Addicted to Porn: Chasing the Cardboard Butterfly

In the beginning, there was man, and there was woman.

From that moment on, things have been tricky.

Going back to Adam and Eve,

temptation has always been a third party participant in human life.

From the time that cavemen wrote on walls,

a struggle has ensued.

On down through time, the tinge of desire

has pumped through the veins of history.

In Asia, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans.

In 1748,

temptation and sexuality hit a whole new level in England

with the publication of "Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure",

a book better known as "Fanny Hill".

Fast forward to 1896,

when Fatima did her belly dance.

And we see sex now, coming out of the shadows

and into the cinematic mainstream.

In the 1960s, "I Am Curious" hit the silver screen in Sweden,

and Pandora was given a pretty little box to open.

Pornographic film erupted in the 1970s,

and an IV of sexual material was injected directly into the main vein of humanity.

As the appetite for sex and pornography rumbled in the stomach of society,

along came an all-you-can-eat buffet of porn,

the world wide web.

Because of that, we are now a planet of technologically dependent beings

with our personal power cord plugged directly into anything and everything,

and the current running through our cables

is high voltage.

We are wired, sexual beings.

Sexuality is a fundamental part of our basic human drives.

We're hardwired for sexuality.

It's a part of our structure,

cellular and DNA, is to be sexual and to have sex.

And anything that activates the sexual part of us

is already hitting something innate with us.

It releases all these chemicals in our body that make us feel good.

Why? 'Cause that's the way we're made.

'Cause sex is supposed to make you feel good, so you have more sex.

That's the way it works.

Um, that's human. That's normal. That's healthy.

We have a almond-sized area in the center of our brain,

the nucleus accumbens. It's the I-want-it part of our brain.

It focuses on what we want,

and it's important because

it allows us to survive

by focusing on food and on reproduction, for instance.

We survive as a species, as an individual.

The chemical dopamine is produced in an area called the mid-brain,

and there are wires that take this dopamine, this chemical,

all the way to the nucleus accumbens,

to a different part of the brain.

It really powers the brain with desire,

the mid-brain dopamine factory does.

We call it the ventral tegmental area.

The neurochemicals that exist in the brain during sex

are the neurochemicals that are supposed to be there.

Whether you're masturbating to pornography

or having sex with a wife that you've been married to for 30 years,

ain't no difference.

A fascinating study has shown actual growth

in parts of the brain that are used more

and atrophy in areas that are used less.

It was first noticed in a study of violin players

and further explored with brain scans of medical students

both before and after an intense three-month period of studying for exams.

Not only did the brain grow and shrink,

but new neurological pathways were formed as well.

In short, the brain is actually reshaped.

That physical change that we've scanned

with violin players and medical students,

that is, um, microscopic change that happens

in that we form, literally, new brain connections

between brain cells when we learn something new.

Particularly for powerful reward learning.

Something as powerful as pornography.

Here's a different analogy.

Imagine your brain is a dense forest.

As your brain continues to create new neurological pathways

through reward learning as Hilton states,

it's as if we're wearing a new pathway in the forest

by walking it again and again.

Over time, almost all thoughts can begin to take that same pathway.

The trail can be forged by a number of things,

including sex and pornography.

Obviously, you drink alcohol. You snort cocaine.

You inject heroin.

So these are physical agents that you take into your body.

What do they do to you? What is the common mechanism

that these agents that are coming into your body do?

Well, they turn on your reward system in your brain.

That's the common mechanism.

We see that not only with drugs,

but we see that with pornography and with sexual addictions.

We're not designed for alcohol,

for meth, for crystal, for all these other drugs.

Our bodies will respond to them pretty quickly,

but not as fast as we will to something that's arousing sexually.

That is the ultimate high, and it's innate and natural to us.

And so, we're gonna very commonly seek something of a sexual nature

to medicate feelings of shame, and pain, and guilt, and remorse,

and sorrow, and fear, and loneliness.

And pornography is the perfect solution for that,

if I'm looking for something sexual,

because it's something I can do it by myself,

it's pretty darn cheap or free,

and its relatively consequence-free, at least in my mind,

because I don't perceive in the moment

an immediate consequence to it.

Perhaps the trickiest part

of taking on a subject like pornography

is the most simple part, defining it.

Entrapping the true meaning of "porn"

into a simplified group of words is nearly impossible,

which is one of the reasons it's remained such an elusive social issue for so long.

How does one define it?

Trying to define pornography is like trying to describe air, sometimes.

I mean, the reality is it's gonna be a different sensation for different people,

but at the end of the day, from a clinical perspective, when I'm working with clients,

they're the ones that can articulate pretty well to me what pornography is.

I'm simply just asking them what they're looking at,

what they're exposing themselves to.

"What makes something pornographic

versus just sexually explicit

or sexually provocative"?

I think is also a debate that needs to be had.

We are learning so much about sexuality that we never knew before.

And we're having our ideas challenged of what we think is normal

and what we think is healthy

by finding out that there are a lot of people out there

who are interested in all kinds of kinky sorts of things.

So how do you define something so broad and so subjective?

In this case, you look for a common denominator.

For the purpose of this documentary,

that common denominator is right here, the brain.

The spectrum of pornographic material is infinitely wide at this point,

but the physiological and neurological responses by individuals

seems to be the same, regardless of the content.

In short, no matter what a person looks at,

the mind and body seem to have a similar reaction across the board.

To use a more simple analogy,

Bob likes football, Jim like baseball, and Suzanne likes golf,

but they all like sports.

Just like everyone's brain releases messages of pain when a person gets hurt,

experts agree that it releases chemicals of pleasure when it is aroused,

chemicals like DeltaFosB.

There are engines of desire, molecular engines of desire,

chemical engines that cause us to want.

And when we see something that we've trained our brain to want,

we turn those engines on.

DeltaFosB is a switch that turns on these engines of desire.

And we know that DeltaFosB and other signaling, cascade chemicals

are very important in building these wires, these brain wires of wanting.

So sex looks just like those drugs.

Pornography, in and of itself,

is designed to just expedite a sexual experience.

It's meant for an instantaneous hit, just like a drug,

um, and it gets us there faster than we're typically designed to go.

So, at the end of the day, pornography, in my opinion,

is simply those things that are designed to quickly

get us to a sexualized state, an erotic moment.

And it could be, as I said, from a visual, a verbal,

it could be something written it could be something...

Anything that's designed to activate those senses,

separate from an interaction with somebody you're actually with.

Since we've already highlighted that sexuality

has been a major component of human nature since the beginning of time,

and considering that the US is relatively young compared to the rest of the world,

here's how other cultures view pornography and its place in their respective societies.

Personally, I think we're moving towards

a very sexualized culture at the moment.

We're becoming more liberal.

They had a very liberal movement in the 70s,

and I believe we're repeating that again now.

And as sexualism becomes more accepted,

I think porn's a very normal part of the Australian culture.

I think as a society we're probably becoming a little bit more,

uh, relaxed and able to talk about sexuality.

It's definitely something that males engage in more,

and I think women watch reluctantly.

Or if they have watched it,

it's not something they necessarily own to,

or they watch it as a bit of a joke.

Certainly does fit into the Australian culture. I think, um...

Is it a normal thing? And I don't think that

pornography is normal, in my opinion.

Because it's not real.

Especially when it comes to marketing any kind of product in Australia,

then certainly, sex is used to sort of, you know, represent

or turn people on to buy a certain product.

Is it a problem? Yeah, I think it's a big problem.

It obviously works. People respond to sexualism.

If people didn't respond, it wouldn't be so rampant.

So I think from a marketing perspective, as long as it's working,

we're going to continue to use it.

And with that in mind, I think we're probably only at the tip of the iceberg.

I think we're seeing a phase

where sexuality and over-sexualization of kids

is generally pushing media to explore different ways to make money.

For example, every time you pick up a magazine with a picture of Kylie Minogue,

she looks like she's having an orgasm.