Porn addiction is a so-called "arousal addiction".

In today's post we are going to take a close look at what that means.

I will also share my experience with how the novelty part of online porn is one of the biggest part of the problem.

Let's begin...

Porn Addiction is An Arousal Addiction

Scandinavian Bob here, hi.

Are you addicted to porn?

Well a few years ago I was heavily addicted myself and I’m here to tell you…

Porn addiction is perhaps not exactly what you think.

Yes, people are engaging in sexual things in porn clips online, but did you know that porn addiction actually has quite little to do with sex?

Porn addiction has actually very little to do with sex...

It certainly has little to do with real life sex.

A common misconception is that if someone who is not addicted to porn hear about porn addiction, many of them immediately jump to the compulsion, that porn addicts must be some kind of sex maniacs who like sex 10x more than the average person.

But it is NOT so.

Porn addicts are not "sex maniacs"...

In fact, porn addicts are often so desensitized that they in fact have lower libido than the average non-addicted man out there. 

So if they are not sex maniacs at all, you know got a small hint about what I meant when I said “porn addiction has little to do with sex”, and I’ll tell you more in just a moment, but what I’m about to tell you may come as an even bigger shock for you.

Without the internet, few people would become addicted to porn...

Did you know that porn addiction actually also has not THAT much to do with porn in and of itself?

My point here is that we should be using the word “internet porn addiction”, because without the internet at least 95% of people watching porn would never become addicted to it in the first place. 

You see Porn becomes a uniquely powerful stimulus when combined with the internet. The endless novelty and all the unseen categories yet to explore at the click of a mouse make it particularly addictive.

You can control your dopamine levels with the click of a mouse and that makes it like a digital sexual slot machine where you never know what you’re gonna find with the next click.

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Story from my own PMO rebooting days to drive home this point...

At one point I was so  sick and tired of relapsing that I actually got rid of the internet in my house and got myself a normal dumb phone. 

So, no chance of me relapsing again, then right?

WRONG!

I was so addicted that one day when I went into town, I visited a small newspaper and cigarette kiosk, and what do you know. Up in the right corner of the magazine shelf I saw that even though we have the internet nowadays, they still had a couple of porn DVD’s there. 

I bought 3 of them and went home.

The old DVD porn pales in comparison with today's internet porn...

And my addicted brain was looking forward to a nice evening with my big TV there in my living room, with some serious nut busting on my cozy couch.

My hands were actually trembling a bit when I slid in the first DVD  as my sensitized addiction pathways screamed at me to hurry up.

I sat down and pressed play on my old DVD player. 

Can you guess what happened next?

It was so boring!

No rapid jumping between categories - scene to scene...

Because the only thing I could do was speed up the pace forward in the movie, or press rewind and go back. But there was no jumping from category to category with just a few seconds in between, with multiple tabs open, using the click of a mouse to explore all the new things that normally are suggested at you over at the online tube sites. 

And the next DVD I popped into my machine was even worse.

Don’t get me wrong. It was still ultra high definition, incredibly hot babes, super quality hardcore porn in all its decadent glory, but this DVD had some kind of error on it so I couldn’t even fast forward it. 

So, normally online porn relapses could last for many hours on end. But that night, with the DVD’s I was bored out of my mind after about 10 times. 

This was when I realized that porn addiction has little to do with sex, and even less to do with real-life sex. And heck, it is almost like it has nothing to do with porn in and  of itself.

I understood that I would never have developed a porn addiction if the internet hadn’t been invented.

Before I got the internet I had no problems with porn...

And to confirm this, all I need to do is to look back at my history, because I was born before the internet. And I never ever developed any unhealthy relationships with porn back when I was using the old VHS tapes or the DVD’s. My libido and erections were strong and worked just fine,  and my porn sessions were maybe once a week or so, lasting perhaps 10-20 minutes MAX.

But as soon as the internet rolled around and streaming tube sites became a thing, it didn’t take long until my sessions became longer and longer and longer and in the end my libido was completely killed and so too were my erections. 

Internet porn addiction is an arousal addiction....

When listening to porn addiction experts like Gary Wilson, and brain experts like Norman Doidge, who wrote The Brain That Changes Itself,  this is something that become evident as well, as they both say, “internet porn is really an arousal addiction, more than anything else”

And here's the thing, with “normal” addictions we simply want more of the same thing. We want more of our beloved drugs. But with arousal addictions we want “different”.

With arousal addiction we want 'different'...

So that’s why it rapidly stays jumping between categories, clicking, searching, it’s like we are on the hunt for the optimal sexual jackpot, which obviously is an illusion because as soon as we find it, it takes only 15 seconds, or less, before we are on the hunt for something else. 

Ok, so if some of you now are thinking, ok that’s great, so I can just go back to watching the old DVD porn again and I will be safe. 

Can we, as porn addicts, go back to watching the old porn DVD's then?

No, unfortunately it doesn’t work like that.

Once your internet porn use has formed addiction related brain changes in your brain, those porn pathways are now there, so they will fire up even if you use a less potent medium like DVD’s or even the old porn magazine

Alright so I hope you found this all informative.

-Scandinavian Bob

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