What is porn addiction withdrawal?

Before you can have porn withdrawal, you need to have a pornography addiction. Pornography addiction is not an officially recognized condition by the American Psychiatric Association. However, many experts believe that repetitively looking at and being exposed to different kinds of porn can lead to an addiction.

Addictions are complex conditions. This is because pornography and related sexual acts trigger changes in brain chemicals, like dopamine. Dopamine feels good in the brain, which can cause you to repeat the addictive behavior.

While you’re doing this, your brain will attempt to maintain balance. To do this, the brain lowers the response of dopamine it normally releases. This creates a type of tolerance to the porn. At the same time, the brain releases more of another chemical — called dynorphin — that counteracts the pleasant effects of dopamine.

When you stop or reduce the behavior, your brain will be out of balance due to having too little dopamine and too much dynorphin. This can lead to porn addiction withdrawal.

Porn addiction withdrawal symptoms

Withdrawal symptoms are usually the opposite of how you feel when you’re doing the addictive behavior. If you feel calm, content, and sleepy during or after porn viewing, porn withdrawal will make you feel restless and anxious.

Porn addiction withdrawal will create uncomfortable and upsetting mental and physical health symptoms. Some of the most common porn addiction withdrawal symptoms include:

• Anxiety

• Depressed mood

• Irritability

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• Insomnia

• Aches and pains

• Cravings for more porn

You may feel unwell, feel more tired than usual, and have high stress levels. These unwanted feelings may tempt you to start looking at porn again. This will only restart the cycle of addiction, though. If you want to live without porn addiction and its withdrawal symptoms, you must resist the urges to relapse.

How long does porn withdrawal last?

So far, there has not been enough research to know exactly how long porn withdrawal will last. How long withdrawal lasts and how intense the symptoms are depend on several factors like:

• How long you’ve been viewing porn

• How you consume it: phone, videos, computer, or magazines

• How frequently you consume it

• The types of sexual behaviors you perform while watching it

Not all porn is alike, so withdrawal timelines could vary. As a comparison, heroin and methadone are both opioids. But heroin is very different from methadone, with much different withdrawal timelines. Heroin withdrawal symptoms can start 8 hours after the last dose and continue for 4 days. On the other hand, methadone withdrawal may take 48 hours to start and could continue for 20 days.

One person could experience mild porn withdrawal for a few days. Meanwhile, another person could have intense symptoms that last for weeks. We don’t know enough at the moment to predict the outcomes.

Is porn withdrawal similar to withdrawal from drugs or alcohol?

Porn withdrawal is very similar to alcohol and other drug withdrawal. This is based on the symptoms and how the symptoms are created in the brain. Though the withdrawals come from different sources, the process in the brain is nearly identical.

Pornography, gambling, and alcohol, as well as other drugs, release large amounts of dopamine when they are used. The brain then adapts to the surges of the chemical to keep the balance. Here, you become physically dependent on the substance or behavior to feel well and function normally.

As the behavior or use ends, withdrawal symptoms appear as your brain struggles to find a new balance. The dopamine surge can be from a behavior like viewing pornography or a drug like heroin. With both, your brain responds in a similar way.

Coping with porn addiction withdrawal symptoms

Coping with porn addiction withdrawal symptoms is challenging. But you have the power to take simple steps. These efforts will ease the withdrawal effects and increase your chances of recovery. When withdrawal symptoms are high and you feel strong urges to look at porn again, you can consider:

• Changing your thoughts: Thinking about the harms of pornography and the problems it has caused in your life can help maintain your dedication.

• Looking for people who support you: Your friends, family members, and other loved ones can provide a needed distraction or kind word to help achieve your goals.

• Staying busy: Being idle and bored could be the worst thing for your withdrawal symptoms, so build a routine to keep yourself busy.

• Changing your environment: You may need to move your computer, replace your phone, and add porn blocking software to your devices. It’s important to create an environment that makes porn less accessible.

• Taking care of your mental health: Stress, anxiety, and depression can all worsen your experience, so seek professional care to help the cause.

• Taking care of your physical health: Eating well, setting aside enough time for restful sleep, and getting plenty of exercise can be the best way to cope.

Creating these new habits and maintaining them can provide a natural boost of dopamine in the brain. This can help ease the effects of porn withdrawal.

Treatment for porn addiction withdrawal

You may find that these at-home lifestyle changes are not enough to manage your porn withdrawal symptoms. Or you may want to take every precaution to maintain your recovery. In these cases, you should seek out professional treatment for porn addiction.

Treatments for porn addiction withdrawal include talking to a therapist or reaching out to your doctor. For more severe porn addiction, you may need a period of time away from your home in a safe environment like those in a hospital or inpatient rehab facility.

Many of the same therapy options that work for substance use disorders are effective in the treatment of sexual addictions. This means you could benefit from therapy approaches like:

• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): Here, CBT helps you understand how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are connected to your porn use.

• Family therapy: The family therapy approach to porn addiction includes family members in therapy so you can better understand how your relationships could be contributing to a porn addiction. You can also work on building healthier behaviors in these relationships, which could help you recover from your addiction.

• Psychodynamic therapy: This approach aims to understand the unconscious mind’s influence on sex, aggression, and relationships.

Adding support groups to the professional treatments could help. Some available support groups for porn addiction include:

• Pornography Addicts Anonymous

• Sex Addicts Anonymous

• Sexual Recovery Anonymous

Medications for porn addiction

Using medications to manage symptoms of porn addiction and porn addiction withdrawal is a new concept. But it could expand over time. Currently, some medications normally used in other substance use treatments are being studied with behavioral addictions.

The medication with the most interest is naltrexone. Naltrexone (Vivitrol) is an opioid blocker that blocks the effects of opioids or alcohol. For a porn addiction, naltrexone reduces feelings of pleasure when you look at porn. It seems that people who receive this medication are less interested in pornography, but more research is needed.