There is no easy way out with porn, it bites harder than drugs.
An online guide for addiction and recovery, The addiction center defines pornography addiction as “a compulsion to watch porn and not being able to stop” and identifies one of its chief symptoms as having “cravings if you have gone without porn for any amount of time.”
Also, a research work presented on July 16, 2020, at the European Association of Urology Virtual Congress, found that excessive pornography consumption was associated with a higher incidence of erectile dysfunction, a condition where males struggle to achieve and maintain an erection.
Some experts opined that while quitting pornography was not the easiest approach to take, they described it as a fast way for addicts to retake control of their lives and start feeling better.
Investigations have also shown that both the nature of pornography and its public accessibility in Nigeria have evolved significantly over the past two decades.
The Nigerian Experience
Recall that in the 90s, visual pornography entered the mainstream with soft-sell local and international magazines. Still, their circulation was often confined to certain social strata, and users had to contend with static erotica (sexually explicit content in a non-moving, still image format, such as photographs, drawings, illustrations etc).
While some of these materials were pictorial, others came in the form of lewd stories, which aided the user’s repertoire of fantasies about specific individuals, whom they considered objects of erotic desire.
At the time, X-rated movies were available to Nigerians only in the form of foreign home video cassettes and late-night cable channels, which were readily subscribed to by upper and middle-class citizens.
For the majority of other citizens, however, porn was inaccessible due to strict home video censorship.
But x-rated video cassettes were often rented at affordable prices from video clubs, which adorned virtually every street corner at the time.
In the early 2000s, the era of video cassettes rapidly gave way to the use of VCDs and DVDs, which provided porn users with upgraded and arguably more deviant forms of explicit content.
Unlike static porn, explicit media were more stimulating, and users quickly got bored viewing the same clip repeatedly.
To attract more customers, DVD marketers began selling dozens of explicit content packed in a single disc to cater to a growing demand for variety.
While their Western counterparts dug greedily for sexually explicit clips in adult bookstores, many Nigerian fans of hardcore porn would often patronise those VCD/DVDs hawkers in stalls and carts in public venues across cities.
The President, Association of Resident Doctors at the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Calabar, Cross River State, Dr Victor Essien, in a phone interview highlighted the importance of recognising the complex interplay between watching pornography and its impact on the brain and behaviours of married men.
Recent studies suggest that excessive consumption of pornography can alter the brain’s reward circuitry, affecting emotional and relational well-being. One of the most significant effects of pornography on the brain is its ability to hijack the dopamine reward system.
Stopping this addiction is a matter of choice and sheer determination, otherwise, it can become a lifelong activity that may render your senses completely inutile.
