Internet porn addiction

Gffg

I don't want anyone to think this is a throll thread. I typed the thread without making reference to anything sexual, although I did use the word '****' a bit. This is an issue that I have not seen discussed that often on boards. And in spite of how high and mighty some here may act, this is an issue that obviously effects a lot of men, and possibly all young single men. I always hear our nation's addiction to alcohol being discussed, but the issue of porn rarely gets a mention. Is it just me?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU

I guess it's something that will never really be able to be proven. In spite of the compelling words during this talk, some will say that there are over a 100 different neurotransmitters in the brain, and that single variable brain studies are useless. And as this TED guy himself stated, there is no control group for men who don't watch porn.

When I first heard about people saying that porn was "unhealthy" it didn't really make any sense to me. I always thoughts masturbation, if not done too often, was one of the few pleasures that isn't unhealthy. People should make the distinction between mental and physical health. Some of the typical arguments against porn seem quite stupid. For example, I never thought that it would give me unrealistic expectations about sex. It might give me ideas... most of which I wouldn't have the nerve to request, but not unrealistic expectations. Do people here think that porn gives men unrealistic expectations about sex? Or is that just something that some woman said that caught on?! I also never thought it would make me view women as less human, or something like which you also hear said. As I knew these reasonings didn't apply to me, this might have led me to believe that there wasn't anything harmful about porn. For the moment, I'm afraid I'm really not interested in whether young men who watch porn are more likely to rape women or not. There are other issues to discuss about porn. For a while, I was even considering seeing an escort.

When I heard that one of the problems is that there's unending novelty with internet porn in comparison to porn of the past. I use not really worry about this before, as I just thought sex was a basic urge that always remains the same... just like there's isn't really unending novelty with the food I eat, I never get bored it". Same with music... I never find myself needing to seek out new genres (as distinct from new songs) to get a kick. But the thing I have to ask myself am I needing to seek out more kinky porn to get off?

If I had a choice between picking one out of 10 random porn videos displayed on a porn site (and having to stick with this porno to finish with), OR to just having a **** by using my imagination, that I'd probably just prefer to masturbate using my imagination. And I'd do so for fear of the porno being a let down. But the thing is I'm never let down, as I can search for what I want.

Sometimes after I've had a great ****, I'm satisfied and I don't think about sex for a few days. But on the other hand, sometimes after a great **** I start thinking about how good it was and then get urges to **** again. Of course this second **** that I go back for is often not as good and I'm left lying on my bed feeling like such an idiot for wasting so much of my time. Sometimes I'm confused by exactly what it is about internet porn that excites me. I think it's the mere thought of being able to search the entire web for whatever the hell you want, more so than the actual release itself. If as time goes on I get more pleasure out of the anticipation, this means that the release is more likely to be a let down. I've noticed that when I go to masturbate, sometimes I'm almost disappointed if I straight away find a video that's good enough.

Often, I'll think that I'd have overcome my problem with porn. This is because I rarely get the urge, so because I rarely get it, I forget that I have it. But when I inevitably get the urge, it's very strong. I've never lasted more than two weeks without watching porn. At least in my case I didn't get into it until I was 22. So if what this guy is saying is true, about your brain being more plastic when you're in your teens, then that might not be such a bad thing. This guy says it takes longer for younger men to overcome porn induced ED as they've grown up with it.

In spite of how strong the urges I get for porn are, I would never pay for porn, and if Jim Daly brings in a porn pass restriction that could not be easily by passed, I wonder if I'd even notice it was taken away from me!

I would like to hear you thoughts on whether you think porn increases ED in men, and whether there is a link between increased depression and anxiety with porn.

Wibbs

Though a banned poster, IMHO it raises a bit of a debate and maybe a welcome one?

Plopsu

Excessive **** will make it more difficult to get/sustain an erection. This is not the same as ED. It's just your willy getting tired.

tritium

As a general point I think society is probably a bit too fixated/ worried about porn. It’s nothing new- porn has existed, and been suppressed, for as long as humans have been around. The current view for suppressing it is just a different set of ideologies doing what one or more ideologies have been doing forever.

A separate question is whether the on demand/ as much as you want nature of internet porn is a problem. That’s actually a much broader question given that most “needs” of modern society have this situation: food, alcohol, social media gratification, shopping...... there’s actually interesting studies about the degree to which getting what we want all the time actually makes us sadder rather than happier. Certainly, like most things, it has the potential to become an addiction: whether that’s harmful in itself is to a degree subjective once the addiction only impacts on the self. While I could see cases where it’s impact would be broader, that’s likely minimal, and to a much lesser degree than seen in say heroin addiction.

The same broadness needs to be applied to the unrealistic expectations argument. Much of what we’re exposed to as a society is guilty of that: a bigger car, a better house a hot partner. We’re supposed to be grown up enough at some stage to get beyond that. Is porn any more guilty here than Apple corporation? At least porn doesn’t advertise their shiny wares on my tv.

And that’s before we get to the nature and variety of porn. It’s amazing how many people have some threshold below which porn is ok- usually a self set threshold. It’s funny to listen for example to some feminists describe “ethically sourced porn”. Is the porn of pre internet times ok but post internet is dodgy. What’s the threshold applied for this? The 2014 UK legislation is a fine example of this, being described by one UK newspaper as “....arbitrarily deciding what is nice sex and what is not nice sex”.

Plopsu

Buddha Of Suburbia wrote: »

Dear God, you think that thought never occurred to me in all my time thinking this through. An oversimplification if I ever heard one.

If you think a tired willy is the same as ED, you still have some more thinking to do. There's nothing oversimplified in what you quoted just cause and effect.

Gael23

What would you term excessive ****?

drunkmonkey

21 times a month is medically recommended to avoid prostate cancer.

Larbre34

drunkmonkey wrote: »

21 times a month is medically recommended to avoid prostate cancer.

Source?

theteal

drunkmonkey wrote: »

21 times a month is medically recommended to avoid prostate cancer.

seriously?

Larbre34

Plopsu wrote: »

Excessive **** will make it more difficult to get/sustain an erection. This is not the same as ED. It's just your willy getting tired.

Evidence?

Plopsu

Larbre34 wrote: »

Evidence?

Of?

drunkmonkey

Larbre34 wrote: »

Source?

https://www.europeanurology.com/article/S0302-2838%2816%2900377-8/fulltext

Squatter

drunkmonkey wrote: »

21 times a month is medically recommended to avoid prostate cancer.

Or 22 times in months with 31 days! I can cope with that, but it's the ¼ extra **** that one is expected to do in the February of every leap year that confuses me.

Furthermore, the medical literature makes no reference to the onset of arthritis from persistent plum pulling. Experience has led me to conclude that the best way to avoid this ever-present threat is to outsource the process.

Gael23

I definitely think that frequent **** makes the penis used to that sort of stimulation and that makes it harder to preform with a girl.

OP, you were too young when the movie

SEX LIES AND VIDEO TAPE came out.

Just replace video tape with "online streaming" for a present day setting

Give it a watch. ;D

tritium

Buddha Of Suburbia wrote: »

I'm afraid that makes no sense what so ever.

It does, you just need to read it.....

I don't follow such fancy ambiguous words. So what set of ideologies did a peasant in medieval times use to restrain himself from masturbating to the thought of the only good looking broad he'd ever seen in his life? You think I'd be masturbating just as often if porn wasn't available? I'm not sure where I'm even going by saying that, but that's me trying to make sense with you.

Well, let’s see, religion was probably the most prominent ideology telling people not to **** in the past so I’ll go with that one....

Given internet porn is a recent thing and **** is a very much not recent thing....

Don't bother going down that road. I'm not interested in unrealistic expectations, and I never said I was interested in who is or isn't guilty. You obviously didn't watch the video. One of the things that I'm interested in, is the issue of becoming desensitised.

You’ve never said you were interested or not interested in anything before now, poster who has never posted in this thread before....

Having unrealistic expectations isn't necessarily a problem... for example, just because a man has an unrealistic expectation of being able to sleep with the hottest girl on the planet, does not mean that he'll be incapable of getting an erection for the second hottest girl on the planet. That's the difference between unrealistic expectations and becoming desensitised. I'm not sure why you keep trying to make correlation between porn and others things in life. Is it because you're trying to avoid the core issue?

Because there are connections between porn and other things in life maybe? Or do you think it’s a case of I **** therefore I am?

I'm hearing that argument so often these days that there's really no need for the word actually!

And since it doesn’t float your particular boat you just rudely dismiss it. That’s probably not how to stir debate on an internet chat forum for debating such things

fryup

cold shower and think of the ugliest woman you know in the nip...(works for me)

Wibbs

No orgasms for a year?? I'd rather go bald as a coot. Plus not exactly great for the oul prostate as it seems men who have fewer evacuations have more incidences of prostate problems including cancer.

Reviews and Books Galore

I found this article interesting.

https://www.psychologytoday.com › ...
The Price of Sex: Women Rule, Men Drool ... - Psychology Today

Honestly, I think a lot of the male slut shaming is people trying to take back the sexual freedom (or take back power to be controversial) that men received after the sexual revolution.

And I do think this ties into anti oorn conversations

Sonics2k

Branchranch wrote: »

I'm going to try and abstain from ejaculation for the rest of the year to see if it has any benefit on my hair. Ejaculation raises prolactin which is known to harm hair growth. I'm on day 5 now, will keep you updated with my progress.

While cutting down on masturbation is a very good idea for a lot of men these days, doing so and expecting your hair to grow in thicker is extremely unlikely.

There's an awful lot of benefits to cutting down on masturbation, but that isn't one of them iirc.

Gael23

Sonics2k wrote: »

While cutting down on masturbation is a very good idea for a lot of men these days, doing so and expecting your hair to grow in thicker is extremely unlikely.

There's an awful lot of benefits to cutting down on masturbation, but that isn't one of them iirc.

I believe there are very few benefits to cutting down on masturbation, as long as you don’t do it excessively

drunkmonkey

Sonics2k wrote: »

There's an awful lot of benefits to cutting down on masturbation, but that isn't one of them iirc.

Are you a closet feminist? What are all these benefits do tell?

milhous

Can we have a poll to see how many times ppl **** a day 😂.. Or maybe the ratio of **** with imagination vs porn.

Its something ppl generally don't talk about in conversation. Boards is the perfect platform.

stefanovich

Deleted User wrote: »

OP, you were too young when the movie

SEX LIES AND VIDEO TAPE came out.

Just replace video tape with "online streaming" for a present day setting

Give it a watch. ;D

I remember being warned against that movie at national school by our teacher :pac:

H3llR4iser

In short, just from the description on the clip:

"NOTE FROM TED: This talk contains several assertions that are not supported by academically respected studies in medicine and psychology."

That, alone, tells ALL about the validity of the entire "talk". The only information I could find about this guy is from "let's ban porn" style websites.

In a nutshell however, he kills his own argument within the first three minutes - when he cites experiments that equates porn access with variation, showing how reaction to "new" pornography is very similar to the reaction to a new partner.

In other words: humans are not built for monogamy and find sexual variation stimulating and desirable; men's sexuality in particular is all about "spreading the seed", just like males in most other species. In this scenario the artificial construct is the socially accepted norm of "mating for life"; Adult entertainment and its free availability has simply filled that void that we culturally, mostly due to the influence of religions, don't want to admit to exist.

As for "porn causing ED", young guys being unable to enjoy real sex...yes, there is more than a bit of evidence for these to be real things, but I'm not sure why very few people are willing to think a bit outside of the box on this: could it be that well, frankly speaking, real life sex is often cr@p, and in the past people were none the wiser? When was the last time you had a "session" that really blew your mind? The vast majority of sex is either routine...or a half-drunken messy fumble on a friday/saturday night.

And I don't want to risk transforming this into a "battle of the sexes", especially because I'm fairly certain that it's usually women who end up being the most "undersatisfied" party in the exchange, but usually...it takes two to tango, and two to mess the dance up completely. Think "50 Shades of Grey" and the general reaction it created...

worded

Masturbation tips ....

Put your hand in the freezer for a few minutes and it feels like someone else

Put nail varnish on that hand and it looks likes someone else’s hand as well

worded

In a time of modem dial up and 56K max speeds they used to say you knew you were addicted to the internet when your itemised bill arrived in a box

Gael23

Interesting reading on this topic
http://www.ladbible.com/community/interesting-hosts-of-sex-podcast-say-we-should-masturbate-daily-20190608?source=facebook

Wibbs

From my reading of it, though it's on a "Lad's" site, it's more about women? I've noted down the years that ChickThink™ media aimed at the ladies trends strongly towards encouraging as much self pleasure as possible as an "empowering" act, with a wide array of tools *ahem* available to do so. On the other hand male self pleasure is largely frowned upon, made into a joke, or in the case of the BroScience™ eejits to be avoided cos it drains male essence or some such ballsology.

This dynamic can encroach on couples too. So a woman using some toy or other to add to her experience of the act is encouraged and a sign of her taking charge of her own sexuality and pleasure and a guy should be good with this, yet if a guy pulled out a placcy fanny from his drawer filled with French ticklers of various grades many women would be "eh WTF? am I not good enough for you?". Which I find interesting.

Galwayguy35

Unless I'm missing something here I don't think it would be even possible not to cum for a year, even if a guy wasn't having sex or **** off the body does it for him after a few weeks.