Let’s talk about the impact pornography is having on your thinking ability in 2024. It’s essential that we recognize that pornography has come a long way in the last couple of decades, and so has the damage to your brain.
Porn is highly addictive, and that addictive nature makes you keep going back for more. Let’s delve into the impact of pornography on the brain and explore whether it contributes to “brain fog.”
As Dr. Trish Leigh mentioned, there’s growing interest in understanding how sexual imagery affects our cognitive functioning. Here are some key points:
The Reason Why Porn Is Addictive
The reason that porn is addictive is that on the first and second consumption of porn when you were young, your young brain changed itself to need higher levels of dopamine. So essentially, the seeds of addiction were planted into that young brain of yours.
If you kept going back and watering those seeds through consistent, frequent, and incredibly intense consumption, you would have found the highest amount of dopamine in the shortest time. What Dr. Leigh means by intense is going into genres and acts and having multiple tabs open to find the highest amount of dopamine in the shortest time.
Porn is Giving You Brain Fog
We know that that is damaging your brain, and it’s giving you brain fog. Porn is highly addictive, and as you keep going back for more, it is damaging your brain and your ability to think. So:
- This addictive nature of porn keeps pulling you back in those high levels of dopamine; what they’re doing is altering the reward pathways in your brain.
- The reward center is located in the midbrain. It has dopamine receptors, so when you feel pleasure, they are firing up and becoming sensitized.
If you keep going back to porn, and especially at high levels, you are desensitizing those dopamine receptors so they can’t feel pleasure anymore, except for at really high levels.
The Reward Pathways Get Fired Up From Porn Use.
The reward pathways get fired up and linked to the screen. And unfortunately, they no longer fire up as much when you are back in your life.
So, dopamine is supposed to work at healthy levels if you go to work and get some dopamine from your job, which keeps you working and enjoying it.
At having sexual intimacy, you should be getting the highest levels of dopamine from those experiences. Dopamine should come on a scale from zero to 10. And those experiences should register at seven, eight, or nine.
Unfortunately, when your brain is trained to go to porn, you’ve trained it to go back to level 15. Level 15 stimulation desensitizes the dopamine receptors in your brain and changes the pathways.
So, the pathways you want to lead you into your life are weeded over. They’re no longer strongly traversed with dopamine, so you want to get back to work, get back to your partner, and get back to your hobbies.
This is How Your Brain Fog Sets In.
Instead, when you keep firing up the pathways back to porn, especially at level 15, your brain will want to go there instead.
We know from research that many men begin to prefer masturbation and don’t want to be with their partner because they get more stimulation from the high levels of mental stimulation from fantasy and the high levels of physical stimulation from masturbation.
They don’t have those pathways back to their partner fired up. The pathways back to porn win out. This is how your brain fog sets in.
It happens because you continue to desensitize your brain. The reward pathways from the midbrain up to the frontal lobe are also becoming desensitized.
And we know from science your frontal lobe has hypofrontality, meaning it slows down, and it’s not working as well as it would without porn.
The Brain Fog Can Clear When you Leave Porn Behind.
So when you leave porn behind, guess what happens? That brain fog that you’ve been experiencing can clear. The fog can clear when you leave porn behind.
Dr. Leigh worked with thousands of people who have experienced it for themselves. None of them believed that it was true until they tried.
So if you’re ready to leave porn behind, fire up those neural pathways back into your life so that you can feel and think more clearly from now on.
Unlock Personalized Support & Success: Join Porn-Free Brain Forever and get monthly group coaching with Dr. Leigh! Find strategies, answer questions, and guide you to success.
