Many people have the habit of viewing porn before bed. This becomes an exercise in unwinding, relaxation, and sleep-readiness. However, what has been proven here is the growing body of evidence that contradicts the seeming simplicity of watching porn before bed-not precisely conducive to good sleeping habits but numerous sleep disorders instead.
We’re going to explore the very intricate interplay of sleep and pornography, discuss some reasons why watching porn before bed is quite harmful, and finally, discuss ways how to deal with such an issue as can’t sleep after viewing pornography.
Is Watching Porn Good Before Going to Bed?
The short answer is a big no. While you may find some relieving or relaxing feeling in watching porn before bed, the general long run of such activities will highly damage your quality of sleep and well-being altogether.
As per research, Pornography frequently causes mental stimulation, which might make it more difficult for certain people to relax before bed. In addition to delaying sleep onset, this overstimulation can lower sleep quality overall. This is one of the reasons why porn before bed is not supported because it affects the sleeping-wake cycle. It emits a blue light from electronic devices, including smartphones and tablets, that delay the secretion of the melatonin hormone responsible for the sleeping-wake cycle. That is why falling asleep quickly is tough, and sleep quality will be poor.
Is It Easier Or Harder To Fall Asleep After Watching Porn?
However, scientists and sleep professionals claim the very opposite: much more complex to fall asleep after watching porn before bed than one would have without the stimulus.
According to findings published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, a high rate of porn usage in adolescence can more likely have associated with disturbances in sleep patterns, among others, especially sleeping onset and duration. Sleep problems from stimulating porn could therefore disturb an individual’s physiological natural circadian rhythm for sleeping and staying awake.
Similarly, in the thread on forum.nofap.com titled “Can’t sleep after viewing Pornography,” there are several personal account statements from those who have insomnia and experienced withdrawal since they started watching porn before bed.
Among them, one commentator mentioned that he did not sleep even after practicing various techniques to bring sleep since he was restless and anxious. There are a variety of reasons why it happens. The physiological and psychological effects may range from:
- Dopamine Dependency: Porn will activate the dopamine, one of the “feel-good” neurotransmitters in the reward system of the brain. Therefore, over time, dependence will build where the brain cannot be satisfied unless stimulated by porn, thus causing withdrawal and sleep issues to arise.
- Guilt and Shame: Some people feel guilty, ashamed, or even hate themselves after watching porn. Negative emotions, thus built in the mind and emotions, form a barrier to relaxation and sleep.
- Cognitive Distraction: Whatever content and themes porn offers can linger in one’s mind; thus, it is challenging to calm down one’s thoughts to relax and sleep.
9 Reasons Why People Are Addicted to Porn
According to research, those who watch too much porn may have trouble going or staying asleep, which could be caused by the aftereffects of increased sexual arousal and dopamine alterations. In addition, insomnia may result from disturbed sleep cycles in these people. Let’s have a closer look at 9 reasons why you feel addicted to porn:
- Availability and Accessibility: The Internet has enabled one to access most of it with the simple click of a button.
- Novelty and Variety: Constant availability of new, varied types of pornographic content will always keep within some sort of cycle the want for novelty that never has an end and, consequently, leads to porn addiction.
- Anonymity and Privacy: Easy access anonymously and in privacy makes porn that much more accessible and less restrictive.
- Emotional Needs: Some might have emotional needs that porn meets: loneliness, boredom, even stress.
- Reward of Dopamine: This reward through dopamine’s neurotransmitter, thanks to the use of porn, creates a feeling of pleasure and sustains the behavior pattern.
- Desensitization: With time, individuals get accustomed to the impacts of porn and, thus, eventually become in pursuit of something extreme or new to experience the same arousal as before.
- Emotional Intimacy Substitution: In some individuals, porn plays a role as an actual substitute for emotional and physical intimacy in their relationship.
- Previous Sexual Trauma or Abuse: Porn addiction may occur as an escape mechanism following trauma.
- Peer Influence: ‘The norm’ established among some peer groups to use porn might create a desire to use it.
Experiencing Withdrawals Without Porn Before Bed
The absence of his routine porn before bed is responsible for several withdrawal symptoms, which can lead to insomnia for an addicted to porn. Some of the symptoms may include:
- Sleep disorder: A person cannot sleep or stay asleep because their brain is not in an adaptation process to the absence of porn stimulation.
- Restlessness: General irritability and inability to sleep and calm into slumber.
- Anxiety: There was anxiety where one feared they would never be okay again, thus giving the person unnecessary fear or nervousness, making it challenging to wind up and sleep.
- Irritability: They become irritable and very moody, and their mood will affect their sleeping pattern.
- Cravings: Cravings are powerful, uncontrollable desires or urge to return to looking at watching porn. Thus, keeping the person’s mind from sleeping for a while is pretty challenging.
These withdrawal symptoms may create a vicious cycle where one cannot watch porn before bed, which leads to sleep issues, and the sleeping problems fuel the urge to return to watching porn, creating a cycle.
Insomnia Struggles Without Porn Before Bed
This, by default, should lead to significant struggles with insomnia since this developed addiction has, at best, replaced dependent on porn before bed.
The mind and the body are thus wired, as it were, by these stimulations-arousals accompanying porn habituations. After consuming pornography, emotional anguish can raise cortisol levels, which makes the body more awake and keeps it from calming down enough to fall asleep. For some people, this may result in insomnia or other sleep disturbances. Consequently, going into a sound sleep should become problematic:
Insomnia that can beset those afflicted with porn addiction include:
- Difficulty Falling Asleep: This denies sexual stimulation to the brain and the body; hence, a person may experience problems in sleep because his body is at a higher arousal.
- Frequent Waking: It keeps a man waking multiple times at night because it does not allow continuous good sleep.
- Early Morning Waking: They tend to wake much earlier than expected.
- Poor Sleep Quality: Sleeping can be unrefreshing, disturbed, and wakeful.
- Daytime Somnolence: Chronic morbidity related to sleep issues, fatigue, and poor performance of the mind during the day.
These conditions associated with insomnia can have a detrimental effect on the physical and mental health, efficiency, and quality of life of an individual.
How BlockP can help you to stop watching Porn?
BlockP is free and trustworthy software for blocking or abstaining from pornography. It is available as a Chrome extension and an application for Android and iOS, respectively.
Benefits of using BlockP:
- It will help you become more productive and mentally sharper since there will be no pornography to hinder your process.
- It allows one to keep up their bodily fitness due to the time taken in watching porn which is now being utilized.
- Reduces depression and promotes self-esteem due to the porn addiction. It improves sleep quality and gives it a reason to live in.
Features of BlockP:
- Filters on the web, keyword, and content blocking
- Password security: blocks unwanted changes made to your settings
- Block uninstallation of the application: the application will not delete
- Focus mode
- Controls websites or applications you are authorized to view
- BlockP VPN – More private, secure features
- Community support and resources for people facing porn addiction.
BlockP operates by analyzing content on the web in real-time using advanced technology and blocking inappropriate or explicit material. It offers this on a platform that runs from browser extensions to mobile applications and covers all areas of security comprehensively.
The document further elaborates on the fact that there are essentially three types of porn blockers, namely browser extension-based, app-based, and device-level-based porn blockers, and the proper selection should be made based on individual preference and requirements.
BlockP has over 1 million downloads and a rating of 4.5+, making it one of the safest and most widely used porn-blocking solutions.
Conclusion
It is not an easy relationship between sleep and pornography because it has been evidenced that watching porn before bed makes it harder to fall asleep rather than easier.
Physiological, psychological, and emotional factors which make you porn addiction may have effects on your sleep conditions in cases of insomnia, withdrawal, and even daytime fatigue.
If this porn addiction impacts your sleep, now’s the perfect opportunity to involve the assistance and resources from BlockP that can assist you to get out of this vicious cycle and help you to reclaim control of your sleep and well-being.
