Porn

The New Drug

As early as elementary school students are warned about the dangers of crack, cocaine, heroin, marijuana and many other drugs. Often there is a new drug campaign in order to tackle the “drug problem.” After years of fighting the use of these drugs comes the arrival of a new drug. This drug’s presence is not new to society but its label as a drug is new. Pornography produces the same effect on humans as drugs do including the chemical effects and behavioral changes.

Pornography and other hard drugs such as cocaine are most similar in their effects on a person’s brain. Everyone has a reward pathway in his or her brain. This reward pathway releases dopamine, which is the chemical that not only gives us the feeling of pleasure, but also helps us to bond with other people (Watts & Hilton, 2011). The high that drug users feel is created by this release of dopamine; pornography viewers experience this same high. And that surge of dopamine is causing more than just feelings. As it goes pulsing through the brain, dopamine helps to create new brain pathways that essentially lead the user back to the behavior that triggered the chemical release (Black, 2013.) This constant action is also how tolerance is created.

Just like any other drug a pornography addict has built their tolerance over time. However, their tolerance is more than how often they indulge in their addiction, but how their preferences of what they watch change. People tend to seek more extreme forms of porn in order to get the same pleasurable feeling, even if what they watch deviates from what they once believed to be morally wrong. After time, they believe these acts to be acceptable or normal. They become less sympathetic to victims of sexual crimes. The problem with this is that those who are less sympathetic are more likely to commit these crimes (Easley, n.d.) The correlation is eighty-five percent between viewing child pornography and participating in actual sexual relations...