Like the rats in the cages of the NIH, pressing the bar to get a shot

Dr. Victor Cline is a psychologist and psychotherapist who, by his own reckoning, has treated approximately 300 sex addicts, delinquents, and victims of sex abuse. He concludes from his therapeutic experience that pornography consumption has a causal relationship to obsession and crime. Dr. Cline describes the process as consisting of four stages:

1. Addiction

The first change to happen was an addiction effect. The porn consumers got hooked. Once involved in pornographic materials, they kept coming back for more and still more. The material seemed to provide a very powerful sexual stimulant or aphrodisiac effect, followed by sexual release, most often through masturbation. The  pornography provided very exciting and powerful imagery, which they would frequently recall to mind and elaborate on in their fantasies.Once addicted, they could not throw off their dependence on the material by themselves, despite many negative consequences such as divorce, loss of family, or problems with the law (as with sexual assault, harassment or abuse of fellow employees).

2. Escalation

The second phase was an escalation effect. With the passage of time, the addicted required rougher, more explicit, more deviant, and “kinkier” kinds of sexual material to get their “highs” and “sexual turn-ons.” It was reminiscent of individuals afflicted with drug addictions. Over time there is nearly always an increasing need for more of the stimulant to get the same initial effect.

3. Desensitization

The third phase that happened was desensitization. Material (in books, magazines or film/videos) which was originally perceived as shocking, taboo-breaking, illegal, repulsive or immoral, though still sexually arousing, in time came to be seen as acceptable and commonplace. The sexual activity depicted in the pornography (no matter how antisocial or deviant) became legitimized. There was increasingly a sense that “everybody does it” and that this gave them permission to also do it, even though the activity was possibly illegal and contrary to their previous moral beliefs and personal standards.

4. Acting Out Sexually

The fourth phase that occurred was an increasing tendency to act out sexually the behaviors viewed in the pornography that the porn consumers had been repeatedly exposed to, including compulsive promiscuity, exhibitionism, group sex, voyeurism, frequenting massage parlors, having sex with children, rape, and inflicting pain on themselves or a partner during sex. This behavior frequently grew into a sexual addiction which they found themselves locked into and unable to change or reverse—no matter what the negative consequences were in their life.* Those who start using pornography generally aren’t aware that looking at pornographic images can quickly lead to a clinical addiction. And  if adults aren’t aware of it, then children and teenagers certainly aren’t either. After they stumble upon it—perhaps it confronts them unprompted through their cellphones or computer screens—children realize at some point that they have been caught. The addict does what he doesn’t want to do, and doesn’t want to do what he does. To feel “good” temporarily, he has to damage himself. And he becomes blind to damage he may inflict on others.

It starts with the “discovery” that they can seemingly escape unpleasant feelings, such as those of frustration, anxiety, loneliness, or inferiority. The real problem isn’t solved, so momentary relief is sought again and again, temporarily to bring on a feeling of pleasure or dull a feeling of pain. The dose has to be increased; the addictive behavior takes over more and more of the person’s life, and begins to destroy those support structures that still exist—marriage, family and friends. If the addict tries to escape the cycle, he suffers withdrawal symptoms that he may no longer have the strength to endure.

At the beginning there may be the power and will to tough it out through the unpleasant feelings and to seek a positive solution. With addictive consumption, the suffering is much greater, the consequences are more devastating, but the will submits to the addiction again and again and is much weaker than at the beginning—a dynamic similar to falling into debt.

Pornography addiction is among the substance-independent addictions, such as gambling addiction, workaholism and anorexia. Strangely enough, however, these induce biochemical processes in the brain similar to those of substance-dependent addictions. The brain’s self-reward system starts to break down, atrophies due to excessive use, so the dose has to be increased. The frontal lobes—which are responsible for discernment—start to shrink.

Modern brain research shows that the brain is actually changed through pornography addiction. Author and researcher Norman Doidge states that pornography, by offering an endless harem of sexual objects, hyper-activates the appetitive system. Porn viewers develop new maps in their brains, based on the photos and videos they see. Because it is a use-it-or-lose-it brain, when we develop a map area, we long to keep it activated. Just as our muscles become impatient for exercise if we’ve been sitting all day, so too our senses hunger to be stimulated. The men at their computers [addicted to] looking at porn [are] uncannily like the rats in the cages of the NIH, pressing the bar to get a shot of dopamine or its equivalent. Though they [don’t] know it, they [have]  been seduced into pornographic training sessions that [meet] all the conditions required for plastic change of brain maps.**

***
Signs of addiction include:

• The inability to quit voluntarily.
• The declining effect of the same sort of sexual activities, and therefore the need for stronger stimuli.
• A constant preoccupation with sexual thoughts, images and desires.
• Withdrawal symptoms when attempting to quit.
• More and more time wasted. Social, professional and family obligations and leisure activities neglected.
• The behavior continues despite its destructive effect on the addict’s own psyche, family and work.

The research studies agree that the pornography consumer finds himself on a slippery slope to ever-more abnormal sexual practices. He has to up the dose, and thereby increasingly loses moral inhibition.

* htt://www.catholicnewsagency.com/resources/life-and-family/pornography/pornographys-effects-on-adults-and-children/ (accessed August 20 , 2015 ).

**Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (London: Penguin Books, 2007 ), 108

Gabriele Kuby
The Global Sexual Revolution: The Destruction of Freedom in the Name of Freedom.