Masturbation/porn possibly linked to SAD and depression

PMO stands for porn, masturbation, orgasm.

Look I'm not suggesting that all social anxiety/depression is caused by watching porn. Brain studies suggest porn affects dopamine, similar to the way cocaine can.

A lot of men who quit porn say their social anxiety/depression went away. Not all, but there's something in it. Unless you're suggesting all these men are liars.

Porn can desensitize men to real sex that's why. When you become addicted real women can't compete, and that's to do with changes in the brain.

No. No no no. Porn is NOT like a drug. Porn is images/videos/text you read on the screen. It is NOT a highly dangerous physical substance you put in your body that could kill you every time you ingest it. It does NOT create withdrawal when you try to stop it.

Yes, porn/masturbation releases dopamine. Dopamine is not a bad thing. Exercise also releases dopamine. There are some people that take exercise too far, but those people are far and few between.

I have met a few people who find that porn makes them feel depressed and lonely. They find that watching two people doing sexual stuff on camera made them feel more alone because they don't have anyone to do that stuff with. They were depressed and lonely before porn and it ended up exasperating it for them. I have to admit that if I'm having a bad day, watching two people do stuff on camera can make me feel like I'm missing out on life. But that thought was a pre-existing thought that porn triggered.

You're also leaving out context. Perhaps someone enjoys porn and his wife found out and she got jealous. Or maybe someone feels like porn is something wrong/sinful so they feel an immense amount of shame from watching it. In those instances, porn can be a negative stressor on your life, however the porn by itself is not what is creating the problem.

If you are comparing porn to drugs, it is ridiculous to say that porn affects the male brain differently than the female brain. The reason you mostly hear about men having problems with porn is because most men have a higher sex drive than most women. Not all men and not all women, but generally speaking. A lot of women also often prefer to read their porn rather than watch it and there is for some reason MUCH less social stigma against reading porn rather than watching it (ex soccer moms ready Fifty Shades of Gray on public transport). But these men don't have a problem with porn, they have a problem with a monstrously high sex drive.

I'm sorry but there is no way that images and video can be harmful to your brain in anyway similar to cocaine.

Well people who study brains tend to disagree with you. So I'll let you take it up with them. Porn releases huge amounts dopamine. Far more then exercise or even sex.

I cannot believe that the dumb looking women with fake breasts whom I saw on a typical porn site and whose orgasm sounds are so obviously affected and not real that I wonder how the producers sign off on such a work product (I am taking about a professional porn site and not amateur porn, so there must be a producer there who takes responsibility for the final product)...

...are better than real women.

No man I personally know would find them better. A distraction, a different kind of reality - sure, but better, no.

So, I would continue to maintain that there was something wrong with the men who became addicted to porn in the first place. I am not saying that those men are liars. I am saying that there was something inherently wrong with them, and that something - I do not know what it was - made them fall for porn addiction.

that, probably, is the thing I was thinking about. A pre-existing condition.

When you say "studies", you should then follow up by linking to "studies". That means articles from PubMed. You were not linking to studies. You were linking to some kind of a site whose editors are, quite obviously, complete idiots, if they posted a testimonial - and the FIRST one out of a series - from a guy who quit therapy because he was able to skip masturbating for two weeks.

The thing is - you are talking about Dopamine.

Have you ever seen dopamine?

I personally have not.

Nor am I equipped to assess claims with respect to dopamine, because I lack training in biochemistry (but if you link to studies in PubMed, and the articles you quote are peer-reviewed, then I might believe them because I have some faith in the peer review process). If a friend of mine with a PhD in biochemistry explains to me what is happening with dopamine, then I will try to follow, but every random piece of junk on the web that talks about dopamine does not gain credibility with me just because they use a scientific term. Most of the "scientific" claims on the web are junk science - probably 80% are. You cannot trust "junk science".

Since I am not able to assess the claims with respect to dopamine on their scientific basis, given my lack of training, I simply resort to making the assessment of whether the site shows basic common sense (since I am well qualified to assess that). The site does not demonstrate basic common sense based on the testimonials they select. It is true that testimonials might not be actually written by the site editors, but they were selected. The judgment that went into selecting the testimonials shows the true nature of the site's administration.

That is all - very simple.

If you can to continue talking about it, please, use peer-reviewed studies to bolster your claims. Even peer reviewed studies have problems with them, though, due to methodological difficulties. growlithing alluded to a couple of issues that makes such studies dubious, from the methodology standpoint; I am sure there are dozens more issues that are challenging.

So, not so straightforward as "porn=cocaine".

the ordinary course of living affects dopamine as well

Look, I read this on Wikipedia:

The brain includes several distinct dopamine systems, one of which plays a major role in reward-motivated behavior. Every type of reward that has been studied increases the level of dopamine in the brain, and a variety of addictive drugs, including stimulants such as cocaine, amphetamine, and methamphetamine, act by amplifying the effects of dopamine. Other brain dopamine systems are involved in motor control and in controlling the release of several important hormones.
Several important diseases of the nervous system are associated with dysfunctions of the dopamine system. Parkinson's disease, a degenerative condition causing tremor and motor impairment, is caused by loss of dopamine-secreting neurons in the midbrain area called the substantia nigra. There is evidence that schizophrenia involves altered levels of dopamine activity, and the antipsychotic drugs that are frequently used to treat it have a primary effect of attenuating dopamine activity. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and restless legs syndrome (RLS) are also believed to be associated with decreased dopamine activity.

This is plentiful for me - I now realize that dopamine is a hugely complex thing and that I am out of my depth for sure (as I suspected anyway).

Ideally, the sources - articles from PubMed and not even articles on psychology today - are best to see how the studies were actually done. Every layer of distortion (a journalist reporting on a study may distort it by interpreting it incorrectly) makes it harder to see what the studies actually delivered. So, ideally, we should see PubMed links.

That's not true. The people that wrote the propaganda sites you read disagree with me. You have to remember that a mass majority of all men watch or have watched porn. We aren't talking about 60% or 70% of all men, we are talking upwards of 90%. In the US, about 7% of the population have depression and nearly 20% has some sort of anxiety. And that those numbers include women. If porn were to cause depression, that numbers would be much much higher to match that statistic because more people would be experiencing the depressive effects of porn.

Oh. That is interesting.

So they recommend to banish all of those - the whole trifecta?

So, masturbating to endogenous fantasies and orgasming is bad BY ITSELF? Without porn? that is interesting... if so, what is the culprit implicated in depression&anxiety - if not graphic materials, then what? endogenous fantasies are bad? how sad... and bizarre.

Like I said above, the mass majority of all men look at porn. The mass majority of men are not desensitized to real sex because of porn. If a man were desensitized to sex, that would probably be because he's jerking it too hard, too fast, and too frequently. He got used to the feel of his and and can only get off to that. Same thing for a woman using a vibrator. That's not porn's fault, that's his fault for the way he used it. And it's not permanent.

Also, saying that too much dopamine causes depression is just not biologically accurate. Too much dopamine causes schizophrenia and psychosis. So if you're jerking it until you start hearing voices, then yeah you probably have a problem.

Do you actually have any evidence other then your opinion? No you don't. I'll take the guys who study brain activity over you. The interesting things is, just less then a few months ago I'd have agreed with you.

Too low dopamine is also linked to social anxiety and depression.

No you don't know what you're on about. Some men have become addicted after they were 40-50 years old. The assumption that all porn is fake breasted women is short sighted. The sexual kinks you can find with pornography, can often be things many women wouldn't do.

No. but for a few months banish masturbation to gain erections without porn for porn ED.

If porn doesn't have any bad side affects for some people, then can go ahead and continue watching it. Some people have no problem with food, but some do have addiction problems. Can a person be addicted to porn - yes they can. Are some fine - yes some are. I tried to post a news link on the affects of porn on kids - I was met with constant praises for porn and eventually had the thread closed.

It may have advantages and I don't get why most people can't understand it might be bad for some who use it long term. What about the men who suffer with not being able to find a partner - do they feel fulfilled after no skin to skin contact. Skin to skin contact increases Oxytocin - the feel good hormone. What about the wife who's lost intimacy because her husband finds porn more enticing. Desensitization is a real possibility for some.

Lycanthrope is simply providing some info that could happen to some. Just because I don't have a addiction to food, doesn't discount those who do.

As I said, I was basing my opinion on the garden variety mainstream porn, which accounts for a big chunk of usage. You are talking about things that are long tail. I was talking about the thick of the bell curve.

To the extent that there are things that many women would not do - sure, but so what? So what?

Back a few years ago I saw that little porn preview blurb. A woman who was very skinny, with very very small breasts, very narrow hips, a waxed pubic area, and an energetic, uplifting voice of a corporate organizer announced that at a certain time she would be demonstrating taking in two penises. And invited everybody to stay tuned. I did not stay tuned because I was not interested in seeing that and also was very busy (I was seeing that stuff incidentally while involved in doing filtering software work, so there was a lot of stuff coming through me that I did not pay attention to, but the high energy of this woman's call for attention was something I did pay attention to). Of course, to the extent that she was unusually narrow in the hip area (basically, of prepubescent dimensions), the idea that she would take in two penises indeed demonstrated that she had special abilities. OK, so as a curiosity, it might warrant attention. Maybe for some men it is arousing, sure, why not. Can I do that? God forbid I would never even consider doing something like this for fear of being torn, bleeding, being exposed to infections, and general disinclination towards using my body for something so weird and extreme. God forbid. But if somebody wants to watch it - here, there is professional porn videos that show it, so they can watch it. But - I am not competing with this. The idea that porn threatens real women presupposes that real women are somehow called upon to enter into competition with porn actresses. But why would they? I acknowledge that the skinny blonde lady with an energizing, uplifting tone of voice has special abilities I do not have - neither would I risk the integrity of my vagina to take in two penises, nor do I have this kind of an energizing tone of voice (or else I would have been a CEO of some company by now... not a Fortune 500, no, but some medium range company...100-500 employees, I would say...). So I am not entering into any competitions - my hat's off to her for her unusual abilities and that is it.

so the guys you are talking about cannot become erect without porn?

how pathetic... omg...

Not true - the comment is:

The guy who wrote this gem of a testimonial was not dumb - he was just being sloppy. He rushed and did not think of how to phrase his thought correctly. But he was not being dumb. Being sloppy is not a crime. It is simply human.

But the editors who posted it...

...right.

So if they cannot catch a flagrant issue such as this, how would I trust them in interpreting research findings, especially in a field that suffers from a can of worms in terms of methodological challenges? How would I trust them?

Lycanthrope - you keep talking about the guys who study our brains. So - medical researchers, right? Well, then let us read their peer reviewed publications. You keep referring to them, but we still have not read their work. Not somebody's interpretation of their work, but the work itself. PubMed provides abstracts for most articles, and, free pdf's for many though by far not all articles.