Porn vs. Personal Development: The Battle of Dopamine

So you’re laying in bed – scrolling through instagram – knowing that you should probably be doing something more productive – … and then you see a little bit of delicious flesh. Maybe it’s a sexy bikini photo.. Or maybe it’s just a little unintentional… well, let’s be honest – Very intentional side-boob. Suddenly, you feel a little tingling down under – and you know what you have to do. Now, you could just take care of business here on instagram – But instead, that little voice in your brain DEMANDS of you that you immediately detour to your favorite porn site while the rest of the world seems to just fade away.

You come back to your senses a short while later, now covered in your own mess and feeling disgusted by what little self control you have. You suddenly remember all of the things you should be doing… how far you are behind in life… And how powerless you seem to be to change any of it. If this sounds familiar – don’t worry – it’s something that pretty much all of us can relate to.

The Hijacking of the Reward System

But… why? Why is it that ESPECIALLY with porn – the more that we consume, the more it feels like we’re… being consumed? Is lack of discipline the problem?… Partly. But the main problem is actually what’s happening on a neurological level: How our body’s reward system, and more specifically DOPAMINE, gets HIJACKED more and more when we consume porn.

Understanding Dopamine and Motivation

Dopamine isn’t just the ‘feel good’ chemical - it’s what MOTIVATES us to do things that result in a reward. Most people understand dopamine as something that our bodies release to make us ‘feel good’ in response to some sort of reward. And yes, our bodies release dopamine when we see we’ve got new likes on that photo we just posted – when we learn something useful - and of course, when we orgasm. But dopamine isn’t just released when we GET the reward – heck that isn’t even it’s main purpose. The PRIMARY responsibility of Dopamine is to MOTIVATE us towards rewards.

Dopamine is literally the thing that motivates us to do ANYTHING – even the most basic of things. Like motivating us to get off the couch and pour ourselves a glass of water when we’re thirsty. If we like the feeling of being in shape- dopamine gets released to motivate us to go to the gym. And when we feel sexually aroused – Dopamine is released to MOTIVATE us to pick up our cell phone and start fapping.

Pornography as a Super-Stimulant

Unfortunately, our bodies can’t distinguish between the rewards that IMPROVE our lives, and the rewards that don’t. They instead simply PRIORITIZE the rewards that cause the biggest dopamine release… and guess what – Porn can cause our dopamine levels to raise over 200% for what’s normal! Just a little bit less than cocaine!

Dopamine Release Levels Comparison:

  • Healthy Productive Activities: Baseline levels of dopamine release.
  • Pornography Consumption: Over 200% increase (nearly hijacking the system).
  • Cocaine Use: Slightly more than 200%.

Two Main Reasons for Addiction

1. The Coolidge Effect

When a male rat is placed in a cage with a female – at first they have lots of sex – but over time the male rat gets less and less excited. Но when a NEW female is placed into the cage – the male becomes excited again and lots of sex ensues. This is what’s referred to as the Coolidge Effect – which is present in ALL humans.

With porn we’re like a lab rat with nearly infinite access to new partners – all we need to do is click onto a new video or explore a new category of porn. The more porn that we consume, the more it becomes ‘normalized’ – and the harder it is for us to find porn that gives us that sensation of feeling ‘new’. Which is how we end up spending more time trying to find the ‘perfect porn’ than we spend on Netflix trying to find that perfect thing to watch.

2. Supernormal Stimuli

Supernormal stimuli are essentially artificially exaggerated versions of normal stimuli that we perceive as more valuable. In this breakdown, we see exactly what’s going on, so that we can reclaim our dopamine system and INSTEAD use it to accomplish our goals. Heck, you may even never watch porn again.