Why People Feel A Compulsive Need To Watch Porn - Dr K Healthy Gamer

one of the best predictors for pathological Pawn use is the age at which you first become exposed to it why how does porn use impact the developing brain what is it about this which direction is the arrow of causation going in yeah so so a couple of caveats about that so that's like a observation we've made of people in our community I don't know if there's actually research on that but I wouldn't be surprised if there was yeah that's true of all the other addictions okay so we sort of know why and so we know that when you have a developing brain adding a substance to it makes us more vulnerable to it long term so there's even studies that show that early marijuana usage leads is more likely to lead to addictions of other kinds and it's because when you use marijuana at a young age it actually Alters how your dopamine circuitry is formed and leaves you vulnerable to other addictions so my guess is that pornography has some similar neuroscientific mechanism where something is going on where even if you're because these people are prepubescent usually when they're exposed which means that they don't get aroused like usually right so so and they don't even understand what they're seeing which is the most common thing when I talk to people who are addicted to pornography most common thing is I was like seven and my 15 year old brother like showed me this thing and him and his friends were watching it and it was super cool I didn't understand what was going on but we do know that adding stuff to the developing brain whether it's a particular kind of stimulus let's say like abuse appearance right so that's not a substance or a substance Alters its formation and that those effects are let's say not quite permanent but sticky and then require some time to be rewired and so probably it has something to do with the way that our dopamine circuitry our emotional circuitry those things kind of get laid down with that perfectly shows why porn use is at least in part not sexual because you have you have this coping mechanism for an individual who is as yet not sexual and and that I think is the the weirdest thing for pornography addiction is that like a lot of it honestly in my clinical experience is like not very sexual in nature it's really about some weird emotional suppression you know mentally checking out getting that Spurt of relief um and and that's also why you'll you'll see so much usage it's not like people are they feel compulsions as opposed to feeling horny yeah then we're just not aroused for eight hours straight right it's not like you know we're gonna jerk off all day and it's gonna be great it's like I feel terrible about myself I don't know what to do I feel a compulsion to watch the stuff do this thing for a while if I get into a fight I need to do it again I'm procrastinating I've wasted the whole day I feel ashamed of myself because I've done this for the last four hours I need to do it again that's honestly more of what it is I think that taking it out of the realm of sex which you know the world still has massive problems talking about openly it's something that's kind of very shameful and guilt-ridden and private and all the rest of it taking it out of that and just saying luck man for you it's fapping for the girl that lives next door it's binge eating the guy that lives down the street it's video games for the dude that lives next door to you it's marijuana coping mechanisms all the way down yeah I think that takes away a lot of the shame which is pretty cool one of the other um considerations that I imagine must happen an awful lot is around bedtime routines sleep sleep hygiene generally from your community if you're talking about people that use screams an awful lot people that use social media porn Video Games Etc why is it that we get so motivated in the middle of the night instead of first thing in the morning why did nature decide that it was going to curse us so that our brains can't shut off when we're about to go to sleep and yet when we want to wake up first thing in the morning our brains don't want to start so I think there are a lot of different answers to this um I think a big part of it is that so a big part of what we do if we look at the staring at a wall exercise for example so a lot of that real solid positive motivation comes from within and if we really look at our society what's going on right now is we are being told what we want all the time so we've lost touch with ourselves right so like there's a notification oh this game is coming out there's this new movie coming out there's a Super Mario movie there's this movie there's that movie there's this kind of thing and by the way there's this kind of thing that you can do to be healthy you should be healthy you need to be healthy you need to be more motivated this is how you grind this is how you be productive be all of these things and so what's happening in our society is we are gravitating towards stuff outside of us all the time and the people are getting better and better at getting us get getting us gravitated towards them right so Oreo is figuring out okay what color can we put the package you know how can we make it crinkly like so that you know there's some kind of pavlovian condition like everyone's getting better at this and so oftentimes if you kind of think about it at night a couple of things happen the night is the only time you're with yourself right and maybe you're and and I guarantee you the people who are getting motivated are not sitting there Doom scrolling on their phone until they pass out they're usually like sitting down quietly or something like that like what happens is you doom scroll you doom scroll you do scroll you get tired you put the phone away you put your head on the pillow you don't fall asleep and then you start having all these ideas so it's really the only time that in the shower right because we haven't we don't have we don't have waterproof phones perfectly yet so that's why like all these profound thoughts happen in the shower it's not like the shower is magical and has some neurochemical that you're inhaling that makes you more creative it's the only time that you have with yourself and there are studies that show that meditation improves creativity and things like that why is that it's because you're with yourself so that's one reason there are a couple of other reasons though I think that some people have a different circadian rhythm and their creative time is really late at night if you look at basically religions across the world they sort of have this convergent evolution of mental work at like three to six in the morning so depending on how late you stay up you may actually be tapping into that what's in Sanskrit called Brahma murta is also the time of like matins so there's like this window of time that based on circadian rhythm where your mind is actually very very active and that's how I ended up studying two hours in med school I just studied during brummel work I was like Hey and everything just sinks in it's like getting up we're getting up early or staying at play so we're getting up early so I'd wake up at like 4am I'd do like yoga and meditation I'd study for two hours and I'd go to class and then I'd Finish class and I'm done for the day which is great um so so I I think that you know you have to be a little bit careful about your circadian rhythm that just could be your time but a lot of it is just that's the time that you're with yourself and so gotta just spend more time with yourself like you're a cool person you don't need something else to entertain you we'll get back to talking to Dr Kane one minute but first I need to tell you about element I've taken element every single morning for probably three years now it is my favorite way to start the day it tastes fantastic it optimizes my hydration it makes my brain work more effectively and it really wakes me up element contains a 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