Anne Truong MDMen's Sexual Health Doctor

How Porn Addiction is Just Like Chain Smoking 🚬 #PIED #Dopamine

14 May 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief monologue, Dr. Anne Truong draws a direct analogy between the way cigarette smokers develop tolerance—needing more cigarettes to achieve the same pleasure—and how repeated pornography consumption drives dopamine tolerance in the brain. She explains that as dopamine receptors become desensitized, individuals experience a deficit of feel‑good signaling, leading to apathy, anxiety, depression, and a diminished response to normal stimuli, including a loss of intimacy. The lack of a “pack of cigarettes” (i.e., sufficient dopamine stimulation) manifests as emotional numbness and relational difficulties, highlighting the neurobiological underpinnings of porn‑induced erectile dysfunction (PIED).

Chapters

It's kind of like the analogy is that when you smoke a cigarette, in the beginning, 1 or 2 cigarettes feels good, but then you need more cigarettes to give you that feel-good feeling. The same thing. The dopamine in your brain works the same way as cigarette smoking. So when you don't have enough dopamine in your brain, you become apathetic and you have anxiety, you have depression, and you have lack of real response to stimuli. It's kind of like you needing a pack of cigarettes, but you don't have that pack of cigarettes anymore to make you feel good. All right? So that's why you have lack of intimacy.