, eventually leading to depression.
12. Escalating Search
A person addicted to pornography will not be satisfied with the similar kinds of porn that he started with.
Over time a person consumes increasingly explicit content and hardcore or extreme porn.
This is because your brain always searches for the high hit of dopamine or, in other words, the extreme pleasure you received earlier through porn.
The same information cannot generate the same level of pleasure; only new and more exciting content can generate greater pleasure.
13. The Other Common Psychological Issues
The other common psychological issues a porn addict faces are low self-confidence, no self-esteem, doubting himself, inability to make strong decisions, inability to focus on his goals, negative self-image, anxiety, depression, negative thinking, overthinking, etc.
Millions of people experience these signs of porn addiction, and you can connect to these people in various communities.
I have mentioned the names of a few communities at the end of the article.
What are the Causes of Porn Addiction?
The causes of porn addiction can be complex and differ from person to person. The causes may be psychological or biological that can develop a porn addiction.
The factors which can develop a porn addiction are:
1. Brain Chemistry
Viewing porn for the first time can activate our brain’s reward system.
It releases a high amount of dopamine that can generate great pleasure.
The brain remembers this event and tries to replicate it in future with various cues.
Once a person repeats the same behavior, the brain creates a neurological pattern which strengthens over time because of repeated use.
The stronger the pattern or path becomes, the more habituated or addicted you become to performing that activity.
2. Coping Mechanism
Many of us use pornography as a coping mechanism. Watching pornography can act as an escape from reality, as many of us sometimes don’t like to deal with stress, emotional pain, or boredom.
The problem occurs when we become dependent on pornography for real-life problems.
The more we try to escape, the greater the problem becomes; as the problem becomes greater, the dependence on porn escalates.
It becomes a vicious circle.
3. Childhood Trauma
There is always some deep subconscious trauma or anxiety seeded for your self-harm actions.
You may say that your childhood was perfect or not even that bad like others, but even small incidents like emotional abuse, neglect parenting, bullying, etc. may cause your pornography addiction.
4. Porn Consumed Society
If you don’t watch porn and work on your goals, you are not one of them.
Your friends will not pat you on your back and label you as weird or nerd. Moreover, we can find half-naked girls promoting their stuff everywhere, music videos, movies, social media, banners, and posts.
The point is that in today’s generation, porn is everywhere, and our society accepts it as normal.
It’s no wonder why today’s youths’ mental health is deteriorating yearly.
How to Quit or Recover from Porn Addiction
Advising to quit porn addiction is disrespectful to an addict. Again, you are the only one who can quit your addiction because no amount of motivation or challenge cannot stop you from viewing pornography once again.
If you want to learn more about quitting porn addiction in detail, you can read the following article:
How to Quit Porn Addiction | Nofap Strategy
However, here are 10 keys to quitting porn addiction forever.
- Focus on building your character. The stronger your character becomes, the easier it will be for you to quit any addiction, including porn.
- Give equal importance to small and big commitments. It is not that you only focus on going to the gym and eating healthy while neglecting the unwashed clothes, cleaning your table or dishes piled up in the sink.
- Practice mindfulness regularly. It will teach you to control your emotions and create self-awareness. Self-awareness will stop you from any activity that you do compulsively.
- Clarify your consequences. Writing down and visualizing the consequences of watching and not watching porn can help.
- Understand that urge is natural. If you see someone and get sexually attracted, then it’s a natural thing. It’s energy, and you can convert this energy into productive use if you want.
- You can always convert your sexual energy to creative and productive work. Once you become good at this, you will enjoy your work even more.
- Patience is the key to your success in quitting porn. Remember quitting porn may take longer than you can imagine. You have wired your brain for over a decade. It may not go away from a 90-day challenge. It may take a year or two.
- Find a better environment for yourself to beat this addiction. If your friends don’t support you on this nofap journey, you must consider finding new friends or staying alone. Good companions are the pillars of your success.
- Join communities and keep learning more about sex addiction. You can read inspiring stories or how porn has killed many dreams in these communities. You can also find accountability partners for beating this addiction.
- Go with professional therapy. There is no shame in showing a psychiatrist about your porn addiction. He can identify the cause of your addiction and prepare appropriate therapy to beat it. You can always go for online therapy if offline therapists are not available in your area.
Final Words
There is no product, idea or belief in this world which gets support from all the people in this world. There will be some people who will oppose what you believe in.
Yes, some believe that quitting porn is a waste of time.
Don’t get swayed by what others believe. Develop your own theory from your practical life experiences.
If your life is progressing and improving daily by watching porn regularly, it’s good for you. But, those suffering from mental health problems, meeting failures after failures, and unable to see the light can try quitting porn for at least three weeks and see what happens.
You are not going to lose anything, right?
Best
Ahbab
