Porn's effect on the brain

Opinions vary on whether porn is addictive.

By COREY TAULE

ctaule@postregister.com

Reisman

Porn isn't a liquid you ingest nor is it a drug injected into your veins.

But scientific studies reveal that pornographic images, whether viewed on television, in a magazine or on the Internet, change our brains much the same way heroin, meth or alcohol does.

Brain imaging technology shows that "behavior addicts" have the same kinds of brain activities that prompt drug and alcohol users. And research shows these behaviors can actually cause molecular changes to the brain, strengthening the hold of the substance or behavior on the person.

But is porn addictive?

That depends on whom you ask.

"Anybody who is well read, informed, educated and credentialed sees this as an addiction, and I think it's professionally reckless to suggest otherwise," said Janet Allen, clinical director at Creekside Counseling in Idaho Falls.

Porn shocks the brain, Allen said, and imprints images in our memory, to be recalled whenever the right trigger happens along.

In a 2000 study on how porn impacts the human brain, Dr. Judith Reisman, who has been studying the impact of visual images on the brain for decades, argued "that by its ability to immediately overpower cognition, reason, logic and other literate functions, pornographic imagery ... nullifies the brain's ability to monitor and correct unhealthy conduct."

Snowden

Not everyone agrees.

Daniel Linz, a professor of Communication and Law and Society from the University of California, Santa Barbara, told a U.S. Senate Committee in late 2004 that it had been handed a "one-sided view" on the science of porn.

The idea of "sexual addiction," "pornography addiction," and "online addiction" "are highly questionable to most scientists," Linz said.

And those in the porn industry say studies like Reisman's are tainted.

Stephen Yagielowicz, who serves as senior editor for XBIZ, a company that writes about the adult entertainment industry and helps people break into it, argues that the only people studying the impacts of porn on the brain are those who oppose it for cultural or religious reasons.

"The people who pay for the studies dictate the outcomes," he said.

For Yagielowicz, a father who calls himself one of the most conservative people in the adult industry, it comes down to personal responsibility.

A person can choose either to engage in pornography or to leave it alone.

Yagielowicz

If a man is surfing porn late at night and hiding it from his wife, that's his choice. If his neighbor downloads porn at work, he's made a conscious choice to take a risk.

But one of the nation's leading experts on sex addiction believes otherwise.

Patrick Carnes, Ph.D., wrote in the third edition of "Out of the Shadows, Understanding Sexual Addiction," "While our society is shifting to a more open attitude toward sexual expression, we still view the amount and kind of activity as a matter of personal choice. For the addict, however, there is no choice. No choice. The addiction is in charge."

Chip Snowden, a mental health counselor in Idaho Falls, agrees.

He wrote his doctorate paper on the impact of pornography in eastern Idaho: "They lose jobs. They lose families. It's a very, very, very horrible defeating condition. It's horribly addictive. It's horribly, horribly addictive."

But not everybody gets hooked.

But some do, experts say, and that number multiplies daily.

Pornography addiction support groups are popping up all over the country. Nobody forces people to go. They swallow shame, guilt and fear and show up on their own.

Illustration by Steve Fischbach / Post Register

Sexual crimes, especially among juveniles, many of whom have almost unlimited access to hardcore pornography, are up.

And profits from porn now measure in the billions. The consumer base grows every day.

"You get to a point where you say 'If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it probably is a duck,'" said Steven A. Dahl, a licensed counselor and director of LDS Family Services in Idaho Falls.