I don’t want to come off sounding like an old fart or anything, but in my youth, porn was pretty hard to come by. If my friends and I wanted to see a naked woman, we had to spend hours searching our dads’ closets for Playboys or fucking with the cable box trying to tune in the Spice Network. And you could just forget about hardcore. That shit was almost impossible to find.

But those days are long gone. Now, pretty much every sex act between consenting adults that anyone could ever possibly imagine or would want to see is only a click away. And as hard as it is to believe, that might not be such a good thing.

The good folks over there at AsapSCIENCE have released one of their typically informative and entertaining videos, this one about the science of porn addiction. You can (and should) watch it above, but the gist of it is this:

Porn is like a drug. Maybe you’ve heard that before and don’t really believe it, but think about that in its most basic terms. You use drugs to make yourself feel good, right? And what are you doing when you use porn? You with me so far? Good. Now, with any drug, the more you use it, the more it takes to achieve the desired effect. With pot or cocaine, the desired effect is to get high, but with porn, the desired effect is sexual arousal. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to build up a high tolerance to that.

See, porn is all about visual stimulation, and with all the choices we have out there, we can actually condition ourselves to only be turned on by certain things. And the more porn you watch, the more adventurous you get, and if you’re not careful, you might get yourself to the point where you need to watch three German midgets pissing in each other’s mouths just to get a boner. And nobody wants that.

But the worst thing about being a porn addict is that if you’re in a relationship, it can make you less attracted to your girlfriend or wife. Monogamy is a tough enough row to hoe as it is, you don’t need to stack the deck against yourself any more than you have to. Now, we’re all adults here, so we’re not going to pretend that when you’re having sex with your girlfriend of three years, you’re thinking about her the whole time. I don’t care how hot she is or how great she is in the sack, your mind is going to wander a little bit. But if you have to take yourself back to the last video you watched to keep from going wet noodle on her, then you’ve got yourself a problem.

Fortunately, there is a solution. You already know what it is and you don’t like it. Stop watching so much goddamn porn, asshole. Show a little self-control. You know how when you go three or four days without whacking off, and then when you finally do it, it’s really awesome? Do that a little more. And don’t rely on the internet every time you need to rub one out. Use your imagination every once in a while, for Christ’s sake. Masturbation did exist before the mid-90’s, after all.

So look. I love it that we live in a world where it’s so easy to get addicted to pornography. It proves we live in an enlightened society where we’re all free to make our own choices. But with that freedom comes a level of personal responsibility. Maybe it’s not so bad to look at porn as a drug. Then, maybe we’ll start using it in moderation.