The consequences of porn on your health… both mental and physical
We can’t lie to ourselves: the consequences of porn on our mental and physical health are both numerous and serious…
1. Loss of sexual performancee
According to neurobiologist Jean-Didier Vincent, author of The Devil and the Flesh (1) consumption of pornographic pictures produces too much dopamine, which then accumulates and leads to the desensitisation of our sensory receptors. It’s as if they stop responding so well in the wake of insisting so much, which in turn leads to the reduction of sexual performance during intercourse. The imagination, muddled by incessant and pervasive images, inhibits our experience of reality and real sexual interaction. In this way, porn has disastrous and destructive consequences on the sexual intimacy within a couple and people’s self-confidence.
2. For guys, it’s a bad example which degrades the image of woman (and vice versa)
Stripped of the sentiments of love, pornographic pictures and videos ridicule the true needs of a woman in the sexual domain. It’s something which is absolutely not taken into account in porn: the importance of preliminary caresses, and the need for gentleness and tenderness, eg. Boys whose sexual education is provided by X-rated films will treat their partners bluntly. In this way, pornography engenders sexual violence, sometimes escalating to rape: which is the complete opposite of a sexuality which is responsible for and respectful of the other.
3. For girls, it provokes an imitation game (and vice versa)
Pornographic websites traffic a vision of sexuality where only the performance counts, often embellishing sexual frolics for an audience. Girls are all too often persuaded they should be “sexy and docile” with their partners, and so start emptily searching to compete with “porn-stars”. They take on the role of the compliant “sex-friend” concerned about staying in the game!
They believe they have to multiply their sexual encounters, using increasingly racy positions – sadomasochism etc. also to be open to partner-swapping or similar risky behaviour.
Those who don’t react by treating men like a piece of meat, as porn would have it, find themselves trapped, frustrated in their need for female sensual pleasure. So they turn away from men, preferring women. In this situation we are so far away from understanding and learning the true gift of self, within respect of our bodies, which will enables us to offer what we have best, to the other. And if they remain heterosexual, a high number of young women simply don’t want to have sex anymore, as explained by Gynaecologist Pia de Reilhac, President of the National Federation of the Colleges of Medical Gynaecology, warning us of the influence of X-rated films on the sexual life of young adults (2):
“More and more young women are telling us they don’t experience pleasure with their partners. We are observing a great distress. Some of them confide in me saying, “I don’t want to have sex anymore”, “I don’t have pleasure anymore”, “it’s rubbish”, “they’re all the same”. These young women, who aren’t even 25yrs old, don’t like to make love with their partner, who tries to imitate porn actors.”
4. Porn, a habit which quickly becomes an addiction
In France, Psychoanalysts estimate the number of victims of sex addiction at 5%, including physical addiction to real sex, and addiction to pornography (3).
Porn follows the classic schema of any addiction, which is characterised by:
- requent impossibility to control a behaviour aiming to produce pleasure
- carrying out this behaviour despite knowing its negative consequences.
We are talking about addiction:
- when the need outweighs the desire, when having sensations replace having a relationship.
- when behaviours with the potential for pleasure become compulsive, and obtaining pleasure or relieving tension is made a priority.
- when passion generated by this addiction overwhelms reason.
Like any addiction, porn drives us fatally to increasingly “hardcore” practices. Easily accessed thanks to the availability of the internet, the spiral is infernal.
As in any addictive process, and the consumption of porn is no different, behaviour is modified progressively, following a series of steps:
Unlike drugs, porn addiction won’t result in an overdose causing immediate death, however, it will end up isolating the individual, driving them to have a sexual “burn-out” and even provoking clinical depression, which carries its own load of consequences on the physical and mental health of the person, including suicide, not to mention the direct effect on the people around them (violence).
So how can you break out of it?
What do you think? We are here for you, via the chat to listen and answer your questions:
Going further:
Notes
(1) “La Chair et le Diable”, éditions Odile Jacob, Paris, France.
(2) Source : Le Parisien/Aujourd’hui en France (french newspaper) : Sexualité des jeunes adultes : “La pornographie fait des dégâts graves”
(3) Source : Santé Magazine (french magazine).