A top neuroscientist has issued a stark warning: that watching porn will ruin your life, as she set out the three biggest side effects of consuming adult content.
Dr Trish Leigh, who is also a sexual recovery coach, stresses in a series of YouTube videos that pornography use quickly descends into addiction and can lead to a host of other personal challenges, spanning everything from issues at work to erectile dysfunction.
In a clip titled ‘Quit Porn, Your Life Depends on it’, she says: “I know what you're thinking, aren't I being just a tad melodramatic? And the answer is no, because I work with so many people whose lives are shattered because of their porn addiction, which begins as a porn habit.”
In a separate video, she explains: “Neuroscience shows that porn [...] gives your brain excessive dopamine (the pleasure neurotransmitter) more than it can get in the world. And in doing so, it plants the seeds of addiction when you're young and it pulls you into the screen.”
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In a third tutorial, she reveals the main side effects of this X-rated habit, saying: “A lot of time spent watching highly stimulating graphic material” means you’re constantly receiving “artificial dopamine dumps”, which keeps “drawing you back for more and more and more”. This then erodes your motivation in other aspects of your life because they “no longer give you the same stimulation as the porn does.”
The second side effect, according to Dr Leigh, is that porn is “proven to create mood disorder”, leaving the viewer burdened with “more anger, rage, depression and, anxiety.”
“The last side effect of porn,” she says, “Is that compulsive masturbation, which goes along with pornography, can lead to erectile dysfunction.”
3 Main Side Effects of Pornyoutube.com
In another YouTube clip, she dissects the “five main reasons someone becomes addicted [to] pornography”.“The number one reason is that it is giving your brain the buzz that it is looking for –it's not an addiction to what you're watching, is an addiction to the release that you're getting in your brain and the feeling that it gives you,” she explains.
This leads to the second reason: “sometimes people have a true chemical imbalance – they suffer from anxiety or depression, and this is the way that they have self-medicated”.
“The third reason is that they have trauma and they have found pornography as the escape,” she continues.
“The next reason [is that] they were sexually abused – the way that your brain controls that situation that was out of your control is through reenactment, so some people are drawn towards watching the sex act that happened to them.
“One last type: it is a person who is not comfortable in intimate relationships, so instead they seek out pornography.”
Porn Addiction Causesyoutube.com
However, she insists, it is possible to pull yourself away from the screen and ditch your porn habit for good.
She recommends meditation as part of this approach, but also, inevitably, urges addicts to follow her Porn Brain Rewire programme to fully achieve their goal.
YouTube users have shared their support for Dr Leigh’s advice, with one writing: “Thank you for your channel. Every time I get the hijacker thoughts I turn on your videos to re-affirm I’m doing the right thing.”
Another said: “You are a God send. I have been watching your videos every day for the past two weeks and I am in the process of stopping my addiction cold. Your channel has really broken down the effects of porn in a scientific way which helps me understand things better.”
And a third commented: “Kid me would see you as an angel. Thank you for equipping a lot of people with the proper information and guidance to finally defeat this disease.”
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