Cupid's Poisoned Arrow

For putting it so well. That's what I meant by misplaced fear.

We need data on this subject, not conjecture!

Okay. Let's accept for the sake of argument your position that it could well be unethical to expose all those poor experimental subject to dangerous (!) pornography as part of an effort to empirically test your these.

(Parenthetically, gazillions of people all over the planet are subjecting themselves to it every day, and living to tell the tale.)

However, let's

a. accept it for the sake of argument.
b. acknowledge that the Internet is international
c. so that men in France, Germany, and even British Columbia have equal access to porn
d. and acknowledge that with these men who are allegedly viewing porn to libido and erection-smashing levels, they're going to try to do something about it when it comes to real life sex
e. and what they'd do, logically, would be to go for ED-drug prescriptions
f. which means that if porn has this huge overall effect, the number of ED drug prescriptions written should be skyrocketing, no?

Only problem? They're not.

Consider British Columbia, for example. According to definitive IMS data for calendar 2008, Viagra was the 100th most popular prescription written in the province, and the increase in number of prescriptions written over the previous year? A measly 2.7 percent. (Easily explainable by aging population and a Canadian population natural yearly increase of 1.5%).

Oops.

You can find the link to the the actual data by Googling:

The Top Rx Drugs in Canada: Our annual look at what's topping the charts in prescriptions 2008 by Brian Carter BSC(Pharm), MBA, and Lysa Campeau (IMS Health Canada) 2008

And the results indeed showed that porn had negative effects. This hasn't stopped many sexologists from continuing to prescribe it therapeutically for its aphrodisiac effects.

If you want to watch an entertaining, informative documentary that recreated the research in question, have a look at "Adult Entertainment: Disrobing an American Idol" Trailer: http://www.1726entertainment.com/ (I downloaded the entire film from Amazon for a small sum. Fast-paced, amusing, eye-opening.)

Yes, thanks Jay for neatly articulating the fallacy I was trying to point out. You perfectly understood my message, but do I understand you correctly when you say that acting upon a hypothesis in advance of incontrovertible evidence is always “foolish and unscientific?”

First, I agree that skepticism about new ideas is appropriate. But even in the case of plate techtonics, it wasn't silly of scientists to take the theory seriously enough to test it. That's also what is needed here.

I, too, keep an open mind about the subjects I address. That said, it is often prudent to act (and counsel others) based on reasonable evidence before “incontrovertible evidence” is provided. Long before the HIV virus was isolated, men were advised that it looked like AIDS was being spread by barebacking (condomless sex) and advised to use condoms——even though there was no proof of how this was happening. Similarly, antidepressants have been prescribed widely, even though there have been many theories about why they work (to the extent they do). Some say serotonin is the mechanism; others say there’s a domino effect involving oxytocin and other neurochemicals. Many people stopped smoking due to an apparent correlation between smoking and cancer long before there was the incontrovertible evidence you’re demanding here. In fact, the mechanisms of cancer have yet to be fully elucidated, so should we advise people to smoke if they like it while we wait?

It’s especially prudent for porn users to experiment with stopping in advance of incontrovertible evidence, because the experiments that will unequivocally show the brain changes I’m talking about are not easy to conduct, even assuming control groups can be lined up, an additional problem I discuss in a recent post entitled, “Forbidden Sex Research.”

Such experiments would require human brains to be sliced up at different points after porn use. (Poor rats.) Fortunately new, noninvasive imaging techniques are being developed daily, and in that post I just mentioned, I suggested that one of the things they should be used for is checking the effects of sexual superstimuli on the brain. The imaging techniques are already turning up interesting evidence in the brains of obese patients.

Another reason it’s prudent to conduct personal experiments (stopping porn use) in advance of incontrovertible proof, is that the cost of passing up porn for a time is low, and the potential psychological and physiological harm from the symptoms users are suffering is quite high, and can linger a long time. Moreover, users won’t correctly assess cause and effect until they do. Let me explain.

If someone masturbates until his penis bleeds (not all that unheard of today, unfortunately), he will likely make a correct cause-and-effect analysis of his symptom. He’ll know he’s doing it to himself, and that if he cuts back (if he can), his body will heal.

However, if, as I propose, porn is dysregulating the dopamine response in his brain, it is likely to be producing all kinds of symptoms that he does not easily connect with over-stimulation: anxiety, despair, concentration problems (perhaps affecting his job performance and certainly affecting his ability to meet his personal goals), sleep disorders, relationship problems, erectile dysfunction, escalation in material viewed, rigid thinking, and so forth.

Not only that, when someone experiments with stopping the use of today’s supranormal (to human brains) sexual stimuli, the symptoms often get worse for a time. This can make it very confusing for the person experiencing this, if he hasn’t been well informed of a rational reason it may be happening and that it will pass with time.

He’s likely, instead, to ask his physician for anti-anxiety drugs, antidepressants, ADHD drugs or sleeping pills because he has no idea that extreme stimulation has temporarily (one hopes) altered his brain chemistry and could be causing his symptoms. He won’t even think to discuss his porn use with his physician, who may not think (or wish) to inquire if his patient is watching Internet videos for hours a day. Nor will the person suffering know that he needs to go all the way through a rather hellish withdrawal in order to return to equilibrium.

Right now, many people appear to be caught in this very trap while people like you discourage people from making their own experiments while they wait for the evidence that you are insisting is required before they experiment. I find this position indefensible. Someone whose brain is suffering from dopamine dysregulation will grasp at any straw that helps him (or her, of course) rationalize continuing the very behavior that is causing the dysregulation. You see, the behavior causing the problem is a form of “self-medication” for the distressing symptoms, even though it perpetuates them. This is the heart of addiction.

In a sense this debate has already been settled, by the way. The diagnostic manual psychiatrists use is being updated again, and the new version defines heavy pornography use as an addiction if it meets certain criteria. (See http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=415) This means that the experts have already decided that this behavior is pathological. The jury is no longer out.

That said, it would be nice to know a lot more about the mechanisms behind porn addiction. Are those who become addicted just born with fewer D2 receptors leaving them more vulnerable to becoming addicts—but the rest of us carefree? Did their childhoods leave them particularly vulnerable? I think it will turn out that both of those factors are at work, as both have an impact on our neurochemistry.

What I’m suggesting is a third mechanism: that human behavior (in this case heavy porn use) can alter healthy brain chemical balance, throwing someone into porn addiction, much like using drugs can. If I’m right, rates of porn addiction are likely to be increasing rapidly.

There’s already evidence that behavior alone (eating superstimulating fatty foods) alters rats’ brains (in nearly every animal in the test groups, by the way). This type of extreme stimulation, in unlimited supply, dampened the pleasure response of the rats’ brains. It also drastically, and surprisingly quickly, reduced dopamine (D2) receptors in the striatum, the part of the brain that also governs sexual appetite in mammals. These changes apparently overcame the rats’ normal satiation mechanism and caused binging. Moreover, when the rats were put back on normal food, the brain changes made their normal food unappealing for days. Their D2 receptors hadn’t returned to normal levels two weeks later. Again, these events happened in parts of the brain that are very similar in all mammals, and we are mammals.

Just a note: Today’s Internet porn videos are now available to computer literate users in unlimited supply, and could well stimulate the human brain more than fatty foods did for rats. This is partly due to the compelling effect of novelty-on-demand, but also due to the fact that a receptive mate represents a prime genetic opportunity and therefore stirs up a powerful release of neurochemicals, as does climax itself. Many men are binging on Internet porn, so it’s not unreasonable to ask if this behavior is also behind the tendency to find porn tastes escalating, attraction to normal mates less appealing, and so forth.

Certainly it’s not irresponsible to point out that users can conduct their own experiments. People make similar experiments when they change their diet or their sleep habits to see if they get better results. When someone experiments with stopping porn use, he’s not, after all, experimenting with a risky substance. The reverse may, however, prove to be the case.

Unlike the substances humans abuse, porn flashbacks remain in the brain and arise unbidden for a long time—activating the circuits that make the person seek the neurochemical relief of actual porn use. This, and other reasons, make it difficult to set up control groups that are truly “porn-free”. If porn is dysregulating the dopamine response of some users, it will be challenging to demonstrate it in the laboratory. I would very much like to see this research conducted, but I disagree that symptomatic porn users would be foolish not to wait until it is.