A Way Beyond the Rainbow

#56 - On Porn and Sex Addictions (Part I)

September 13, 2021 Waheed Jensen Season 4 Episode 16
A Way Beyond the Rainbow
#56 - On Porn and Sex Addictions (Part I)
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

This is part I of a 4-episode comprehensive series on understanding and overcoming porn and sex addictions. In this episode, we discuss what addiction is, from physiological, emotional and personal perspectives. We  also look at the damaging effects of porn and the horrifying realities associated with the porn industry.

Do I have a compulsive sexual behavior disorder? How does compulsive porn use, masturbation or sexually acting out affect the physiology of my brain and nervous system and lead to addiction? Other than physiology, what are other important aspects of addiction to take into account so we can understand our behaviors and habits? These and other questions are explored in this episode.

References used and resources mentioned in this episode:
- Breaking the Cycle: Free Yourself from Sex Addiction, Porn Obsession, and Shame by George Collins
- The Porn Pandemic: A Simple Guide To Understanding And Ending Pornography Addiction For Men by Andrew Ferebee
- The Easy Peasy Way to Quit Porn
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Pornified: How Pornography is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families by Pamela Paul
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Resources from Dr. Patrick Carnes: official website and online assessment tests
- "Your Brain On Porn" official website
- "Fight the New Drug" official website
- TED talk “Why I stopped watching porn” by Ran Gavrieli
- TED talk “Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong” by Johann Hari

Waheed 00:37
Assalamu alaikom wa rahmatullahi ta’ala wa barakatuh, and welcome back to “A Way Beyond the Rainbow”, this podcast series dedicated to Muslims experiencing same-sex attractions who want to live a life true to Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala and Islam. I'm your host Waheed Jensen, thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. In the last episode, we talked about masturbation from a holistic approach, and with today’s episode, we kick start a 4-episode series on porn and sex addictions. This series of episodes on sexual recovery builds on the foundations discussed earlier in this season, particularly the four episodes on complex trauma (i.e. episodes 43-46). If you haven’t had the chance to listen to those yet, I encourage you to do so when you can. Understanding many of the concepts discussed there will put these upcoming episodes in a proper context, inshaAllah. Of course, this episode and the upcoming episodes have been flagged for explicit content given the nature of the topic.

Today’s topic is dedicated to understanding what addiction is, from physiological, emotional and personal perspectives. We will also look at the horrifying realities associated with the porn industry. In the next episodes, we will demystify triggers together and utilize conscious awareness and mindfulness to overcome triggering moments, talk about withdrawal symptoms and how to handle them, discuss some mind tricks and pitfalls, as well as lots of practical tips on our recovery journey, and finally end with spiritual themes and reflections.

The contents presented in these four episodes are a synthesis of several sources: Breaking the Cycle: Free Yourself from Sex Addiction, Porn Obsession, and Shame by George Collins, The Porn Pandemic: A Simple Guide To Understanding And Ending Pornography Addiction For Men by Andrew Ferebee, as well as The Easy Peasy Way to Quit Porn. There are also many TED talks referenced. All these sources are added to the episode description so you can check them out. So let’s get started, inshaAllah.


02:56
The American Society of Addiction Medicine defines addiction as a treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual’s life experiences. People with addiction use substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences. Prevention efforts and treatment approaches for addiction are generally as successful as those for other chronic diseases.

Compulsive sexual behavior disorder (also referred to as hypersexuality or sex addiction) is defined as a progressive intimacy disorder characterized by compulsive sexual thoughts and acts despite consequences. The categorization as a progressive disorder means that its negative impact increases as the disorder worsens. For some, sex addiction may involve increasing use of pornography and masturbation, online chat rooms or webcam sex. For others, it may escalate to anonymous hook-ups, extramarital affairs, and even illegal activities like voyeurism, exhibitionism, molestation, or rape.

In general, compulsive sexual behavior covers a broad range of symptoms. These behaviors range in intensity and severity, but to be considered signs of mental health conditions, they have to be evident across many situations and over an extended period of time. Not everyone living with compulsive sexual behavior will experience the exact same symptoms or with the same intensity. In fact, signs can take many forms depending on the unique circumstances of one’s case. Let us explore some of these signs in the forms of questions, and see which ones resonate with you.

  • Do you spend far more time viewing porn or masturbating than you originally intended?
  • When you’re stressed or triggered, do you find yourself constantly resorting to porn, masturbation or hook-up apps, engaging in a cycle of porn → masturbation (or sex) → orgasm (also known as PMO)?
  • Do you spend significant amounts of time thinking about pornography or sexually acting out even when you’re not in the process of consuming pornography or sexually acting out?
  • Do you experience a cycle of arousal and enjoyment before and during pornography consumption or sexual acting out, followed by feelings of shame, guilt and remorse afterwards?
  • Are you unsuccessful in efforts to stop or limit your consumption of pornography or unwanted sexual behaviors? Do you feel distressed as a result of this?
  • Has the time you spend viewing pornography or engaging in sexual behavior interfered with, or taken precedence over, other personal and professional commitments, hobbies and relationships in your life? Has this led to missed work, poor performance in your work or studies, lost sleep, neglected relationships, or financial problems, for example?
  • Has viewing pornography or engaging in unwanted sexual behaviors caused significant problems in intimate relationships? Has it led to hurting yourself or others in the process (physically, emotionally, sexually), e.g. forcing others or being forced to engage in certain activities, like unprotected intercourse, or physical or sexual abuse for personal gratification?
  • Do you go out of your way to keep your pornography consumption secret (e.g., deleting browser history, lying about viewing porn, etc.)?

If you’ve answered “yes” to many of these questions, there’s a high likelihood that you’re dealing with a sex addiction. Another important aspect of compulsive sexual behavior disorder is the duration of symptoms, where 6 months and more is taken as a cut-off by the ICD-11 to arrive at a diagnosis.

The Sexual Addiction Screening Test is a common screening tool to help you assess whether you deal with sex addiction. The self-reported questionnaire was developed by addiction recovery therapist Dr. Patrick Carnes, and it helps assess your behaviors and thoughts. The test has been modified and updated to reflect modern internet influences, such as pornography use. I will add links to the test in the episode description so you can access it when you can.

The truth is, when we’re addicted to a substance or behavior, we generally don’t like to admit we’re addicted. Sometimes we’re not even aware of having a problem until we’re made to realize we have one. Yet we all have impulses or compulsions that we’d rather not have. We all have an addiction to something, or an addiction to certain beliefs. Patrick Carnes wrote an apt description of the addict’s behavior: “The addict substitutes a sick relationship to an event or a process for a healthy relationship with others. The addict’s relationship with a mood-altering experience becomes central to his life.” Time and time again, people realize one thing: we can’t get enough of what won’t satisfy us. If you keep trying to get that “something”—whatever it is that you get over and over while remaining unsatisfied—you have developed an addiction. As spiritual teacher and best-selling author Eckhart Tolle wrote, “This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction. What characterizes an addiction? Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the choice to stop. It seems stronger than you. It also gives you a false sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain.”

Porn or sex addicts no more choose to become addicted to porn or sex than alcoholics choose to become alcoholics, or heroin addicts choose to become heroin addicts. For many of us, there are underlying issues that lead us to addiction, as a form of escape and numbing. We have touched upon this in detail in our 4-episode series on complex trauma. Understanding the ideas in those episodes are fundamental to our healing and recovery journey.

Originally, curiosity and human nature take people there, but they wouldn’t have started had they known they’d become addicted, causing the decline of their health, happiness and relationships. However, fundamentally, it’s the users themselves that decide to knock on the doors of porn websites, sexually acting out or whatever other compulsion they choose to carry out. So, ultimately, there is an element of choice. But there’s also pain and trauma.

If we take a step back, we may realize there’s also an element of fear when it comes to quitting. Fear that a night all by yourself will be miserable spent fighting uncontrollable impulses. Fear that the night before exams or a big presentation will be a night from hell without porn. Fear that we’ll never be able to concentrate, handle stress or be as confident without our little crutch, and that our personality and character will change if we quit. But most of all, there is the fear that ’once an addict, always an addict’, spending the rest of our lives labeling ourselves and trapped in a mentality that keeps us hooked. Especially when people have tried to quit before and kept falling back, they may be more and more convinced that there’s no way out.

Many of us told ourselves, "I will stop, just not today", eventually getting to the stage where we think we haven’t got enough willpower or there’s something inherent in porn or sexually acting out that we must have in order to enjoy life. Porn or sex addiction can be compared to clawing your way out of a slippery pit, you feel that you’re near the top, seeing the sunshine but finding yourself slipping down as your mood dips, eventually opening your browser and feeling awful as you masturbate, trying to work out why you have to do it.

How many times have you experienced this: you decide to stop for good. First day or two are going just fine, and then you experience a moment of stress or weakness, and you’d be like “just one peek, one last time!” and bam, there we go again. Or maybe, you’re doing well, but you start experiencing more stress due to withdrawal effects. After a few days of “torture”, you come to the decision that you’d picked the wrong time to quit, deciding it’s better to wait for periods without stress in order to quit again. Of course, that period will never arrive, as we internally believe our lives tend to become more and more stressful. Stress-free lives without trials and tribulations don’t exist - we all have something we’re dealing with. Regardless, porn and sexual acting out have become pacifiers to dealing with stress, thinking that such behaviors relax us and relieve stress. As one friend puts it, “Sexual activity can often seem like the only constant in life amidst the turbulence, trials and tribulations, and its familiarity, even if detrimental, can provide a perceived 'safe' and happy space of pleasure.” As we shall see, it’s actually quite the opposite; viewing porn or engaging in unwanted sexual behaviors tends to fuel the vicious cycle of stress, shame and pain. The “safe and happy space” is only an illusion.

The beautiful truth when it comes to porn in particular is that all porn does absolutely nothing for you whatsoever. Let’s make that clear: it’s not that the disadvantages of being a user outweigh the advantages, it’s that there are zero advantages to looking at internet porn. Most users find it necessary to rationalise why they use porn, but the reasons they come up with are all fallacies and illusions. We’ll talk about many of these in these episodes inshaAllah, and if you have such ideas yourself, you’ll come to understand that not only is there nothing to give up, but there are also marvelous positive gains from being a non-user, well-being and happiness being only two. By eradicating the feelings of being deprived or missing out, we can then go back to reconsider the many benefits of quitting. These realisations will become positive aids, assisting you in achieving what you really desire, free from the slavery of compulsions you’re dealing with.

Once you understand the true nature of porn and sex addiction and the reasons why you use it, it’ll be easier to stop inshaAllah. Things will become clearer and demystified. To do that, we have to start by looking at what is before we talk about what can be done. Let’s look at the damage that results from the explosion of porn in our time and age.

15:14
Porn has been known to cause these problems in men: avoiding or lacking interest in sex with a real partner, experiencing difficulty becoming sexually aroused with a real partner and maintaining erections, or even unwanted delayed orgasm. Men can feel the need to think of porn during sex to reach climax or be too aggressive, demanding, or rough with their partner trying to act out a porn fantasy. Men can become emotionally distant and not present during sex, feeling dissatisfied following sex with a real partner, which leads to having difficulty establishing or maintaining an intimate relationship. Overall, porn can desensitize you to sex with your spouse, since real sex may not be as exciting as porn, and you’ve trained your brain to be stimulated by porn and masturbation, not real sex.

Frequent and compulsive masturbation can also desensitize a man to common types of touch and stroke. When this happens, normal vaginal stimulation doesn’t work and it becomes difficult to maintain sexual stamina and interest. If a man continues down the path of watching more and more porn and masturbating, then a real vagina no longer pleasures as well as the grip of your hand and the visual stimulation of the unending novelty of porn.

When a healthy male has sex, arousal builds up through different triggers that respond to sight, sound, and touch. As the sex intensifies, the arousal builds until it reaches the point of ejaculatory ecstasy. If porn use has desensitized your brain to dopamine, then arousal won’t build up enough for you to ejaculate. You can also be so harsh on your penis when you masturbate that you have become less sensitive to stimulation through touch. If you’re under 40 and in good health, then you should not have erectile problems, but if you can only get an erection to porn, then porn could be the main source of this problem. Don’t mask the problem by investing in erection supplements and drugs. Solve the problem at its roots by stopping porn use and reducing/stopping masturbation altogether.

Frequent porn use brings about the fear of deep intimacy with others and even social friendships. One develops an inability to relate to others of the sex he/she is attracted to in an honest, authentic, and intimate way despite being very lonely and yearning for this level of deeper connection inside. Additionally, users tend to isolate themselves as they prefer a plethora of virtual bodies online over interacting with real individuals in their lives. It’s easier and less stressful in the short term.

Shelley Lubben, a former pornstar, has been outspoken about the damaging effect of the industry. She says, “Most of the people who join the porn industry come from broken homes. Many of the girls are sexually abused. So the porn industry actually lures in these kinds of people to exploit them. So basically when someone is watching pornography, what you’re really doing is contributing to the demise and destruction of adult survivors of sexual child abuse who are on drugs and have physical disease. That’s really what you’re watching because I promise you, nobody in that industry is healthy.”

You are witnessing human degradation right in front of your eyes. In the documentary Hot Girls Wanted, we see how porn stars did not sign up for what they experienced but were coerced into doing such acts beyond their will. We are witnessing how far human sexuality can go publicly online for free, and it’s happening for the first time in human history. The problem doesn’t just stop there – it spills over into the real world as men who have grown up watching these scenes believe all women would like to be treated this way. Veteran porn actor and producer Bill Margold explained things like this: “I’d like to really show what I believe men want to see: violence against women.” This is teaching men to treat women this way, unfortunately. 

There is objectification of physical bodies going on in porn, particularly when it comes to women, which destroys any type of emotional availability and real connection with a potential spouse. People are viewed as sex objects to be used for purposes of sexual gratification rather than building real and authentic intimate connections. Also, porn companies are having to create more and more outrageous porn to fulfill the novelty demanded by porn users. This pushes actors to do dirtier and dirtier things on camera to keep your attention. Porn is a business. They are not looking out for your best interests, nor do they care about your future. They want to keep you engaged and on their website for as long as possible. They don’t want you to go. The longer you stay on their site masturbating to their porn in binges, the more money they make.

The porn industry is a 97 billion dollar global industry with 14 billion of that coming from the United States. 30% of all traffic online is porn. 25% of all search engine requests are porn related. 69% of all paid content online is porn – people are willing to pay for more access to new material despite all the free porn available online. Now, imagine if that amount of traffic were allocated towards improving our health, curing cancer, ending poverty, creating peace, or building businesses, how different would life be?

The problem is there are no restrictions to watching porn – you simply click “Yes, I’m 18” in the age check box, or most websites don’t even ask. The habit of watching porn begins at an early age, and this shapes young people’s views of the world and the relationships they will engage in in their adult lives. A 2018 study revealed that 57% of teenagers search out porn at least monthly. 51% of male students and 32% of female students first viewed porn before their teenage years. The first exposure to pornography among men is 12 years old, on average. 71% of teens hide online behavior from their parents. A 2007 study at the University of Alberta surveyed 429 students aged 13 to 14 and found that 90% of boys and 70% of girls reported accessing sexually explicit media online. And 35% of those boys stated they had viewed porn “too many times to count.”

In 2009, Michael Leahy released results of a survey of 29,000 North American university students and found that 64% of college men spend time online for Internet sex every week. Additionally, the University of Sydney surveyed 800 regular porn users in a 2012 study and found that 43% started viewing porn regularly between the ages of 11 and 13, spending between 30 minutes to 3 hours a day watching porn.

Recent statistics have shown that around 28,258 users are watching pornography every second. $3,075.64 is spent on porn every second on the Internet. 88% of scenes in porn films contain acts of physical aggression, and 49% of scenes contain verbal aggression. 79% of porn performers have used marijuana, and 50% have used ecstasy.

Addiction to Internet pornography is a very real pandemic with a very real impact on the lives of men and women. Porn has grown exponentially in the last decade largely due to the advent of widespread availability of high speed Internet, high definition video, and mobile technology.

The 2019 annual report released by PornHub, one of the most popular porn websites, reveals shocking statistics. To start off, there were more than 42 billion site visits to Pornhub in 2019—nearly 6 visits to the site for every person on Earth—which is 8.5 billion more visits total than 2018. That’s over 23 million more visits per day in 2019 than in 2018. In 2019, there were 115 million visits per day, 39 billion searches performed and 6.83 million videos uploaded. There were 1.36 million hours of content, equivalent to 169 years of content to watch. In other words, if you had started watching 2019’s new videos in the year 1850, you would still be watching them today. There are a lot more shocking stats, but that’s enough for now.

Today, we don’t think of porn the way we did decades ago when it was mostly taboo and thought of as something only for “dysfunctional men”. It is widely accepted in culture today, and the trend is only continuing to grow. In fact, it’s become the norm. Stating that you don’t watch porn and masturbate makes you a “dysfunctional person”, right? Something must be wrong with you. How can you not watch porn? This social acceptance of porn reduces the old barriers and social shaming once associated with porn, making it easier for men to start and continue using porn. Even among Muslim communities, this has been increasingly growing and becoming more normalized.

There’s tons of research that speaks volumes about the harmful effects of porn on one’s body and mind; I will add links to Yourbrainonporn and Fightthenewdrug websites, which contain a lot of relevant information. There’s also a great TED talk called “Why I stopped watching porn” by Ran Gavrieli, a link to which I’ll add to the episode description as well. Also, for anyone interested in learning how porn affects our relationships, kids, families and cultures, I recommend Pamela Paul’s book, Pornified: How Pornography is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families.

And let’s not forget the effects of what porn does to our hearts and spirits. There is an inevitable element of pride and entitlement, where we keep wanting more and more, focusing on our own pleasure and overlooking the damage it does on us, the valuable time we waste, and the distance we feel from Allah and from our purpose. The focus is on me and my pleasure as opposed to what Allah wants from me, what is righteous and good.

Abu Hurairah narrated a hadith of the Prophet PBUH who said, “Allah has decreed for the children of Adam a share in adultery. There will be no escape from it. The adultery of the eyes is looking; the adultery of the ears is listening [to voluptuous speech/song]; the adultery of the tongue is speaking; the adultery of the hand is the grip [lustful embrace]; and the adultery of the foot is to walk [to a place of intended adultery]; and the heart yearns and desires. The private parts confirm or falsify that [i.e. to put it all into effect].” In other words, our organs have their fair share of adultery, so the eyes can commit adultery through looking (and porn is an example of that). And then the actual adultery is potentially committed by the private organs. In Surat Al-Israa, Allah says, “And do not approach adultery. Indeed, it is truly a shameful deed (fahisha) and is evil as a way” [17:32]. The prohibition is not just to adultery, but to anything leading to it as well.

Our religion places special emphasis on hayaa’ and modesty, and we’ve spoken about this earlier in several episodes throughout the podcast, most recently when we talked about Islamic sexual ethics and gender norms. Modesty applies to many aspects of our lives, including the way we dress and interact with each other, but also how we guard our gaze and speech. Porn throws modesty out the window altogether, and with it, we’re already breaking many rules and treading on dangerous waters.

29:17
In a 2014 study entitled “Brain Structure and Functional Connectivity Associated With Pornography Consumption” published in JAMA Psychiatry, psychology experts in Berlin found that porn use correlated with less grey matter in the brain and reduced reward activity when viewing porn. Porn use weakens the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain responsible for decision making and executive functioning, which reduces willpower so that you can easily succumb to more porn use and other addictive behaviors. This makes it easier to give up on other goals in life. In other words, porn leads to changes in one’s brains at a physiological level. Let’s explore this in detail and look at addiction in general.

When we talk about addiction to any substance or activity, we have to talk about a chemical called “dopamine”. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in our central nervous system that is involved with reward, pleasure and motivation, a feel good chemical associated with pleasurable activities like having a good meal, enjoying good company, or engaging in a particular activity we like, for example. When we perform actions deemed by the brain as advantageous for survival, like sex, for example, it rewards us with a surge of dopamine that triggers the sensation of pleasure and stimulates memory and concentration.

Addiction neurobiologists have revealed that all addictions, both chemical and behavioral, appear to share a key molecular switch. You overconsume fatty/sugary foods, drugs or high levels of sexual activity, causing dopamine to surge repeatedly. Chronic overconsumption over long periods with the associated dopamine spikes causes a molecule called ΔFosB (pronounced deltaFosB) to accumulate gradually in key areas of your brain. ΔFosB is a transcription factor, meaning it’s a protein that binds to our genes and turns them on or off. This molecule then hangs around for a while, altering our genes’ responses, bringing on measurable, physical brain changes. 

These changes begin with sensitization, which means a state of hyper-reactivity of the brain’s reward system, but only in response to the specific cues it associates with the developing addiction. In this case, we’re talking about porn or sex addiction cues. For example, sitting at a computer alone late at night, or surfing Instagram or some other social media platform looking at people in bathing suits, or feeling depressed, bored, lonely or tired, reaching out for a hook-up app and meeting someone. Any of these cues would lead to a behavior, and in this case, it’s surfing porn leading to masturbation and orgasm, or hooking up with someone and achieving an orgasm. The end result in our brain is the same. Repeating this cycle for a few days or weeks creates connections that eventually lead us to checking out porn without even thinking about it, and then things start getting out of control for many of us. It’s become a habit.

All of the brain changes initiated by ΔFosB tend to keep us overconsuming or riveted to what our brain perceives as engaging in constant reproduction. In other words, porn works through hijacking the natural reward mechanisms designed to keep us reproducing for as long as possible. The problem is, we’re not actually having sex, but our brains cannot differentiate between online porn and real sex. The input to our brain stimulates the same areas, and the neural response is the same. It’s kind of like how when watching a scary movie we cringe or jump out of our seats, or a sad movie can make us cry and feel sad. The brain thinks something that we watch digitally is actually happening to us in real life, and it reacts accordingly. It reacts to a picture or video of a naked person of the sex you’re attracted to the same way it does to a real-life naked person or the experience of real sex. If you’re watching multiple porn scenes (which is usually the case for most porn binges), your brain actually gets the stimulus that you are having sex with multiple partners, believe it or not. Your brain ramps up dopamine and ΔFosB levels, driving you to orgasm whether that climax is fostered with another human being or it is self-induced through masturbation. So this is quite an argument against those who claim that porn is the “lesser of two evils” in relation to having sex with someone else.

Internet porn’s instant and highly accessible form keeps the brain’s reward mechanism turned on significantly longer than would normally be possible, by producing megadoses of dopamine and ΔFosB in our brain. It’s too much dopamine and ΔFosB for our brains to handle at once, because our brains were never designed to handle unlimited amounts of porn (or any amount, really). Oftentimes, this chemical rush while watching porn encourages one to masturbate to produce even more dopamine. Simultaneously, a person releases even more happy chemicals in the brain like serotonin and dopamine, particularly during an orgasm. So we can understand why this is enjoyable and potentially addictive. It’s easy, it feels good, and it’s free. And that is exactly the problem. Our brains start to crave more and more, causing us to watch more and more porn. The obvious question is: “At what point does porn use become pathological (i.e., an addiction)?” From a physiological standpoint, the answer is simple: Whenever the amount of stimulation induces the accumulation of ΔFosB and the corresponding addiction-related brain changes.

What I’ve just described is a perfect example of epigenetics, whereby the environment (in this case, porn exposure) affects our genes (through the actions of ΔFosB), causing particular genes to be turned on and others to be turned off, thereby leading to changes at the structural and biochemical levels in our brains. With continued overconsumption and addiction, these changes then show up as behaviors and symptoms, such as cravings, compulsion to use and continued use despite negative consequences. Whether an addiction is behavioral or chemical, accumulated ΔFosB levels correlate with the severity of addiction-related brain changes.

According to researcher and molecular scientist Eric Nestler, “[ΔFosB is] almost like a molecular switch. … Once it’s flipped on, it stays on for a while and doesn’t go away easily. This phenomenon is observed in response to chronic administration of virtually any drug of abuse. It is also observed after high levels of consumption of natural rewards (exercise, sucrose, high fat diet, sex).” Some research suggests that it takes 6 to 8 weeks of abstinence for ΔFosB to decline. Remember, the purpose of ΔFosB is to promote the rewiring of the brain, so that you will experience a bigger blast from whatever you have been over consuming. This memory, or deeply ingrained learning, lingers long after the event. The point is that everyone has ΔFosB, and if it accumulates due to chronic overconsumption, anyone of us can end up with brain changes that lead to compulsion and cravings to use. Adolescents in particular are at a higher risk of addiction given the much greater induction of ΔFosB, making them more vulnerable to addiction. So this is another thing to keep in mind.

What’s even more dangerous is that the Internet gives us an unlimited variety of sexual experiences. This variety means that, when we view porn, dopamine shoots to our brain, encouraging us to search for more and more porn. And what someone once found arousing over time will no longer be arousing. This is called tolerance, whereby consuming the same amount over time doesn’t lead to the desired effect, so you have to increase the “dose”. And that’s why people start with one kind of porn and then find themselves searching for different categories and seeking novelty with time. This tolerance may take years to develop, but it’s very easy to develop, as the pleasure and reward system of our brains has already been primed to receive the dopamine rush associated with porn, masturbation and orgasm.

Now, the brain has a proper maintenance system whereby the number of dopamine receptors is limited when frequent and daily flooding of dopamine is detected. The brain starts to express fewer dopamine receptors and produce less dopamine to counteract what’s happening. As a result, dopamine has a harder time moving in your brain, regardless of the reason it was sent out. This desensitizes you not only to porn but to everything in your life that would normally give you pleasure through a dopamine response. With less dopamine produced and fewer receptors available, we then start to feel more stressed and irritated than usual. Motivation is reduced, and we feel less excited and satisfied when we do things we used to enjoy. And with reduced pleasure and motivation from daily tasks, we feel apathetic, lethargic and overwhelmed. This process is known as desensitization. When desensitization happens, we’ve actually crossed the ’red line’ and triggered a range of emotions such as guilt, disgust, embarrassment, anxiety and fear, among others, and this may lead to full-blown depression. 

Once you’re in a state of depression, you begin to isolate yourself, live in a constant state of sadness and despair and feel overwhelmed. In this environment, it is extremely difficult to thrive in your personal and professional life. Nothing you do during your day will come nearly as close to the dopamine rush that you get from porn, so things you once found stimulating are now increasingly boring. Things that used to bring joy to your life simply have less importance to you as you consume more and more porn or act out sexually. And the problem here is, the more of this you consume, the more desensitized to life you become. The addiction just feels right, so it’s this constant urge to consume more of it. You do it, but then soon after you’re bored, so you do it again and again. This spiral of negative actions leads you to feel more guilt and shame about how you’ve spent the last few hours watching porn or acting out. People find themselves sexually objectifying others more frequently, neglecting important areas of their lives, having intimacy problems with their spouses, constantly feeling bad about themselves, or even engaging in risky behaviors, like random unprotected hook-ups, prostitution or other illegal activities.

Even desensitization contributes to brain changes, particularly at the prefrontal cortex, producing abnormal white matter, loss of gray matter, and lowered metabolism. These changes are called hypofrontality and result in weakening your impulse control and over-valuing your addiction. So, once again, sensitization means your brain is hyperactive and produces megadoses of reward chemicals in relation to environmental cues, and desensitization is a protective mechanism by the brain to fight the tsunami of these chemicals. At the same time that desensitization numbs us to everyday pleasures, sensitization makes our brain hyper-reactive to anything associated with our addiction. This is the basis of addiction. Over time, this dual-edged mechanism can have your brain buzzing at the hint of porn use, but it would be less than enthused when presented with a chance of genuine intimate connection. 

Understanding sensitization and desensitization helps us understand how withdrawal symptoms emerge. Dopamine flooding acts like a quick-acting drug, falling quickly and inducing withdrawal effects. Withdrawal from porn doesn’t cause any physical pain; it is merely an empty, restless feeling of something missing, and when this is prolonged, it becomes associated with nervousness, insecurity, agitation, low confidence and irritability. It’s like hunger, but for a poison. When one gives in to this again, within seconds of engaging in a porn session, dopamine is supplied and the craving ends, resulting in a momentary feeling of fulfillment. There’s an inner addict that’s taken root in our brains and enjoys taking a trip into porn land every once in a while, enticing us to engage in porn for the sake of its pleasurable effects. However, the satisfaction is fleeting, because in order to relieve the craving, more porn is required. As soon as you orgasm, the craving starts again and the trap continues to hold you. And so it becomes a vicious cycle.

There is another subtle form of “porn” which exists on social media and not on porn websites, and this may be more common. Many of us tend to follow others on Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms, many of whom we haven’t actually met in real life. It’s not uncommon to find shirtless and exposed bodies on our daily feed, and the more we click on these photos, the more similar photos and videos pop up through the algorithm. You may be saying, “Well, that’s not technically porn.” But to your brain, it’s more or less the same, if you look at what’s happening physiologically to your brain. These images and photos induce erotic thoughts and fantasies, and they fire up the dopamine pathways in your brain. These social media platforms are basically another avenue for porn. We click on a photo or video, get a shot of dopamine, explore other photos and videos, and so on. More cues, more dopamine, more triggers. Eventually, we find ourselves needing a release. 

Social media “porn” is the perfect trigger to watching hardcore porn online, since our minds have been already primed. All you have to do is click over, open a new tab, and within seconds you have access to unlimited attractive people doing anything you want. So don’t trick yourself into believing that such content isn’t doing you harm - to your brain, whether you’re consuming this content on social media, porn websites or through real-life hook-ups, you’re feeding the same reward pathways that have become addictive neural circuits.

Speaking before the U.S. Senate in 2004, American psychiatrist and physicist Dr. Jeffrey Satinover said, “Modern science allows us to understand that the underlying nature of an addiction to pornography is chemically identical to a heroin addiction.” Drugs like cocaine and heroin provide an instant rush of dopamine to our brain, giving us that euphoric feel-good effect. And so does porn. And actually, when we think of drug addiction, imagine the state of panic of a heroin addict without any heroin, and now picture the incredible joy of when they can finally plunge a needle into their vein. The heroin itself does not relieve the feeling, it actually causes it, because of the pleasure it’s associated with and the withdrawal effects that come from its absence. And the same happens with porn.

Now, unlike most addictive substances like alcohol and drugs, porn has no barriers. Psychologists and addiction experts often refer to the “three As of addiction”, which are accessibility, affordability and anonymity. Most addictive substances will have one or two of those, and usually cost (affordability) is often the biggest barrier for most addicts. But what is astounding is that porn meets all three conditions. It is accessible, as one can go online and watch unlimited amounts of porn within seconds; it’s affordable, as most of it is free; and it’s anonymous, since it’s on our phone or computer and no one will ever know. Dr. Mary Anne Layden, co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Cognitive Therapy said, “Porn is the most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today. The internet is a perfect drug delivery system because you are anonymous, aroused and have role models for these behaviors.” She continues, "To have a drug pumped into your house 24/7, free, and children know how to use it better than grown-ups know how to use it -- it's a perfect delivery system if we want to have a whole generation of young addicts who will never have the drug out of their mind."

Understanding the physiology of addiction that I’ve just summarized as well as the three A’s of addiction helps us understand why porn is incredibly dangerous. It’s incredibly easy and quick to get hooked. Porn use and drug use actually have a lot in common. When cocaine users escalate their behavior, they need bigger and more frequent hits of cocaine (again, that’s called tolerance). When porn users escalate their behavior, they need more extreme porn more frequently. You need a bigger dose to keep generating the same dopamine reward. In practice, porn sessions become longer and more frequent. Your brain tries to make up in quantity for what it can’t get in quality. An extreme user may spend hours each day watching porn. Eventually, it can get really weird and taboo to become something violent, disgusting, dangerous, or even illegal. Or possibly it gets to the point where someone goes off the computer and starts to engage in real-life encounters and even goes to illicit places to get that. It can take years to develop this level of porn usage – it’s not something that happens overnight. But if someone looks back at his/her porn use, one may see that there has been a progression in terms of quantity and quality which was not there earlier on.

Now, it may be of consolation to lifelong and heavy users that it’s easy and manageable for them to stop, even quitting cold turkey. And it doesn’t have to be a hell of a process, it can actually be enjoyable and liberating. And we will talk about the details of this inshaAllah. There are some layers that we need to get through as we go along the process. 

People get confused when it comes to quitting porn and think they’re weak, hopeless, never good enough, or that the process is excruciating and will take a long time. It’s a fallacy that users are weak-willed or physically weak. You actually have to be physically strong in order to cope with an addiction after you know it exists. You’re not weak or hopeless or not good enough. You are strong and worthy. There are a lot of preconceived notions and internal dialogue happening that has to be corrected. And remember, that “inner addict” that’s craving his next dopamine fix only adds fuel to the fire. It’s important to be equipped with the necessary knowledge and tools to know how to move forward on the journey of sobriety and healing. 

And remember, we spoke about neuroplasticity previously in episode 42, particularly on our journey of healing and recovery, how our brains and neural circuits are created with such flexibility and plasticity that what can be learned can be unlearned, and vice versa. Old pathways can be rewired into new pathways. You’re not stuck with your brain wiring for the rest of your life. The good news is that stopping or significantly reducing porn and masturbation use and living a healthy well-balanced lifestyle can restore your brain back to its normal function. When you stop the porn, the receptors grow back, and your brain can resensitize itself to dopamine again with time. It can take months, but it can still happen and you can live happily again, inshaAllah.

51:38
There is a brilliant TED talk called, “Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong” by Johann Hari. I will add a link to the talk in the episode description, so make sure you give it a listen. In the talk, Johann tells us the story of Dr. Bruce Alexander, who’s a professor of psychology in Vancouver, and who carried out the famous “Rat Park” experiments, which were published in the journal Psychopharmacology in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Before we talk about Alexander’s experiment, back then, people understood addiction based on earlier experiments in the 1920s that went like this: scientists got rats and put them in isolated cages, and they gave them two water bottles: One was just water, and the other was water laced with either heroin or cocaine. The rats ended up almost always preferring the drug water and almost always killed themselves quite quickly. 

Alexander and his colleagues looked at that experiment and thought about not having those rats be in isolation and empty cages, where they’d have nothing to do except use those drugs. So, Professor Alexander built a cage that he called "Rat Park," which was a large housing colony 200 times the floor area of a standard laboratory cage. There were 16–20 rats of both sexes in residence, food, balls and wheels for play, and enough space for mating. And they still had both water bottles: the normal water and the drugged water. But here's the fascinating thing: in Rat Park, they didn’t like the drug water. They almost never used it. None of them ever used it compulsively. None of them ever overdosed. So they went from almost 100% overdose when they were isolated to 0% overdose when they had happy and connected lives. 

Other studies have supported the conclusions made by Alexander and his colleagues, finding that environmental enrichment creates neurological changes that would decrease the chances of opiate addiction. This is another example of the environment inducing brain changes – just like we’ve talked about earlier, addiction is associated with brain changes at the genetic level, but so is leading happy and connected lives. You might be asking, this applies to rats, what’s this got to do with us?

Back in Alexander’s days, a real-life experiment was taking place at the same time, which was the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, 20% of all American troops were using loads of heroin, and people in the US were worried, thinking that they’d have tons of addicts come back home when the war ended. The Archives of General Psychiatry performed a detailed study on those soldiers who were using heroin and followed them when they returned home. It turns out, these soldiers didn't go to rehab or withdrawal; 95% of them just stopped. What about dopamine withdrawal and brain rewiring and everything we know about addiction? Professor Alexander at the time began to think that there might be a different story about addiction. He contemplated along the lines of: What if addiction isn't about our chemical hooks, but rather about our “cage”? What if addiction is an adaptation to our environment? 

Looking at this, there was another professor called Peter Cohen in the Netherlands who argued against calling it addiction to begin with, but rather calling it “bonding”. Human beings have a natural and innate need to bond, and when we're happy and healthy, we'll bond and connect with each other, but if we can't do that, because we’re traumatized or isolated or beaten down by life, we will bond with something that will give us some sense of relief. That might be drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography, sex or whatever else. We will bond and connect with something, because that's our nature. That's what we want as human beings. 

So why is it that some people become addicted and others not? We know that some people may be “casual users” of substances, porn, and so on, and this is more like a form of escape or relaxation that is not as satisfying or meaningful as real intimate connections. Porn and online sexual experiences are not sustained because they feel unrealistic to them, and they’d rather have intimate genuine relations in their lives. Other users may be “at-risk”, where they would have periods of intense engagement, and it is a distraction from other life challenges. But they can stop or set limits when they start to experience more serious consequences. There may be potentially a history of abuse for recreation, spending, gambling, sex or other high-intensity behaviors as a result of reacting to life stressors. But they can stop before things get out of hand. In this case, yes, there are troubles in some aspects of life, but there is satisfaction and connection in other areas that kind of help out in the process. All in all, those who don’t become addicted have got bonds and connections that they want to be present for. They have people they love, work they enjoy, and healthy relationships. 

All of this scientific as well as empirical, daily life evidence, suggests that a core part of addiction is about not being able to bear to be present in your life. Addicts turn to substances and experiences to fill an emotional void. Many cannot stop negative behaviors or even have a desire for change. They know what they’re doing is hurting them, yet they still keep doing it. They typically are depressed or are experiencing severe emotional challenges or have a history of substance abuse, history of emotional, physical or sexual abuse, social anxiety, depression, attention deficit disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, history of self-harm behaviors, neglect, family dysfunction, addiction, or lifelong fears of being unwanted or “not good enough.” So they use porn, masturbation or sex to replace intimate personal relationships and peer support altogether. There could also be a history of unresolved adult trauma, having short-term, infrequent relationships, and being emotionally distant from friendships and family even if they are physically in close proximity. Addicts find as much intensity, excitement, and distraction in the search for the next sexual thrill as in the sex act itself. Fantasies pull addicts into an emotional state that renders them unable to make better choices or even consider how their behaviors might affect others or themselves. 

Remember our episodes on complex trauma - bearing in mind that at least 90% of people struggling with addiction have complex trauma in their lives makes a lot of sense -- the addiction becomes the numbing behavior we use to escape the deep pain we experience. Dr. Bruce Alexander from the Rat Park experiment writes, “When I talk to addicted people, whether they are addicted to alcohol, drugs, gambling, Internet use, sex, or anything else, I encounter human beings who really do not have a viable social or cultural life. They use their addictions as a way of coping with their dislocation: as an escape, a pain killer, or a kind of substitute for a full life. More and more psychologists and psychiatrists are reporting similar observations. Maybe our fragmented, mobile, ever-changing modern society has produced social and cultural isolation in very large numbers of people, even though their cages are invisible! The view of addiction from Rat Park is that today’s flood of addiction is occurring because our hyperindividualistic, hypercompetitive, frantic, crisis-ridden society makes most people feel socially and culturally isolated. Chronic isolation causes people to look for relief. They find temporary relief in addiction to drugs or any of a thousand other habits and pursuits because addiction allows them to escape from their feelings, to deaden their senses, and to experience an addictive lifestyle as a substitute for a full life.”

When we see it that way, everything changes. Our attitude towards people dealing with addiction, including ourselves, changes. Unfortunately, how do we deal with people struggling with addictions of whatever kind (including ourselves if we’re dealing with that)? Shame. Punishment. Barriers. Criminal records. And so on. And this only fuels further and further disconnection and addiction. Especially in our Muslim communities, where these topics are taboos to begin with. And how do we deal with individuals struggling with addiction in our communities? “If you don't shape up, we're going to cut you off!” Shame, kicking out and further isolation. Families and communities take the connection element, which is what’s missing, and further threaten to sever it. They make it contingent on the addict behaving the way they want him/her to behave. Ultimatums. Conditions. Threats. And that, obviously, defeats the whole purpose.

What do we learn from all this as individuals struggling with addiction, or as parents, family members, friends, imams and community leaders? Think of it this way: the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. You want to help heal the wounds of addiction and help others step back on their feet? Say to the addicts in your life that you want to deepen the connection with them. “I love you no matter what. I love you, whatever state you're in, and if you need me, I'll come and sit with you because I love you and I don't want you to be alone or to feel alone. You’re not alone, I’m with you.” I love you. You are good enough. You are worthy. And I am here for you. The core of this message -- you're not alone, we love you -- has to be at every level of how we respond to addicts, whether at the individual level, social level or even political level.

Once again, I would like to redirect you to the series of episodes at the beginning of the season that covered the origins and effects of complex trauma as well as healing from it. When we view addiction from that lens, as well as from a viewpoint of “connection”, the whole paradigm takes a radical shift. 

1:03:22
And with this, we have come to the end of today’s episode. In the next episode, we will explore together triggers and how to demystify them using a myriad of mindfulness and conscious awareness techniques, inshaAllah. I would like to end this episode with a famous Native American saying that goes like this: “Inside every person lies two wolves: one bad and one good. Which one will win, you may ask? The one you feed.” This has been Waheed Jensen in A Way Beyond the Rainbow, assalamu alaikom wa rahmatullahi ta’ala wa barakatuh.

Episode Introduction
Addiction: Definitions and Considerations
Further Damage and the Porn Industry
Pathophysiology of Addiction
The Opposite of Addiction is Connection
Ending Remarks