Young Men Turning to Viagra, Cialis Due to Porn-Induced Impotence; 26-Y-O Talks of Porn Addiction That Started at 12
A 26-year-old Texas man is now campaigning against porn after his addiction to the online variety caused him to suffer impotence at 23. And one popular Boston urologist says he is worried about the effects of porn on young men and women.
Gabe Deem, who confessed that he got addicted to online porn at the age of 12, has started a website called Reboot Nation aimed at helping young men in their 20s and 30s overcome a condition doctors call porn induced erectile dysfunction.
"I get messages pretty regularly from guys who are freaking out, some of them are suicidal…they're not getting the answers they need," said Deem in an interview with Global News. "They'll go to the doctor and go, 'doc, I can't get an erection,' and they'll slap them a pack of Viagra and say don't worry about it, it's all in your head, it's performance anxiety."
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Deem, however, doesn't believe that performance enhancing drugs are the answer, and he has made it personal by highlighting how he dealt with his condition.
"I would get out of middle school and come home as fast as I could, and watch porn – look up whatever I could for about three or four hours before my parents got home from work," said Deem about his boyhood introduction to porn. "I was watching every type of porn that you could think of by the time I was out of middle school."
It wasn't until he hit 23, three years ago, that Deem was forced to confront his addiction after he had an ego deflating moment with a girl he admired.
"I was 23 years old, I was with a gorgeous girl who I found extremely attractive, we went for sex and nothing happened. I couldn't get turned on at all," said Deem. "I freaked out."
Like many young men with the same problem, Deem said he turned to impotence drugs like Cialis and Viagra, which are meant for older men. The pills did not work.
"I took Viagra and I took Cialis and it didn't have any effect on me. And that's because…your problem is in the brain not below the belt," he said.
Dr. Abraham Morgentaler, director of Men's Health Boston and associate clinical professor of urology at Harvard Medical School, agrees that porn addiction is now a serious problem affecting men's health.
"I'm worried, I'm worried about the impact of porn on men and on women," he said.
"I see young men coming in who are really confused about what normal is because all they know about sex is what they've seen on porn," he explained.
"Once upon a time in the Victorian age when women wore long gowns…it was considered to be really sexy when a man saw a turn of an ankle. That was enough for men to go and write sonnets and all of these other things. Then, we went through the mini-skirt phase in the '60s and all that and we talked about, this is the apocalypse is coming, and oh my God this is so sexualized," he continued.
"Now we have it where everybody's got a computer or even a smart phone and on the Internet you can see whatever you want," he said. "There's no surprises. … I think the concern is that porn has figured out what really works for the brain of the guys. It's the maximum stimulus," said Dr. Morgentaler.
Removing the porn addiction from the equation, argues Deem, could go a lot further in addressing erectile dysfunction problems in men than prescription drugs.
