Signs of Porn Addiction
Porn addiction isn’t an official medical diagnosis in the DSM-5, but millions of men report compulsive porn-use patterns that look and feel like addiction.
The signs below are based on common experiences reported by heavy porn users, research on behavioral addiction, and my own lived experience.
You Can’t Stop
This is the simplest and most reliable sign of porn addiction:
You’ve tried to stop, and you can’t.
If you want a reality check, give yourself this test:
Try going two weeks without porn. If you’re dealing with compulsive porn use, odds are you won’t make it two days—let alone two weeks—before you’re back on your favorite site.
For anyone who’s been a daily user for 5–10 years, this is far harder than it sounds. You’ve trained your brain to expect a dopamine hit when you’re:
Tired
Stressed
Lonely
Bored
Anxious
Frustrated
These stressful states naturally lower your dopamine levels, and pornography gives you a concentrated boost of dopamine to get you back to baseline. But as your dopamine receptors become desensitized, you use that dopamine spike to feel normal, and you no longer know how to cope with those states (Kühn & Gallinat, 2014). In fact, your response to them becomes habitual (Robinson & Berridge, 2008).
This is the line between enjoyment and compulsion: you don’t watch porn because you want to, but because you feel like you have to.
That’s what addiction looks like in real life. It’s not dramatic. It’s not chaotic. It’s subtle, predictable, and repetitive.
And here’s the part nobody tells you:
Most addictions don’t feel like addictions until you try to quit. The quote "The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken” captures the idea of addiction perfectly.
When you suddenly feel:
irritable
restless
anxious
mentally unfocused
overwhelmed by urges
…that’s not a lack of discipline or a moral failing.
That’s a reward system that’s been conditioned to expect stimulation on demand.
If going just a few days without porn feels uncomfortable—or even impossible—that’s one of the strongest signs your relationship with porn has crossed into addiction territory (Volkow, Koob, & McLellan, 2016).
You Spend Money On Porn
Another red flag is when you start spending money on something that’s available in unlimited quantities for free.
On its 10th anniversary, Pornhub released data on the number of videos uploaded to its site. By the year 2017, there were:
10,059,213 videos uploaded
684,352 Gigabytes of video uploaded
1,515,217 hours uploaded
To put these numbers in perspective, Pornhub boasts the following:
“The first telegraph message was sent on May 24, 1844. If you started watching Pornhub then, you would still be watching new videos today.”
That statement seemed like an exaggeration, so I did the math myself.
Indeed, if you somehow managed to do NOTHING but watch videos (not even sleep) uploaded to Pornhub from the day the first telegram was sent to the day the survey was released (May 25, 2017), you would only have watched 1,513,416 hours of porn.
This means there would be over 2,000 hours of unviewed footage remaining. And Pornhub also boasts that users uploaded 476,291 hours of video alone in 2016. That is almost double what it was the year before.
That is a spectacular amount of porn, but more spectacular is that ALL of it is free!!
And Pornhub is only 1 of many free streaming sites. There is no logical reason to spend money on pornography. And yet, it’s estimated that pornography generates $6-$15 billion annually.
Even on the low end, that’s a lot of money spent to enjoy something that has more free content than you could ever possibly view in a lifetime–even if ALL you did was watch pornography.
If you find yourself spending money on pornography — especially when free content is everywhere — it may be a sign that your relationship with porn has crossed into compulsive territory. That’s usually the point where guys realize it’s not ‘just a habit’ anymore.
You’re Feeling Depressed
Do you constantly have low energy?
Does the world seem kind of grey?
Well, many men report this as a common side effect of pornography.
The pleasure we feel when watching pornography is mostly dopamine being released by neurotransmitters in the brain. The kicker is that it is artificial joy. It’s a simulation that fools your brain into producing massive, unnatural releases of happy chemicals like dopamine and oxytocin.
Dopamine is called the “pleasure molecule,” though this is technically inaccurate. Dopamine drives us to seek rewards, and we experience that drive via anticipation. Unfortunately, this often becomes an addiction.
Dopamine itself does not cause addiction, but the role it plays not only makes you addicted but also can contribute to depression-like symptoms. The spike of dopamine you receive from sexual activity and orgasm, however brief, has been compared by some researchers to the way other reward systems fire.
After extended porn use, dopamine cells begin to fire more strongly in anticipation of consuming rather than in conjunction with actual consumption. Cues and triggers, such as hearing a porn star’s name, time alone, fatigue, rejection, or boredom can elicit conditioned, sudden surges of dopamine release. These surges then trigger cravings to use or even binge.
It can take months for your brain to stop responding this way.
Remember, your primitive brain is happy because it thinks that the naked woman you just blasted your load to on the screen is going to bear your children. Of course, it’s not real, but at the neurochemical level, your brain can’t really tell the difference.
All that dopamine being released by the artificial but intense stimulus is so overpowering that the rest of your life will seem pale in comparison. Not only is it not real, but you can also release it on command without doing any of the challenging work required to earn sexual release with a woman.
You didn’t make any more money.
You didn’t improve your physique.
You didn’t get smarter.
You didn’t become more attractive.
You got all the good feelings without doing any of the hard work. This is very similar to what happens in other behavioral addictions.
Even worse, because porn allows you to release dopamine on demand, you build a tolerance to it. Like any other drug addict, you need more to get the same level of enjoyment as you did the first time you used it. As long as you’re on the drug, real life will never compare.
How can walking in a park ever be fun?
How can we appreciate the small things in life?
How can real sex ever compare to digital depravity?
The inability to enjoy even normally enjoyable things in life is a classic sign of depression. When it’s tied to heavy porn use, a strong sign you may be addicted to pornography.
You Have Erectile Dysfunction (ED)
Porn-induced erectile dysfunction (PIED) is a relatively new term for erectile dysfunction (ED). It’s specifically when men have trouble maintaining erections due to heavy porn use.
It’s one of the most common reasons men do No Porn November and No Nut November. They literally can’t have sex. If this is not properly treated, they’ll stop having sex altogether and just watch porn. It’s easier anyway.
Yet doctors just prescribe Viagra instead of asking them about their porn habits. Welcome to America, where we have a pill for every problem and a problem for every pill.
Even worse, companies like Hims and Roman have begun to cater to this audience by making it possible to get Viagra at home, circumventing the potentially difficult conversation you might have with your doctor.
The problem is simple, and no pill can fix it:
For many guys, chronic masturbation to extreme online porn can disrupt normal arousal patterns.
No human woman will compare to a dozen beautiful naked women performing deviant sexual acts in the best lighting, looking like they’re having a blast—especially when endless varieties of that woman can be accessed on demand.
The levels of reported ED issues among young men have skyrocketed in recent years. To anyone familiar with the porn epidemic, this is not surprising at all.
In 2012, Swiss researchers found Erectile Dysfunction (ED) rates of 30% in a cross-section of Swiss men aged 18 to 24.
In 2013, Italian researchers found that 1 in 4 men under the age of forty had reported some type of erectile dysfunction.
NHS psychosexual therapists say that “more and more men in their late teens and early 20s are suffering from erectile dysfunction.”
While erectile dysfunction has multiple causes, it is not an issue that young men typically encounter. However, we already know that pornography wreaks havoc on the brain’s response to dopamine. Sexual desire and getting an erection are all related to dopamine sensitivity.
In the book Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow: From Habit to Harmony in Sexual Relationships, the authors state:
“In the last decade or so, addiction researchers have discovered that too much dopamine stimulation has a paradoxical effect. The brain decreases its ability to respond to dopamine signals (desensitization). This occurs with all addictions, both chemical and natural. In some porn users, the dopamine response is dropping so low that they can’t achieve an erection without constant hits of dopamine via the Internet.”
Of course, men who are above 40 are less likely to be affected by heavy pornography use since they reached puberty in the age of magazines and not-so-easily obtained videos.
Because who wanted to go into an X-rated video store and ask the clerk for Anal Busters 4: The Return of Rodney Rod.
It’s embarrassing. But now you can simply log on to your favorite streaming site and be bombarded with all of your fantasies to your heart’s content and the exhaustion of your dopamine receptors.
If you’ve had anxiety while performing, had an issue getting erect, or suffer from premature ejaculation, porn might be the culprit.
The good news is that for many men, porn-related ED improves when they reduce or stop their porn use — especially when they get support in a structured program like Relay
Your Porn Taste Has Escalated
Think back to what used to excite you.
Maybe it was a lingerie catalog, a late-night movie, or a blurry VHS tape you weren’t supposed to find. Then the internet arrived. Then broadband. Then unlimited streaming in HD, updated every second of the day.
At first, regular sex scenes were enough. But over time, you needed something new. Something different. Something more intense. Many men experience this shift without even realizing it’s happening.
This is one of the clearest signs of porn addiction:
Your brain stops responding to what used to turn you on, and you start seeking more extreme content to feel anything at all (Ince et al., 2024).
This happens because of two forces working together:
• Dopamine tolerance — your brain becomes less sensitive to the reward signal
• The Coolidge Effect — our biology responds strongly to novelty, especially sexual novelty
And streaming porn offers infinite novelty on demand.
A “regular woman having regular sex” can’t compete with the hyper-edited, high-definition fantasy machine that online porn provides — customized to your preferences, available instantly, and never saying “no.”
Hardcore porn from the '90s is considered softcore now for a reason: as a culture, tastes escalate because brains adapt to stimulation.
If you catch yourself watching content you never imagined you’d search for years ago, or if basic intimacy feels dull compared to what’s on your screen, that’s a strong sign your brain has adapted to an artificial level of stimulation.
Brain Fog and Low Energy
One of the most overlooked signs of porn addiction is the constant sense that your mind just isn’t working the way it should. You can’t focus, your thoughts feel scattered, and you keep forgetting what you were doing. It starts to affect your work, your relationships, and even basic conversations (Kowalewska et al., 2018).
People in recovery often call this “porn-induced brain fog.” And the scary part is that you usually don’t realize you were living in a fog until it finally lifts.
I’ve experienced a similar state during my years as an alcoholic — where everything felt cloudy, threatening, and overwhelming. Porn can create its own version of that mental haze.
A major reason for this fog is the way chronic pornography use overstimulates the brain’s dopamine system. High-volume porn consumption floods your brain with dopamine, and over time your receptors become less sensitive to it. When your brain no longer responds to normal dopamine levels, you feel drained, unmotivated, mentally slow, and emotionally flat.
This same dopamine desensitization is why regular intimacy stops feeling exciting, why you need more extreme content to get aroused, and why your day-to-day energy crashes. Your brain isn’t broken — it’s adapting to an artificial level of stimulation.
Many men start watching porn in early adolescence, long before their sexual and emotional systems were fully developed. If porn has been part of your life since before you finished puberty, it’s possible you’ve never actually experienced your natural baseline for energy, focus, or arousal.
If you feel chronically foggy, unfocused, or mentally “off,” and you rely on porn just to feel normal, that’s a strong sign that your brain may have become conditioned to the cycle of constant stimulation. (Brand et al., 2019)
You Feel Guilt and Shame About Watching Porn
One of the clearest signs of porn addiction is the emotional aftermath. The guilt, the shame, the self-disgust that shows up right after you finish (Grubbs et al., 2015).
Most people use “guilt” and “shame” interchangeably, but they’re not the same:
Guilt is feeling bad about what you did.
Shame is feeling bad about who you are.
Porn addiction creates both. You know you’re the one doing the behavior… but you also can’t stop. That contradiction eats at you.
Most guys don’t feel anything when they first start watching porn. But over the years, the shame begins to build. In my case, I felt inadequate because I couldn’t meet women. Then, when I finally did start meeting women, I felt ashamed because I still couldn’t stop watching porn. I had what I thought I wanted — but the habit was stronger than my willpower.
Later, when I learned about the darker side of the industry and how many women involved come from traumatic or exploitative situations, the guilt hit even harder. I knew I was supporting something destructive, but I still couldn’t stop. That’s when shame turns inward — when you start asking yourself, “What’s wrong with me?” (Kraus et al., 2016)
And for men with wives or children, the guilt gets even heavier. They tell me it feels like:
a betrayal
a secret double life
setting a bad example they swore they’d never set
Yet despite all of that guilt, shame, and remorse, they still find themselves going back to porn.
That’s the hallmark of addiction: the behavior continues even when the emotional cost becomes unbearable.
If you keep promising yourself you’ll stop after “just this one time,” but you end up right back where you started, that’s a strong sign porn has more control over you than you realized.
You Abandon Responsibilities to Watch Porn
One of the most obvious yet ignored signs of porn addiction is when your responsibilities start taking a back seat to your habit.
If you’ve ever:
shown up late to school or work because you were searching for “just the right scene,”
put off an assignment, project, or important task so you could watch porn first,
skipped the gym, stopped grooming, or let your living space fall apart because you spent that time watching porn,
or sacrificed sleep — telling yourself “just one more video” until suddenly it’s 2 a.m.,
…then you’re showing one of the most significant behavioral signs of addiction: you’re neglecting real-life responsibilities because porn has become the priority (Kraus et al., 2016).
Most guys don’t notice this shift at first. It starts with little excuses and justifications:
“I’ll start the assignment after this.”
“I’ll go to the gym tomorrow.”
“I’ll get ready in a minute.”
“I’ll go to bed after this next video.”
But after a surprisingly short amount of time, this becomes a default state. And no matter how important your job, school, health, or family is, you can’t force yourself to make them come first (Coyne et al., 2019). This shifting of priorities only compounds the shame and guilt that you feel.
I remember once I had a plethora of paid subscriptions to explicit sites. That was already bad enough, but I had those paid subscriptions even though I was struggling to pay my rent. Looking back, I didn’t realize I needed help, but now I can clearly see that shirking personal responsibilities to indulge in something is a crystal clear sign of addiction.
Porn becomes the easiest, fastest way to feel good, so your brain pushes everything else to the bottom of the list. You tell yourself you’ll get back on track tomorrow — but tomorrow keeps getting pushed forward.
Over time:
deadlines slip
grades or job performance drop
your body weakens
routines fall apart
you lose discipline
social connections fade
Porn becomes the path of least resistance, and real life becomes something you “get to later.” When porn dictates your choices more than your values do, that’s not a bad time-management issue.
That’s loss of control.
You lie, hide, or downplay your porn watching
When it comes to addictive habits, most addictive behavior has a strong outward social component.
Drinkers have bar culture
Marijuana users have the 4/20 stoner culture
People who use hard drugs are usually introduced to drugs by other users
Gamblers have the casino
Food addiction comes with the built-in social nature of food
Pornography use is different because it’s not watched in a group.
At the very least, there isn’t a social community of guys who get together and watch porn the way people get together to drink or do drugs.
No one watches porn in a group and calls it “hanging out.” There’s no “porn night” with the boys.
It’s just you, a screen, and a habit that grows in the dark.
Porn is already a private behavior, but when guys go out of their way to hide an already secretive habit, that’s a sign of addictive behavior.
In practice, some examples of hiding your porn watching habits look like:
Deleting your browsing history
Using incognito mode
Locking your office door when the family is home
Staying up late to watch porn while everyone else is asleep
When guys go out of their way to hide their usage, it means they’ve moved into the shame and guilt stages of their porn use, which naturally means they try to hide or lie about it.
You prefer porn to real-life intimacy and interaction
Instead of socializing with your friends, you’d rather watch porn.
Instead of meeting women, you’d rather watch porn.
Instead of having sex with a real flesh-and-blood woman, you’d rather watch porn.
In many ways, this is worse than neglecting your personal responsibilities because it’s more easily justifiable, and the negative feedback is less impactful on your ability to live.
You can easily tell yourself that you had a hard day, so you’re just going to stay in and relax when, in reality, you’re going to binge-watch porn. Showing up late—or not at all—to social events because you wanted to watch porn is way more acceptable than not showing up to work.
You can delude yourself into thinking that talking to girls isn’t worth it because they just break your heart or you’re busy. The worst version of this excuse is when you don’t have sex with your wife or girlfriend and, instead, watch porn.
Losing your social or love life won’t render you homeless the way losing your job will, but it will create a vicious cycle of isolation and loneliness, the perfect environment for driving addictive behaviors (Cacioppo et al., 2014).
It’s long been understood that isolation is one of the strongest drivers of addictive behaviors. This has been observed in both animals and humans, and we also understand the neurological drivers of addictive behaviors (Alexander et al., 1981).
So You’ve Got Some of the Signs of Porn Addiction — Now What?
First, take a breath.
Recognizing the problem is the hardest part. Most men never make it this far. Porn becomes such a normal part of life that they don’t realize how deeply it’s affecting their mood, energy, motivation, relationships, and identity.
But once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
And that gives you power.
Nothing you read above is permanent.
The shame. The brain fog. The depression. The anxiety. The isolation.
The ED. The “I’ll stop tomorrow” loop. The late-night scrolling sessions.
All of it can be reversed — because all of it was learned.
You can unlearn it.
You developed this habit, and with the right tools, you can undo it.
And the best place to start is Relay.
Relay is a recovery program built specifically for people struggling with compulsive porn use — not in a judgmental, old-school “addict” way, but based on behavioral science, accountability, and community.
You aren’t doing this alone. You’re paired with a small team of peers who understand exactly what you’re going through.
It’s anonymous, safe, and comfortable. No awkward in-person meetings. No shame.
It’s grounded in real psychology. Relay’s curriculum is designed by behavioral therapists who specialize in porn and sex-addiction patterns.
It gives you structure. You have daily check-ins, milestones, accountability, and the tools to rebuild a healthy relationship with your own mind.
You can do this from your couch, quietly, and at your own pace—with no one knowing you’re struggling. Because people still don’t take porn addiction seriously,
But the moment you start, things begin to change.
It won’t always be easy — breaking any addiction takes effort — but it will be worth it.
You’ll get back your:
Focus
Confidence
Real desire for women
Drive to be better in every area of your life.
And one day, you’ll look back at this moment and thank yourself for making the decision to change.
References
High-Authority Medical & Diagnostic Sources
Volkow, N. D., Koob, G. F., & McLellan, A. T. (2016). Neurobiologic advances from the brain disease model of addiction. The New England Journal of Medicine, 374(4), 363–371.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1511480
Kraus, S. W., Krueger, R. B., Briken, P., First, M. B., Stein, D. J., Kaplan, M. S., Voon, V., Abdo, C. H. N., Grant, J. E., Atalla, E., & Reed, G. M. (2018). Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder in the ICD-11. World Psychiatry, 17(1), 109–110.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29352554/
Kühn, S., & Gallinat, J. (2014). Brain structure and functional connectivity associated with pornography consumption: The brain on porn. JAMA Psychiatry, 71(7), 827–834.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/1874574
Major Theoretical & Review Frameworks on Addiction
Brand, M., Wegmann, E., Stark, R., Müller, A., Wölfling, K., Robbins, T. W., & Potenza, M. N. (2019). The Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution (I-PACE) model for addictive behaviors. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 104, 1–10.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27590829/
Robinson, T. E., & Berridge, K. C. (2008). The incentive sensitization theory of addiction: Some current issues. Psychopharmacology, 191(3), 391–431.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2607325/
Peer-Reviewed Research on Problematic Pornography Use & Cognitive Effects
Coyne, S. M., Stockdale, L. A., Nelson, D. A., & Fraser, A. M. (2019). Problematic pornography use: The role of family, mental health, and sleep problems. Child Abuse & Neglect, 98, 104168.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8426110/
Kowalewska, E., Gola, M., Draps, M., & Kraus, S. W. (2018). Impaired cognitive control in individuals with problematic pornography use. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 7(4), 1016–1027.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8080450/
Ince, C., Albertella, L., Liu, C., Tiego, J., Fontenelle, L. F., Chamberlain, S. R., Yücel, M., & Rotaru, K. (2024). Problematic pornography use and novel patterns of escalating use: A cross-sectional network analysis with two independent samples. Addictive Behaviors, 156, 108048.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7616041/
Kraus, S. W., Rosenberg, H., & Tompsett, C. J. (2016). Self-perceived problematic pornography use, sexual functioning, and the role of moral incongruence. Addictive Behaviors, 61, 1–7.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-018-1248-x
Grubbs, J. B., Exline, J. J., Pargament, K. I., Hook, J. N., & Carlisle, R. D. (2015). Moral incongruence and pornography use: A longitudinal examination. Emotion, 15(2), 185–190.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29412013/
Foundational Behavioral & Environmental Research Relevant to Addiction
Cacioppo, J. T., Cacioppo, S., & Boomsma, D. I. (2014). Evolutionary mechanisms for loneliness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15(7), 427–439.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3855545/
Alexander, B. K., Coambs, R. B., & Hadaway, P. F. (1981). The effect of housing and gender on morphine self-administration in rats. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, 15(4), 571–576.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/98787/
