By: Shane James O’Neill
4 min read
Is Porn Addiction Real?
Being informed is a massive part of finding freedom. After all, a person can’t pursue truth if they don’t know what is true. Sensible, right? But being ignorant of something dangerous can damage a lot of people, including ourselves.
Most people view porn as a cultural resource, something to be enjoyed and explored. While others view porn as a vice, but a private vice without consequences until we stand before God. Most often we disconnect the physical and the spiritual, as though sin impacts the soul that we cannot see and doesn’t impact the physical things that we can see.
Is porn simply a cultural perk of living in the 21st century? Is porn a sin? If porn is a sin, does it impact our physical lives? All of these questions can funnel into one question: Is porn addiction real or is porn addiction merely a religious myth?
If porn has dangerous consequences, such as addiction, then it isn’t something we want to remain ignorant about. So, let’s find!
What is Addiction?
Social and neurological scientists once thought addiction only involved what we physically put into our bodies. However, addiction is no longer only connected with what we put into our body, rather addiction is connected to how our brains respond to experiences.
We now know that behavioral addiction exists, not just the substance addiction (or drug addiction) of things such as cigarettes, alcohol, or heroin.
Neuroscientist Dr. William Struthers says that pornography “hijacks” the brain the same way drugs do, by tricking the brain into thinking it is getting sex. Just like a drug, it takes over our brains and deceives the natural area that identifies pleasure.
Or as Matt Fradd has said, “… porn can make us addicted to our own neurochemistry.”
When humans engage behaviors like watching pornography, chemicals are introduced into the brain that would not be there otherwise, similar to using a substance like heroin.
You and I are wired for pleasure, and porn addiction exploits that design. Here’s a brief look at how it works:
Pleasure Center and Porn Addiction
There is a part of your brain called the reward center. As you may be able to guess, its job is to reward you during healthy experiences.
The reward center is responsible for those feelings of satisfaction, contentment, stimulation, and empowerment you encounter after exercising, finishing a project, or even cleaning your room.
When we use drugs (like heroin), it supplements and/or replaces the chemicals in the reward center. When we watch porn, since sex is a good experience, our reward center floods the brain with very high doses of feel-good chemicals.
Pathways are created in your brain so that when you feel sad, or bored, or frustrated, or even happy, your initial reaction and desire is to watch porn. Over time, your brain begins to think of porn like it does food or water, as a necessity.
Related: The Science of Confession
And here’s where behavior addiction uses something natural, beautiful, and powerful, like sex, to create a serious addiction, such as porn addiction.
Can a Person Heal from Porn Addiction??
In short, absolutely! We can heal and come back from the addiction of pornography.
Pornography does change us, but the brain is a remarkably elastic organ. Change, and damage, are not entirely permanent.
The brain is designed to enable and support many kinds of interactions; the brain is designed to shifting and changing as we move through life.
Humans are designed to learn new languages, to inhabit cultures, to know a variety of people who have a diversity of personalities, opinions, feelings, and stories.
The Brain is not a static organ, nor is an addiction to pornography.
The reason brains are able to change is because humans are relational, and relationships require flexibility. Brains are not static because people are not static, nor are relationships. Our feelings change and every moment is a new experience. That flexibility is worked into how God designed us, since we are made in His image and He is a relational Triune God (Genesis 1).
So, yes porn is incredibly addictive. But…
Hope
You are not hopeless: You can redesign your own mental pathways, you can shift the way you see people, and you can reshape your impulses. You can be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2).
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Shane James O’Neill is the Editorial Director for Proven Men Ministries. He is currently working on a graduate degree in apologetics at Liberty University’s Rawling School of Divinity.