How Porn Addiction Harms the Person – Mary Anne Layden at PornHarms.com Briefing on Capitol Hill

http://PornHarms.com briefing. Dr. Layden is a Psychotherapist & Director of the Sexual Trauma & Psychopathology Program at the Center for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in the treatment of victims & perpetrators of sexual violence, sexual addicts & sex industry members. She has testified before Congress on issues of sexual violence, the sexual exploitation industry & the media.\r\n \r\n”The American Psychiatric Association has added Hypersexual Disorder to the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual-5 which will include both sexual addiction & pornography addiction. The mental health field is coming to realize that the central issue of addiction is not that you ingest a substance through your mouth or veins but that however the substance is delivered, it has an effect on your brain that causes terrible negative consequences & yet you continue to ingest it anyway. Pornography may be ingested through your eyes but its impact is not just on your genitals but also on your brain, so it fits the addiction definition perfectly. Don’t be fooled by those who are motivated by greed or lust or fear or ignorance that tell you otherwise.”\r\n \r\nEXCERPT FROM TALK:\r\nLike brain-stimulated rats, men have pleasured themselves to psychological death, relationship death, career death, and self-respect death. They went from curiosity about sex on the Internet, to compulsive behavior, to illegal behavior. They started with milder forms of pornography but then developed tolerance to it so that it no longer aroused them. They would then begin to escalate using pornography for longer periods of time, in riskier places & using harder & harder forms. In the beginning of this in one progression, they would say, as do other men, that there were certain kinds of pornography that they found disgusting & they would never use them. Invariably, they would end up using those kinds. They would watch things being done to women that they would not want done to the women they love. It psychologically destabilizes them to violate their own innate sense of justice, fairness & the golden rule & reduces their own self-respect. They would lie to others about their use or swear that they would stop but they never did. They would lie to themselves about the possible negative consequences & then they would ignore the actual negative consequences that had already occurred. They, like many other men, were highly motivated to think that pornography was ok to use, that it was a harmless pleasure & that didn’t hurt anyone. Any challenge to that belief was met with a blast of blowback. If anything interfered with their access to pornography, they would get irritable or enraged or depressed or anxious. They avoided anything that would interfere with their use including family picnics, time with their wife or friends, church services, jobs & ironically actual sexual intercourse with a real woman. They did not connect their increasing problems of erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, and retarded ejaculation with their pornography use. They were only dimly aware of the many ways they used pornography.\r\n\r\nUnlike other drugs, pornography can get you up if you are depressed or bored or can get you down if you are anxious, or stressed. Pornography is such a versatile drug that the impact on your brain chemistry makes it be both an upper & a downer. Also, unlike other drugs, we can never completely remove it from the system. It is permanently implanted in the brain. No detox is possible. This is the first time that the mental health field has been asked to deal with an addictive substance that is irremovable.\r\n\r\nAnd even men who do not become addicted suffer damages & inflict damage on others including their partners or on females in general. The research indicates that it is not just the sex addict but also non-addicted men who use pornography who start to think & act in sexually callous ways, thinking & treating women as sex objects, reducing their support for the women’s liberation movement, with increased likelihood of sexual harassment & sexual violence including rape. In relationships, they become dissatisfied with their partner’s looks & sexual performance, demanding that their partner act out degrading and physically damaging sex acts, having affairs & thinking that it’s acceptable, wanting sex that has no emotional involvement & becoming less child centered in their marriages especially toward female children. Frighteningly, men who are exposed to pornography increase their belief that pornography does not have to be kept away from children.\r\n\r\nPornography robs men of their masculinity, of their psychological health, of their self respect, of their greatness. Pornography robs men of themselves. It robs them of the chance to be the kind of men they know they can be. It then robs their family, their community & their country of all that they could have offered. \r\n\r\nFull text at: http://pornharms.com/Congressional_Briefing.pdf