A new BBC documentary called “Brought up on porn” has been released, exploring the effects of porn and it’s looking pretty down, literally. “Nick,” who features in the documentary, says that his porn habit made it almost impossible for him to get it up. ‘I found that when I was lying next to a girl a lot that I just wouldn’t be horny at all, despite being really attracted to the girl and wanting to have sex with her.’ In the show he admits to watching up to 2 hours of porn a day, a habit which escalated to more and more extreme material. ‘There was nothing that would give me a kick. Normal stuff didn’t do anything anymore, so I had to get more and more extreme material.’

Unfortunately, this is becoming an all too common case, with porn wiring viewers brains to more extreme material, making real sex seem pretty dull and boring. ‘There is an element of the real world being boring in comparison to porn. I think porn is kind of reality on acid,’ says Nick, ‘You can literally discover a perfect version of whatever.’

In the follow up BBC report, respected UK psychosexual therapist Angela Gregory said she’s seen a massive increase in men attending her clinic with erectile dysfunction. ‘Historically men that were referred to our clinic with problems with erectile dysfunction were older men whose issues were related to diabetes, MS, cardio vascular disease,’ she says. ‘These younger men do not have organic disease, they’ve already been tested by their GP and everything is fine.’ According to Gregory this dysfunction is something that catches up with porn users, before they know what’s happening. ‘They start off with recreational use (of porn) and often it’s not until they want to get into a relationship that they realise the impact that’s it has had on their sexual functioning.’

So from the outside, it seems that porn is turning our young men into old men. Erectile dysfunction is taking place well before it is normally experienced and the common factor is the explicit stuff they’re viewing online. For Nick, he realized that he had a problem and decided to get help. ‘At first I went to a doctor and she said, “I don’t think there’s enough evidence to suggest it’s a thing, however I do have a lot of young men coming to me with this problem.”’ Eventually Nick decided that he’d stop viewing porn for a while and see if that made any difference. He started by going 100 days’ porn free. ‘My libido came back with a vengeance and I met this girl and it was great. For the first time in ages I was able to flirt and within quite a short time I was able to have normal sex.’

For us the concept of quitting porn to be able to perform normally in the bedroom is far from new. Recently we blogged about the online group called NoFap, which encourages porn users to stop viewing online porn and masturbating for a long period of time, so as to get their libido back. So what are the signs and what are some ways that porn viewers can identify that their online viewing habits are taking over their lives? As Angela Gregory says, the signs are pretty obvious. ‘They notice they are starting to prioritise viewing pornography over going out with friends, studying, seeing girlfriends, boyfriends and then they notice that gradual decline in sexual functioning as well.’

Interestingly experts are finding that for porn users medicinal treatments for erectile dysfunction don’t really help the condition. ‘Giving up online pornography is ultimately the cure,’ says Gregory.  ‘Some will be able to do that relatively easily, whereas for others they find, they stop. They manage to give up for a week, but then the go through a difficult time and back to it.’ But there is hope. For Nick it was worth the effort. ‘Once I recovered I spent a lot of time on online forums trying to help others do the same. You should tell your friends, tell people who are close to you or just a couple of people you trust. And don’t worry, there are many of us in the same boat.’

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