Check Your Porn Usage?
Question by Dwefsw Frdrfw: Check your porn usage?
Addiction is a primary disease and can arise regardless of prior disposition towards psychological abnormality. It all has to do with “rewarding behaviors”. Addiction is simply the pathological enactment of rewarding behaviors. It has been found that all forms of addiction are associated with irregularities in the brain’s dopaminergic system. Neurostructural and neurophysiological changes include tolerance to dopamine and loss of sensitivity to it, or “habituation”; the accumulation of DeltaFosB, a protein associated with vivid memory and thus responsible for “sensitization” toward actions or locations contextually linked to the addictive behavior or substance; “hypofrontality”, including deterioration of impulse control and consequence visualization; and so on.
Humans, as animals, and moreover as mammals, typically seek out and perform rewarding actions. These can range from self-administering a particular drug (e.g. nicotine, heroine, cocaine) or acquiring sets of behaviors (e.g. gambling, playing video games, eating junk food).
The biggest factor in addiction to one action or another is not existing mental pathology or genetic predisposition. Since addiction comes about through certain neurostructural changes predicated, as described before, on desensitization to dopamine and the accumulation of DeltaFosB, it is actions that are most likely to create these conditions that are likeliest to be addictive regardless of neurological or genetic idiosyncracy.
A small minority of heroin users wind up addicted, yet the majority of those who use nicotine do. Note here that users do not become addicted to a drug per se (though the chemicals that constitute the drug may have myriad other neurocognitive effects). Rather, users become addicted to the dopamine released by their own brains. This is why behaviors such as gambling can frequently become addictive.
With heroin, especially intravenous, the dopamine, though in high volume, comes in low frequency. With cigarettes, however, each puff causes a small release of dopamine. The frequency of the dopamine release is critical in the progression of changes associated with addiction, then.
The Internet is a constant source of novel and entertaining information and imagery. Dopamine production during Internet use is high and constant. Studies indicate that problematic Internet usage – indicative of Internet Addiction Disorder – is evident in a significant proportion of the population, in the double digits. Internet addiction has been shown to have the same neurological and neurocognitive markers as substance addiction, including adverse changes in attention, mood, memory, and behavior. Internet pornography, as a subset of the Internet, features the same attributes. Internet pornography is novelty at-a-click, a rapid progression of sexually arousing images, and there is little more rewarding for the mammalian brain than sexual arousal and perceived reproductive opportunities.
Internet pornography is the equivalent of cigarettes and junk food *combined*.
Internet pornography is, under a certain age, used frequently by virtually all males. There are indications that frequent consumption of Internet porn is becoming – or already is – a majority behavior among the younger female demographics.
Prolonged consumption of Internet porn has been implicated in social anxiety, dysphoria, depression, and problems with sexual performance.
How will you use this information personally?
Best answer:
Answer by shanty town
I masturbate approximately 4-5 times a day (on average). I think what this article saying is true, to some degree. Perhaps some figures and references would be appropriate though.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
Motherhood may dampen cocaine's effects on the brain
Filed under: Cocaine Addicts Behavior
New research from the University of Michigan has revealed that motherhood may dampen the effects of cocaine use – a discovery that could lead to more customized drug therapies to fight addiction. “We know there are sex differences in the way men and …
Read more on Fox News
Overcoming memories that trigger cocaine relapse
Filed under: Cocaine Addicts Behavior
Rats demonstrating cocaine-seeking behavior spent significantly more time in the previously cocaine-associated chamber. Over several cocaine-free test sessions, addicted rats lost their place preference through extinction learning. To examine the …
Read more on ScienceBlog.com (blog)