Kirstin Cills
Hello, party people. Welcome to the So Curious! Podcast presented by the Franklin Institute.
The Bul Bey
We are your hosts. I am the Bull Bey.
Kirstin Cills
And I am Kirsten Michelle Cills. Bey and I are so stoked to bring you this season that talks all about the science behind love, sex, and relationships. We have been talking about everything from your brain on love to why we obsess over our favorite television characters, to how science and tech are challenging our relationships with each other. And I’ve learned a lot.
The Bul Bey
And for this episode, we’re going to delve into a topic that’s been part of human sexuality for millennia. We’re talking with Dr. Mateusz Gola about how porn affects the brain.
Kirstin Cills
Porn has been around, like, forever, right?
The Bul Bey
Yeah, I’ve read about erotic art in every ancient culture.
Kirstin Cills
Yeah, where they’re like kinky pictures and cave paintings in the old days, probably.
The Bul Bey
Maybe that says something about who makes art. And since it’s been around so long, let’s find out what happens to our brains when we take in pornography. Our guests for today’s episode talks all about this. We have here, Dr. Mateusz Gola. Can you introduce yourself, what it is you do, the field of study that you work in? Tell us all about you.
Dr. Gola
First of all, thank you for having me here. And my name is Mateusz Gola, and I help people enjoy their life being free from addiction. I do it through my research as a research professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences at University of California, San Diego. I also help more directly as an entrepreneur and clinical psychologist, and you can find me at Dr. Gola.com
The Bul Bey
And what drew you to study behavioral addiction and compulsive sexual behavior specifically?
Dr. Gola
So when I started my clinical practice, one of my very first patients was seeking treatment because of programmatic pornography use. And it was in 2008, and that time there was no knowledge or systematic research on that issue. And very quickly, I have realized that my supervisors were as helpless as I was. And it was a little bit confusing, but somehow I was able to help this man, and he referred others. And five years later, about one third of my patients with whom I’ve been working had some problems with either pornography use or some other compulsive sexual behaviors, like paid sexual services use or risky sexual activities also involving delicious substances. And that was around 2013. At that time, I was working halftime in clinic, halftime at the Cognitive Neuroscience department where I was studying brains. And the same year, American Psychiatric Association decided to not include compulsive sexual behaviors in the official classification of disorders due to the insufficient research on this topic. And this event inspired me to start a research lab focused on problematic pornography use and provide all the data necessary to recognize it as a real problem. And eight years later, World Health Organization officially recognized that as a new disorder and who officially acknowledges that people may have a problem with compassion sex.
The Bul Bey
Yes, thank you for that. You mentioned it a couple of seconds ago. But I want to ask directly the person that you encountered in 2008, you were able to help them and change the behavior and I guess their brain?
[3:48] – Dr. Gola
Yes. I don’t know about the brain or the person. I assume that there was a change in the brain. In our later more recent research, we were also providing treatment and checking what changes in the brain after five months of treatment. And we know that this effective treatment also changes the brain, restores the normal brain function.
Kirstin Cills
Well, first of all, incredible that you are able to sort of create a safe haven. May unintentionally was just starting with one patient, but then able to grow in a place where people don’t feel like they’re the only one. Right, because people can seek addiction services but if they feel like they’re in a super stigmatized, special addiction as opposed to maybe a more common addiction, alcoholism or drugs, it might feel uncomfortable to seek help. So that’s incredible.
Dr. Gola
This is also very important that you mentioned that because there is already a lot of shame and stigmatization around addiction. But when it comes to the addictive behaviors related to sex, we are even more embarrassed to talk about it and the shame is much stronger. So this thing that you are not the only weirdo, it’s really helpful to reach out for help.
Kirstin Cills
Yeah, and we’re covering so much about sex, love and relationships but there’s been such a through line with all of our guests about how much shame and stigma comes along with sex in the first place, even in healthy levels and addiction. So combining them I’m sure is a really hard conversation for people to take the step to make. And so I think undeniably pornography has become increasingly prevalent and partially because of just availability on the internet right compared to decades ago. Have you noticed are there other factors at work as to why it’s become more prevalent in the last few decades?
[05:37] – Dr. Gola
So Internet is one factor obviously, but another one are mobile devices. So 20 years ago there was one desktop computer in the household, usually in the living room, so everyone could see what you are doing.
[5:50] – The Bul Bey
Watching back right there.
[05:51] – Dr. Gola
Yeah, that’s right. But then we got laptops, so we were able to explore internet in our own bedrooms and now with smartphones we can do it everywhere at any time. So this increasing mobility of internet access is actually the main factor and also the decreasing age of owning your first mobile device. This is also very important and it results with the situation that average ten year old kid can see more naked bodies and see more sexual positions within 1 hour than all his grandparents ever seen during the whole lifetime.
[06:33] – Kirstin Cills
Oh my God.
[06:35] – Dr. Gola
According to our most recent studies, about 25%- so every fourth kid in the age of seven to twelve and it’s the same for boys and girls watch porn at least once a month. So by the age they will have their first romantic relationships, their first sexual encounters, they may already acquire a lot of unrealistic expectations about real sex. And research also shows that too much porn watching increases the anxiety related to sexual initiation. Those first encounters may be more stressful and also decreases satisfaction from the real sexual encounters with partners. This is one very big factor, this increasing availability of mobile internet devices and decreasing age of having them.
[07:30] – The Bul Bey
I really appreciate that note on behaviors and how it informs behaviors very early. One of the things that we’ve been talking about is consent and just having general information that’s been the through line. That’s not been the case, unfortunately. I was going to say most people use pornography as
entertainment, but some need to seek treatment for pornography use and excessive masturbation. What constitutes problematic porn use, according to you?
Dr. Gola
Yeah. So it’s important to stress out that around 50% of adult males and 30% of adult females use porn on a regular basis as an entertainment and only for some of the people this is a problematic behavior. And thanks to the World Health Organization starting from January 1 of this year- 2022. We have those official guidelines- diagnostic criteria. We can measure it exactly and according to WHO we can say that someone has a compulsive sexual behavior in this case related to porn use if this person experiences loss of control over pornography use and we can measure this loss of control for you several aspects. For example you don’t control where do you start watching porn? You don’t control for how long do you watch porn? You don’t control when do you stop watching? You don’t control where do you watch? So you can start watching at work, in the public transportation, wherever. Then the next very important aspect is that this loss of control over pornography watching leads to neglecting significant activities such as your hobbies, education, work, social life and then it becomes more severe if, despite those negative impact on your life, you still cannot stop watching porn.
[09:32] – Dr. Gola
So you see the negative impact but you still cannot stop or limit how much do you watch. And you continue watching despite decreased pleasure from that or even lack of pleasure because in the severe cases people don’t even experience pleasure while masturbating to porn, they just watch for self regulation. And there are two important aspects- this pattern needs to last at least six months so we can recognize it as a disorder and the second thing, which is also important is that it’s not enough that you just feel bad because of the dissonance and congruence between your moral beliefs around sexuality and porn and your behavior. Sometimes people who are very conservative, they believe that porn is always bad, they shouldn’t watch at all, but they don’t have any other sexual activities, so they watch from time to time. They feel bad, but they don’t experience any of those four aspects I just mentioned, which who mentioned? So this is important that we really see those things mentioned by WHO.
[10:38] – Kirstin Cills
I want to pull back for a second to make sure I understood you correctly. So this is something that I have never heard before, if this is what you’re saying, that there are people using porn, either problematically or not, who watch porn without any intention of masturbation sex. It is entirely just to watch. Is that accurate?
Dr. Gola
No. So 99% of cases of pornography watching is confined by masturbation. Sometimes, like one person is watching with your spouse, your partner, just to spice up the sexual life, but sooner or later there is always masturbation. But among those people who develop the problematic pornography use, the main driving factor is not just to experience a sexual pleasure, to meet your sexual needs. Usually people watch just as a coping strategy to cope with difficult emotions stress, loneliness, anxiety and disappointment and so on. And they use it as a distractor. So very often they watch multiple times a day because they need more of that distraction. And sometimes they don’t want to masturbate quickly with
porn because they desire this distraction. They want to escape the reality so they can stay on the edge of the orgasm and watch, for example, for a few hours before they masturbate, because after masturbation they need to wait a little bit more for another session to watch. And that’s how it looks like. So in the case of very severe problematic users, we are talking about watching sometimes 4, 6, 8, 15, even hours a day, very often multiple days in a row, such that this is a very massive behavior and it disturbs life completely.
Kirstin Cills
Yeah, I mean, 15, 18 hours a day. That’s your entire day. More hours than I’m usually even awake for. And so I know your research particularly seeks to understand the neural and the psychological mechanisms that underlie problematic pornography use. I’m just curious what is going on in the brain biologically, whatever it may be, of someone with problematic pornography use?
Dr. Gola
It’S helpful if we think about addiction and problematic pornography use as a problem with motivation. Like a motivation disorder, let’s say like that. So let’s look first at the healthy brain. When we look into the healthy brain, we can see that this brain is motivated to seek for variety sources of activities which provide pleasure. And that’s how we evolved and we learn what is predictive for pleasure. So, for example, your friends are telling you that they are going for a weekend trip and your brain takes it as a cue that there’s a potential fun experience. And then it motivates you by the release of Dopamine to get your work done by the end of the week and do whatever it takes to join them because you expect that there will be fun. And that’s how the motivation works. And if we look at the addicted brain, we can see that over time, it becomes super sensitive to cues of only one type of pleasure. So, for example, alcohol only or pornography only, and it starts neglecting the cues of other sources of fun. So this increasing sensitivity for only one source of pleasure results with the development of the wide spectrum of different cues associated with this particular substance or this particular behavior. Such as, for example, in places where you’ve been drinking becomes your cue, your triggers, the situation when you are drinking or mood states when you are drinking, becomes the triggers. And your brain then, when meets this trigger, starts motivating you to do whatever it takes to have a drink or whatever it takes to watch porn. So what we see in the brain, both of alcohol addicts or problematic pornography users, is this hyper sensitization for cues associated with the substance of abuse or behavior of abuse like pornography watching. And then it evolves, this craving that it’s hard to stop when something triggers you. There is a strong release of dopamine, and your brain tells you, do whatever it takes to get it, to watch it.
Kirstin Cills
I’m so glad we’re talking about this because, as you know, working in addiction, it’s something people who have little information on the topic often think of as just every day you’re waking up and you’re making this choice, but there’s so much science and biology that goes behind it. So I’m so glad we’re having this conversation.
[15:40] – The Bul Bey
And then I’m stunned in this moment myself, just because I’ve craved to watch pornographic images and different things like that, but to be made aware of this spectrum of behavior and the depth of the issue, I’m
like, whoa, I’ve never been stifled in that manner. And so in this moment, I’m just like I have a heart for anyone who might be going through that. I want to switch gears just a little bit. Can you tell us about Predict Watch Inc. And why you do the work that you do?
Dr. Gola
Yes. So Predict what is a company I co founded a few years ago. And my main goal was to help people with addictions, not only to understand it. And one of the very big issue is that over 70% of people who are very motivated to quit, they already go for some kind of treatment. They go to rehab facilities sometimes, they pay a lot of money for that, and they spend a lot of time there and we know from the studies that over 70% of people with substance use disorders and behavioral addictions, they relapse within one year after treatment, after successful treatment, not mentioning that a lot of people are not able to complete treatment. So this is very sad because for some of those people relapses result with death. So they die because of overdose in case of substances and sometimes it’s very dramatic. So in Predict Watch, the goal was to develop innovative technology allowing to predict Relapses and currently we are able to do it for six different addictions with over 90% of accuracy. Yeah, but the best is that we can do it even five days ahead of Relapse.
Kirstin Cills
What?
Dr. Gola
So we know about the Relapse way before the addicted person knows about it. And we do it using advanced machine learning approach and data we collect through the smartphones and smartwatches. So currently this technology works and now what we are doing, we are testing a personalized interventions which will allow us not only to predict Relapse but also prevent it before it happens. Once it’s ready, probably approximately around the end of this year, we will be releasing the product to the market.
Kirstin Cills
Oh my God. It’s funny because we’ve been talking a lot about dating apps with a few people and about algorithms and how interestingly kind of overwhelming it can be to realize that your phone knows so much about you and not always in a good way. You’re blowing my mind.
The Bul Bey
Many of these conversations have opened up what we initially thought of particular topics like porn or apps and algorithms and technology and relationships. It has opened it up quite a bit. I’m going to move on to the next question which is there’s a lot of underage porn consumption with modern technology, young people will always have access to it- we just kind of mentioned that. How can we guide future generations in their porn consumption in a way that’s not limiting but it helps them understand the unrealistic standards and risk of addiction?
Dr. Gola
That’s a great question, thanks for asking that. I think that first of all, we need a good sexual education so young people could learn about sexuality in a positive and nonjudgmental way and discover their own sexuality without anxiety. Moreover, I think we need such an education not only for young people but also for the generation of their parents. And we were talking about this shame around sexuality today and this is very important because our research shows that one of the most significant factors preventing teenagers from development of problematic pornography use is an ability to have an honest conversation about sexuality with their own parents. And this is so simple. But the problem is that currently majority of adult couples can’t even talk about their pornography use with each other. We can talk about it with our own partners, how we can talk about it with kids. So we need this education for both adults and teenagers. And I also believe that we need some kind of better mechanisms of age verification. A lot of countries in Europe right now already implemented policies and currently also implement also technical solutions to really verify the age of people who visit porn sites the same way as we do it for the online liquor store or cannabis stores or financial services.
Dr. Gola
There is already plenty of safe, fast and completely private and effective solutions which works. Why won’t we use them to also verify the age of people who access the porn sites? Probably some teenagers will be able to bypass because teenagers are skilled this time. But for sure it will work for most of seven or twelve year old kids and they would be able to explore internet without this risk of getting into the porn too early and being able to experience their sexuality without this bias of porn. And I think this is important.
[21:27] – Kirstin Cills
My last question for you is what are some questions for you or what is a question that you’ve come across that in this field is still unanswered and that you hope to research in the future that you hope to see solved in your time.
Dr. Gola
So currently for me the most fascinating, the biggest question is how to most effectively help those individuals who struggle with either addiction or problematic pornography use, how we can personalize this treatment so it’s most effective for everyone and also tackles the individual issues. And I believe that we can do it with new technologies that they can be extremely helpful, that’s in predictable for example. So I hope that we will be able to provide a good ways of treatment, good solutions, how to help, but there’s still a lot of research on the way.
The Bul Bey
Dr. Gola, thank you for this conversation because before I just thought if you brought porn mags you had a problem. I understand it’s like much bigger than that.
Kirstin Cills
This is so interesting. Thank you so much for all of this and thank you for taking the time out of your day to come talk to us. This was wonderful.
Dr. Gola
Thank you so much and it was a great pleasure to talk.
Speaker 4
Thank you.
Kirstin Cills
You’re doing amazing work. Seriously.
Dr. Gola
You also, it’s great that you are talking about topics that we needed. Man.
The Bul Bey
I always took the conversations around porn and pornography. It’s kind of light and fun and funny. But that conversation definitely humbled me in a way because I didn’t know it could get so dark. I didn’t know it could get so serious and affect your behaviors and affect your relationships and really cripple you. I’m like, that’s not something I knew.
Kirstin Cills
Yeah, that was very shocking to me. I suppose not shocking, but I didn’t realize how severe that can go because it is an addiction, right? Like alcoholism or drug abuse or anything. It’s the wiring in your brain. So that was really awesome to hear about and I love the work that he’s doing.
The Bul Bey
No, it’s so important we all interact with porn. It’s not something that is hard to find. I mean, we could find it right now. The kids find it all the time.
Kirstin Cills
Yeah, we actually have to go out of our way to make sure kids don’t come across it. That’s how hard it is to not see porn.
The Bul Bey
Yeah, it’s so accessible.
The Bul Bey
Yeah.
The Bul Bey
That’s our story for today’s episode. Next week, we’re going to jump into the ultimate commitment marriage. But you might be surprised to learn more about how humans came to value marriage and monogamy.
Kirstin Cills
We’re going to get this and more on next week’s episode. So please subscribe to this podcast everywhere that you listen, every single place. Like literally every platform, every single place. We’re talking Spotify, we’re talking Apple Music, all the things. Subscribe and leave a rating if you loved it, right? Thanks for hanging out with us today. I am Kirsten Michelle Cills.
The Bul Bey
And I am the Bull Bay.
Kirstin Cills
And we will see you all next week. Bye bye. So Curious is presented by the Franklin Institute. And special thanks to the Franklin Institute producers Joy Montefusco and Dr. Jayatri Das. This podcast is produced by Radio Kismet. Radio Kismet is Philadelphia’s premiere podcast production studio. The managing producer is Emily Charash. The producer is Liliana Green. The lead audio engineer and editor is Christian Cederlund. The editors are Lauren DeLuca and Justin Berger. Head of operations is Christopher Plant. The science writer is Kira Vayette. And the graphic designer is Emma Sagar.
