Will I ever feel the "high" I get from porn orgasm during real sex?

"I think that's the root of my addiction and the only reason why I watch porn."

You are absolutely correct. The high is a dopamine rush. It is an evolved response to sexual thoughts, the function of which is to, ultimately, encourage reproduction in the species. All mammals experience it. Dopamine can be thought of as a motivational neurotransmitter. That system works, but, in the late 90's we, we being the species, invented High Speed Internet Porn. It is different than the porn that came before it, because it offers endless novelty, and the ability to search for and experience never before seen images, forever. We get that high from thinking about sex, but we also get a high from thinking about never before experienced sex. (Footnote: this leads some to watch genres way outside their orientation, and results, in some, in HODC). This has to do with the Coolidge Effect, and the fact that our primitive sexual reward center, of the brain, retains the evolved desire to spread our genes around, in the gene pool. We talk of the brain as if it is one organ, but, in fact, it is multiple organs, each performing a different function. The part of your brain that understands you have a problem, and wants to fix it, is the cerebrum. The part of the brain that gives you that dopamine high when you watch porn, is the sexual reward center. Some call it the "primitive" sexual reward center, but it is only primitive in the sense that it evolved to, essentially, its current state over 100 million years ago, and then it stopped evolving because...wait for it...it works. The function of that portion of the brain is to promote sexual activity, for the purpose of reproduction, and it has worked just fine since it reached its current state.

But, in the late 90's we invented High Speed Internet Porn. We did not know it at the time, but, in inventing it, we invented a new addiction. Rather than reality, we can now use HSIP to obtain that dopamine high we used to get, only, via natural interaction with other humans. Back when that part of our primitive sexual reward system, in the brain, first evolved, it worked much the way it does now, but, back then, we could not afford to ride that high like we can now. Not only did we not have that much spare time on our hands, but being that distracted would have made us easier prey. Jump forward, 100 million years, and, wallah, HSIP, and a species no longer afraid of being preyed upon, with a lot of time on their hands, and laptops and mobile devices.

The answer to your question, which many do not like is: HSIP is the most efficient means we have to get a prolonged, powerful, dopamine high, even more so than sex. Sex will always be great, in many ways, but sex will never allow for the prolonged, powerful, dopamine high that HSIP can produce. One of the hard truths, when quitting the addiction, is that you are giving up that high, at least the high that is so profound and prolonged. You are not going to replace it with sex. Sex can still be great and satisfying, but, in reality, in the real world, you are not going to be walking through multiple, willing, sexual partners, every day, until you find the one you want to consummate the deal with, with her saying yes every single time. In the real world, it just does not work that way. In reality, most of us, have one partner, every day, and we don't, necessarily, have sex every day, and sex with that one partner becomes less a means of a dopamine high, over time. It is still good, but it not as efficient a means of obtaining a dopamine high as HSIP is.

So, understand the brain mechanics, and ask yourself: Do you want to keep the high that HSIP gives you, which is using artificial sexual stimulation to get a dopamine high, or, do you want to get high with reality, even though that high is less, but is infinitely more real.

I urge you to choose reality, and end your slavery to the addiction. Time to wake up and smell the coffee.

It's hard to be cynical about coffee.

Hope this helps.

Will I AM.

Much love.

 

To add to this really well written and informative comment, this is also why porn addiction is so very dangerous. It can be a gateway to some extremely destructive behavior. For many that feel as you do, who crave the same dopamine rush from real sex and find that one partner isn't doing it, they may find other ways to feed their addiction. Many sex addicts begin with porn. Believe me, the high that you're chasing isn't worth the inevitable heartbreak and destruction the end result will cause.

 

Williamoneanddone is correct, to the brain real sex will never be as good. I think it is also important to add that your brain does not have an unlimited supply of dopamine and dopamine has a lot of different uses in the brain. Dopamine also has to with memory short and long, memory recall, motivation for anything, social interactions, and much more. When you use it all on a porn high it produces things like, brain fog, social anxiety, memory problems and more. So if you are trying to decide between a porn high and real sex think about what else you are giving up.

Real sex does get better over time as long as you abstain from porn. To the point where you will enjoy it over porn. But you also need to understand that just knowing that won't make the urges just go way. It will still be a fight to recover. Good luck on your journey if you decide to take it up.

 

Everyone kept saying how much better sex was than porn. And when I finally had sex it was the worst disappointment... Didn't feel a thing.
I seriously hope it is possible to get back even after 10 years of porn, because the thought of me being permanently damaged is terrifying and killing me emotionally right now.

 

You are mixing two different things. Dopamine is not pleasure it is anticipation. That is the high that it is actually giving you. I didn't mean to make you believe the pleasure in sex won't be as great because it very much is, even greater than porn. But that is pleasure not the high of anticipation, which sounds weird but that is what it actually is. Can keep you searching or going back to the same video. And no sex cannot give you the same high as porn because porn is a supernatural stimulus. You haven't learned a lot about this addiction yet and what it does to the brain. It is literally impossible for sex to give you as much dopamine as porn can give you, it is biology. Your brain was not made to handle constant supernatural stimulus for long periods of time. It is what creates an addiction. Have you seen the great porn experiment on youtube? One thing i almost forgot. The people who get a better rush from sex than porn probably are not porn addicts and don't watch porn a lot. They have never gotten the high that we have. The high becomes the problem though.

 

Well, biologically we are just a network of synapses responding to different stimuli in the environment.
So if you break it down, happiness, fear, thrill or any feeling is just a set of molecules that stimulates your brain to feel that way. Drugs utilizes this. Drugs are molecules designed to bind into certain receptors in your body to give you fake sensations. Why wait for you body to produce 10% molecules for happiness, when you can synthetically get 1000%? It is the same molecules, there is no moral or "better" molecules in the chemical world.

So porn is like a drug that is 1000% effective compared to real sex, because your body doesn't know the difference. There is no moral in your body, it will chose 1000% over 10%.

 

That is after you have rewired your brain. It's not so by default.

Do you like bacon? The more you eat bacon the more you love it. An anti-vegetarian argument is usually "bacon is too damn good to become a vegetarian".
But once you stopped eating bacon for a year, a good guacamole will be much more tasty. Bacon isn't the best food ever by default, it's just that your brain gets used to it.

 

You will be amazed at what your mind and body can do, once you fill them with light instead of darkness.
You are on a journey. You have valid questions. Answers are coming to you.

 

gen, thank you for this tread. This thread touches upon some of the key, root, concepts that must be considered in order to understand the "why" of the addiction. This thread is important.

You ask:

"Yes but why should a 2 min video clip be 1000% and real sex 10%, it's illogical."

Hi gen. Actually, once we understand how porn addiction works, it is very logical. To preface the explanation, I will paraphrase Gabe Deem: Porn is not sex, sex is not porn, porn is porn, sex is sex, and the two really have very little to do with each other.

Let's start with basics. There has never been a porn addict in the history of the world. We use the phrase "porn addict", but porn is just the means we use to generate sexual thoughts. Sexual thoughts give us a dopamine rush, and that rush is what we become addicted to, or, I should say we become addicted to the hypersexual thoughts that porn, and porn alone, generate.

You ask why a 2 minute porn video would produce a greater dopamine rush than sex, or just thinking about sex, without porn. I don't think it is 100 times greater, but it is more.

That, sort of, in my opinion, skewers the reality for most porn addicts. Most porn addicts are not addicted to a 2 minute clip. They are addicted to searching for porn for, sometimes hours, mostly every day, but only finishing up on that one 2 minute video they have found that seems to peek their dopamine rush. BUT, they were feeding a dopamine rush in the hour spent previously while they searched for that one clip. Remember, the thought of sex produces a dopamine high, and the addict is not doing algebra in their head during that hour search; during the search, they are thinking about sex, and are giving themselves a dopamine high.

In addition to creating hypersexual thoughts (and thus a profound, prolonged dopamine high), the search is rewarded, in and of itself, via the Coolidge Effect. That is a holdover instinct from way back in evolution, when it was beneficial for the species to spread DNA around by having babies with multiple partners. In reality, it encourages mammals to breed with multiple partners. In the artificial sexual stimulation world of porn, it encourages the addicted to search for never before seen sexual images and portrayals.

Now we come to availability. While it is possible to think of sex without porn, porn makes thinking of sex, for hours, easy. Much, much easier. Translation, porn makes getting a dopamine high, for hours, every day, for years, easy. I think this is where your issue with the logic of it comes in. Once you accept that porn makes it much, much easier to get a prolonged and powerful dopamine high than sexual thoughts without porn, it becomes logical that porn generated sexual thoughts would be much more likely to be the basis of sexual thoughts without porn, which, to the best of my knowledge, have never caused dopamine addiction. If you do not have porn, you can have the thoughts, but they are not as immediate, lurid, and as powerful producer of a dopamine high as porn is. I know it is odd to think of porn in terms of "efficient", or "more effective", but sexual thoughts generated by porn, at least for "porn addict," are a much more efficient, more effective way to obtain a dopamine high than high than sexual thoughts which are not generated by porn.

One of the more difficult things for a porn addict quitting porn to accept and embrace is: quitting is not about replacing porn with some other means of getting the "high", or about trying to have sex that will give one the same "high," (it will not), but is about learning to live without the high. For a porn addict, there are tons of great things in reality that feel great, and are interesting, but for a porn addict, noting in reality will give that "high" like porn, so part of the process is giving up the high. For life.

Thanks for the opportunity to think about it.

Hope it helps.

Much love.

WilliamOneAndDone