Fight the New Drug

Hey, guys. I want to talk to you about a force that’s messing up individuals, relationships, and the society we live in. It lowers self-esteem. It controls people and makes other people feel unloved. It is even intertwined with terrible stuff like sex trafficking, illegal drug use, rape, and abuse.

I’m talking about pornography. Are you surprised? So was I. To some people, pornography use seems harmless enough. But studies have shown that porn has all sorts of negative effects on individuals. For one, it can be a source of addiction. Porn use has effects on the brain that are similar to drug use, lighting up the brain’s reward pathways with high amounts of dopamine, rewiring the brain to favor pornography over many other activities, including real sex with real people.

Pornography can also change perceptions of women and make users see women more as objects to be used for sexual pleasure than as people with feelings, wants and needs. It provides a false image of men and women, and its use makes you think that you can have sexually intimate experiences without regarding the needs of the person you are with. In this way, and others, it can have negative effects on relationships. Women are often portrayed as enjoying any and all sexual experiences in pornography, regardless of whether they are being abused or mistreated. As a result, real sexual experiences with real people (who have feelings and preferences) can become less satisfying to porn users, and they can return to porn to get a better high—a person can come to prefer being with a computer screen to being with a real person. And this can cause their relationship partners a lot of pain. People have reported feeling less valued, depressed, anxious, and inadequate because of their partners’ porn use.

Porn also harms society. According to fightthenewdrug.org, “ ‘Pimps and traffickers use pornography to initiate their … victims into their new life of sexual slavery,’ says Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse, a former UN representative and a senior fellow at the Beverley LaHaye Institute. Through exposure to porn, these victims ‘get hardened to accept the inevitable and learn what is expected of them.’ ” At least three studies have connected watching even non-violent porn with using drugs and alcohol to coerce women into having sex. Other studies have shown a correlation between consumption of non-violent porn and attitudes that support abuse and sexual aggression of women and girls. That’s not okay.

And the worst part is that there are people out there who are promoting pornography use, saying that it’s good for you. BuzzFeed recently posted a video entitled “Four Good Reasons Everyone Should Watch Porn,” which claims that studies have shown that porn use improves things like quality of life and sex in long-term relationships. We know that that’s not true, and yet the video has been viewed 599,481 times and received 4,987 up-votes, and only 2,114 down-votes. In other words, there are nearly 5,000 people that think not only that pornography use is not harmful, but that it is good for them. And that’s only the people who are willing to cast a vote for the video on YouTube.

But here’s the good news: there are people that are fighting pornography, spreading the truth about what it does to people. My favorite organization with this goal at its heart is Fight the New Drug. They approach pornography from the perspective of scientific fact, citing legitimate studies and testimonials to show pornography’s negative effect on individuals, relationships, and society as a whole.

My first close-up-and-personal experience with Fight the New Drug was a few months ago. I had been following them on social media sites and re-posting some of the messages they published, but hadn’t become any more involved than that. My friend Kyson Dana, who works for the organization, was coming to a high school near me to give the students a presentation about pornography, and he shouted out to his friends on Facebook to see if anyone wanted to come help him set it up. I said I was willing to come and help, and when I got there, I decided to stay while he gave his presentation. What I found out about pornography from that one presentation was eye-opening. Kyson showed testimonials of men and women who had been addicted to pornography. One of them said pornography addiction was similar to drug addiction. One of them said that her and her husband’s use of pornography ended up being, as she put it, “a poisonous ingredient in our marriage.” He also said that there are some actors in the porn industry who are forced to carry out sexual acts on screen against their will, sometimes being threatened with death if they don't do what they’re told. He said pornography is like a drug—that it causes a high, and that that high diminishes with each use of pornography, so that in order to be satisfied, porn users have to use pornography that is more and more hardcore, similar to how drug users have to use purer forms and greater amounts of a drug to get a high that will satisfy them. The overall message I took away from that presentation is what I emphasized at the beginning of this blog post: pornography hurts individuals, it hurts relationships, and it hurts society. It can hurt you, and it can hurt the people you love. Nobody wants that. After that day, I decided that I would take a more committed and serious stance against pornography. And I’d like you to join me.

There are several ways you can do this at no cost to you. You can sign the Fighter Pledge at fightthenewdrug.org, committing not to use pornography, to help others overcome their attachment to it, and to teach people the truth about it. You can follow Fight the New Drug on Facebook and Twitter, and re-post and retweet the messages they put out. You can educate yourself about pornography on fightthenewdrug.org and teach your friends about its negative effects. There are also other ways you can help. One of the coolest ways, in my opinion, is by advertising the truth wherever you go.

Fight the New Drug sells T-shirts and bracelets that you can use to rep the movement. You can also join Fight the New Drug’s street team and spread the word around your community with posters and stickers, showing people the truth about porn.

I hope you will join me. Pornography is hurting people, and it’s time we put an end to it.

All of the information mentioned above relating to scientific studies about pornography and testimonials about its effects can be found at www.fightthenewdrug.org.