Quotes from Gary Wilson

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self. Aristotle

We are what we repeatedly do. Aristotle

A young psychiatrist, himself newly recovered from porn-induced sexual dysfunction,[182] pointed out that the internet porn phenomenon is only 10 or 15 years old, and way ahead of the research. He notes: Medical research works at a snail's pace. With luck we'll be addressing this in 20 or 30 years ... when half the male population is incapacitated. Drug companies can't sell any medications by someone quitting porn. We

As psychologist Susan Weinschenk explained,[52] 'dopamine causes us to want, desire, seek out, and search'. Yet 'the dopamine system is stronger than the opioid system. We seek more than we are satisfied. ... Seeking is more likely to keep us alive than sitting around in a satisfied stupor.

Viewers routinely spend hours surfing galleries of porn videos searching for the right video to finish, keeping dopamine elevated for abnormally long periods. But try to envision a hunter-gatherer routinely spending the same number of hours masturbating to the same stick-figure on a cave wall. Didn't happen.

Yet pornography transforms that drive into a force that primarily motivates the completely solitary and unproductive activity of masturbation.

No matter how miserable they are, porn seems like a way to feel good a solution rather than a source of problems.

With multiple tabs open and clicking for hours, you can 'experience' more novel sex partners every ten minutes than your hunter-gatherer ancestors experienced in a lifetime.

Brains are plastic. The truth is we are always training our brains – with or without our conscious participation. It's clear from countless reports that it's not uncommon for porn users to move from genre to genre, often arriving at places they find personally disturbing and confusing.

Once we begin to think clearly about neuroplasticity we are inevitably drawn to the question of what we want from life – what we consider to be a good life. Each of us must answer that for ourselves. But we are best able to do so when we understand the threats that some substances and behaviours pose to our capacity to choose the lives we want.

Choice is a subtle form of disease. Don DeLillo, Running Dog

The earliest people to report porn-related problems in online forums were typically computer programmers and information-technology specialists. They had acquired high-speed internet porn ahead of the pack

Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced. John Keats

But CREB's effects don't limit themselves to a user's 'drug' of choice. Other things that used to make a porn viewer feel good, such as socializing, watching a movie or playing a favourite game, pale because of the dulling effects of CREB. Desensitisation leaves us bored, less satisfied, and often searching for anything to increase dopamine. It can lead a porn fan straight back to porn.

Sensitisation leads to high spikes of dopamine in response to cues and triggers associated with use. The dopamine spikes occur before ingesting the drug or masturbating to porn, and are experienced as cravings to use. However, on exposure to the same old stimuli less dopamine (and less opioids) are released (desensitisation). This dampening of pleasure occurs during drug use or while masturbating to porn. The activity is experienced as less pleasurable, increasing cravings for more.