What Porn Does to Your Brain (And How to Quit)

The brain is not meant to be flooded with high levels of dopamine. Almost every man I meet these days is on testosterone replacement therapy and they watch porn and they're never making the connection between the depletion. Testosterone is first made in the brain before it's made in the sex organs. So this cascading effect of how it affects basically all biological processes, then at the same time it affects mental health, it increases anxiety, depression, something I call porn induced adhd. Many people these days go and get an adult ADHD diagnosis without ever thinking that ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder. You had to have had it when you were a kid. But it's because porn does the same thing to the frontal lobe. It's proven scientifically to decrease function and actually shrink the structure also, which then also leads to porn induced erectile dysfunction. That's the wake up call for most people, sexual arousal dysfunction, which I call sad.

Well, as I was just speaking with my podcast guest today before we started recording, sometimes books show up at my house randomly. In this case, she sent it to me and they're books that I might not have otherwise grabbed off a shelf and I read them. And right off the bat I think, gosh, you guys need to know about the content of these books. In particular this book, Mind Over Explicit Matter. I'm holding it up for those of you who are watching the video and the shownotes are all going to be@BenGreenfieldLife.com MindOverMatter here's the subtitle to give you a little bit of a clue of what I'm going to get into with today's guest. The subtitle is Quit porn and improve intimacy through Neuroscience. And it's so interesting because, like, I was in the gym today and I was listening to a popular fitness podcast. They were interviewing someone about relationships and that person was talking about some kind of new AI technology that, pardon the explicit nature of what I'm about to explain, but essentially it was some kind of, kind of a sex toy that allows men to sync the sex toy.

To like an AI digital girlfriend on the computer. So they can essentially be like, having sex in real time with this sex toy that's like plugged into their computer. I thought, gosh, like, tech has come a long ways from back in the day when you had to wait 5 minutes on a 28k modem for a photo that you. A dirty photo that you wanted to see, to pull up. And now, obviously, unless you've been hiding under a rock you know, this is an issue.

So, anyways, my guest is Dr. Trish Lee. Trish is a cognitive neuroscientist. She's an addiction recovery expert, and she studies the actual neuroscience behind these things, which I think is important because sometimes I think we neglect to take into account the impact on mutual neurotransmitters on hormones. And sometimes the focus is just on, oh, this is dirty, this is bad, this is wrong. But there's some underlying biological mechanisms behind porn that I really wanna get into today. So, Trish, welcome to the show.

Yeah, thanks. Glad to be here.

Yeah. Thanks for sending me this book.

Yeah, yeah, you're welcome.

I have lots of pages folded over in it, as you can see. And whenever I interview an author I like, I don't wanna create a podcast that, you know, causes people to not read the book because you guys should read this. I like to take a deeper dive into some of the things that I found quite interesting in the book. And you often see books about porn written by counselors or pastors or maybe former porn addicts, but you're a neuroscientist. So what got you interested in this?

The same thing that gets all those people interested is that a personal friend of mine and a client I tell the story in the book was really struggling, and I didn't know that porn was at the core of it. And even when I found out porn was at the core of it, I still was slightly perplexed because I knew all about the brain and how it functions and how it impacts behaviors and how it impacts mental health. But when I realized it's just my nature too, I'm probably similar to you. The minute something comes on my radar like that, and especially seeing it impact someone I care about.

The way I think about it is I was kind of perfectly set up. All I need to know was a little more. I already knew everything. And when I applied it to porn, it just blew my mind. And then I felt like I had the world a secret the whole world didn't know. So I made one YouTube video. Like, just saying, don't watch porn. It does this to your brain. And it, you know, had a viral impact. And from there I doubled down.

Yeah. It kind of reminds me, have you ever seen that website, your brainonporn.com? i think it is, yeah.

Yeah, thoroughly. Yeah. Gary Wilson, he was kind of the, you know, the forefather in all of this, bringing attention to porn as an issue. But what he didn't do was present the solution. You know, he's like porn's really bad for you. And in his book, your Brain on Porn, you know, he substantiated. But then on the website he does go into, you know, what you can do to help yourself.

Yeah, and I know there's obviously a porn epidemic right now. I mean, it's everyone's beck and call. But you described the porn addiction epidemic. So how bad is that exactly? Like, what is the porn addiction epidemic?

Yeah, it's the same thing that you're thinking. You just don't realize it's porn addiction. You think it's a porn use or consumption. But I know that.

Many, I would say most, I actually would probably reach out to say all the people who consume porn regularly are either actually full blown addicted in the current moment or they're moving towards that. And in the book I describe it that use becomes misuse becomes abuse becomes compulsion. So the compulsion is a person has to go back. It's not a choice anymore. And we know with porn use that the seeds of addiction are basically planted in childhood, adolescence. And like you said, now everybody has a phone in their pocket. So this generation of young people, digital natives as they call them, who are the first generation to have porn in their pocket, we see a stark increase in addiction.

I heard, and I don't know if this is true. You might know this, that.

Many young people who become addicted to porn first experience it accidentally. Like it gets served up via an ad or a pop up or something like that. Is that the case?

It is the case that exposure is typically not on purpose, yes. I mean, just think about it. I mean, think of the things that you'll search and, you know, it might not be full blown porn, but it's, you know, explicit in nature. The thing I really like about, I actually named the book Mind Over Porn and the publishing company had me change it to explicit matter. And I was a little, I was more than a little. I did not want to change from porn to explicit matter because I'm like, we're watering down the subject. But then I really grew to like that because my point being is it covers, you know, all matters of it in terms of social media. So think about kids now. You know, I, I am the mom of five kids. My youngest is 14, my oldest is 22. They're all subjected to hypersexuality on social media.

So.

So it's running rampant and yeah, so now everything's hypersexualized.

What do you mean when you say hypersexualized?

I mean that kids go onto social media I mean, if you knew the research behind this, it would. It's staggering how many kids share nudes with each other. Girls are sharing nudes. You know, men are young men. Boys are asking girls to share explicit matter with them, and they're looking at each other's feeds just for the dopamine hits that come along with looking at the images of girls that aren't wearing a lot of clothing. And men are consuming that primarily right now.

How bad is the kind of like the OnlyFans part of this where you can. And I'm gonna sound like a total Luddite here. I've never actually been to an OnlyFans. I don't even know if it's a website. Like, I don't even know how it works. I'm that much of a Luddite. But explain to me how that's feeding into this.

It is. Someone said it to me the other day that when you go on a porn site, you know what you're getting. Onlyfans is pretending. It's kind of like porn with a dress on it. You have to look harder to realize that very much of the same thing is happening there. But the easiest way to think about it from a scientific and a neuroscience perspective is that all explicit matter exists on a continuum of supernormal stimuli. Porn proper, which tends to be very violent. It tends to have acts and scenarios that you can't find on lower level supernormal stimuli. It's at the top. But then OnlyFans is just one notch down.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, the way I think about this is sometimes through an ancestral, or what some might call an evolutionary lens, I think. Well.

Kings and queens of old, who are the wealthiest people with the most access to, let's say, a high number of sexual partners, had nowhere near the ability to be able to view image after image or be in a situation where you're subjected to that much sexual activity all at once. And yet we, just, less than 100 years later, are in a scenario where our brains can be bombarded by this. And.

It'S like our current access to hyper palatable foods 247 at our beck and call, we simply haven't even developed the. We have these built in calorie conservation mechanisms that kind of freak out when we begin to consume that much food. And it kind of seems like porn is a little bit similar, but. But what exactly are. And I realize it's kind of a big question, but what are the damaging effects of that amount of neural stimuli of something that the human brain doesn't even seem to be conditioned for.

Yeah, and I love that perspective because I've thought the exact same thing. Like thinking about it from an evolutionary sense, like back in the day, who could get this level of stimulation? I've thought that myself, that it was only people with harems.

Right? Like freaking like, you know, King Solomon with his, what, 700 concubines or whatever.

Exactly. That's what I thought. And it wasn't even at the level because, you know, he, you know, there's just. Yes. I think about it the same way you did. You do? But, you know, the idea is that the brain is not meant to be flooded with high levels of dopamine. And especially many people that I work with, at least they engage in something called edging, which means they keep going back for more and more and more dopamine. So they consistently flood their brain with high levels of dopamine and it desensitizes the dopamine receptors in the reward center. And that causes. It changes the way that the brain uses electrical energy, which is what I primarily focus on. And then it does change the way that neurotransmitters cascade, hormones cascade, and, you know, men. Almost every man I meet these days is on testosterone replacement therapy and they watch porn and they're never making the connection between the depletion. Testosterone is first made in the brain before it's made in the sex organs. So this cascading effect of how it affects basically all biological processes. Then at the same time, it affects mental health. It increases anxiety, depression, something I call porn induced adhd. Many people these days go and get an adult ADHD diagnosis without ever thinking that ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder. You had to have had it when you were a kid. But it's because porn does the same thing to the frontal lobe. It's proven scientifically to decrease function and actually shrink the structure also, which then also leads to porn induced erectile dysfunction. That's the wake up call for most people. Sexual arousal dysfunction, which I call sad.

Wow. Okay, I want to double click on a few of these things. Let's rewind back to the testosterone piece. I haven't heard this before, so explain to me what you were just saying in a little bit more detail about the link between porn use and decreased testosterone. And by the way, I asked this because some people might think, well, you're looking at, let's say you're a man looking at a naked woman. You'd think biologically that would cause a massive surge in testosterone well, it is.

Spiking testosterone in the moment. And the same thing with dopamine. But you know, I call them all easy button behaviors. And your likening it to food is very similar. Porn has been very much, you know, kind of put on a parallel of junk food. So if you're hitting that easy button to get extra testosterone, you're depleting the system. It leads to overall depletion. And it works this way is the way I think about it and I talk about it with dopamine is when you start to get a drip of it, that's extra dopamine. And the same thing might apply. And I've looked at the science, it does apply to testosterone. Then you flood your system with it. And that's why people feel numbed out after they've consumed pornography. They feel numb, dissociated, extra calm. That's a flood, a drowning of dopamine. But now you go back into your life and you're in a deficit state. That's the depletion. Because when you put yourself in a position where you're making your brain produce extra of what's not supposed to be produced at those high levels, especially frequently and consistently, and some people linger there for a really long time now, you really create deficit and depletion.

So the way I understand from what you're saying about the dopamine is if I'm viewing porn, and this would apply whether I'm a man or a woman, because I know a great percentage of women now view porn.

Yeah, there's an increase for sure.

Yeah. So I'm getting a surge in dopamine. And then are you saying there's a subsequent drop in dopamine that would then drive me to engage in other reward seeking behaviors and experience ADHD like tendencies?

Yeah, that's exactly right. So what happens is once you flooded your system, then when you. So basically with continued consumption, the brain is becoming conditioned to feel okay, not even good, okay, when it has high levels of dopamine in the system. So then when you go back into your work and your hobbies and your relationships, where dopamine actually should be, now there's not as much there. And the way I characterize it is that you're conditioning your brain to need level 15 or level 20 dopamine, which then does affect testosterone. So now you go back into your life, work should be dopamine producing. You should enjoy your work. A lot of people can't focus because now their frontal lobes are not functioning. So this is why a lot of people Feel discontented in their life. So just to double down on the science for a minute, Everything I'm telling you is proven by science. This isn't my, my opinion is that people have difficulty with focus and productivity. They have decreased relationship satisfaction, they have decreased body image, they see their partners as less attractive. People stop engaging in their hobbies and they just keep going back for the high levels of dopamine. Then of course, that is a tolerance building behavior that leads to escalation, which leads that person to click buttons that have more violent scenarios in it. And it goes up from there.

You need a higher level of stimulation. Has anybody ever done brain scans on people who say, view porn frequently versus those who do not?

Yeah, that's a great question. There are studies with. There's two primary studies that looked at the brain scans that prove that function and structure had changed due to porn consumption. One of them, the author, is usually quoted as saying that porn creates underdeveloped brains, which is true, but I think it has a level of hyperbole to it. But I can explain that one to you in a second. But the very cool thing is that I'm in the midst of doing a study that has already shown significant results with almost 400 brains. So I myself have seen this effect in, you know, probably about a thousand brains. I've seen it in myself. And I'm in the midst of doing the study to, to prove it and to prove the correlation to erectile dysfunction too.

What do you mean about the underdeveloped brain part?

What I focus on is eeg, electrical energy in the brain. So what happens in the brain is that, and I love this stuff, I think once you know about it, it's logical, is that.

When babies are born, they sleep all the time. That's because their brains are using extra slow speed developmentally. That's what's supposed to happen. Then as they grow a little bit older into toddlerhood, then their brains are still using slow speed, they still sleep a lot. Developmentally, your brain is supposed to speed up to the speed of calm focus. So if porn is introduced into the system, it keeps the brain in those slower patterns. Those slower patterns are actually what is at the core of ADHD. So essentially brains develop until the age of 28, but when a person finds porn at 10, 11, that's actually the average age is down to under 10. Now their brains get stunted in this slower speed and you know what happens then? It requires more stimulation.

That is super interesting. I saw an interview with an OnlyFans I don't know what you would call, like, a model or star or whatever named Lily Phillips. She apparently slept with 100 guys in 24 hours or something like that. She said in this interview that she started watching porn, I think, when she was 11. Yeah.

So this is the hypersexualized brain. So the brain gets linked to sexuality and it craves it. That's the way that it gets dopamine, and it becomes a maladaptive behavior. There's.