Sexual Addiction Is Bullshit

Just my opinion. I’ve always thought the idea of any ‘sexual addiction’ is psycho-babble created by those with some other agenda looking for a tool to leverage. Behind the will to survive, sex ranks #2 in the primal drive category; are we going to start breathing addiction next?

A new study out of the University of California Los Angeles suggests porn addiction does not exist. Researchers found that people who said they had trouble controlling their consumption of pornography did not show a typical addiction response to sexual images. With addiction, increased brain activity is expected in response to relevant stimuli—heroin in the case of a drug addict, for example. But the porn study’s participants showed decreased brain activity in response to pornography, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Biological Psychology.

Source: Study Suggests Porn Addiction Isn’t Real

I find the the paragraph below to be particularly telling:

Last year, a study out of Cambridge reported nearly opposite findings: participants with compulsive sexual behavior showed brain responses similar to those of drug addicts. Prause says the difference might be partly attributable to the earlier study recruiting participants from sites like YourBrainOnPorn.org which argue porn addiction is real. “We know individuals who identify as sexually addicted have more conservative values and were more likely to be raised in religious households, so they may simply be picking up on shame, not addiction, in the brain,” she said.

‘Porn’ has the same sort of definition as ‘slut’ – namely ask five different people, get five different answers. This is handy for those who choose to use the topic as a wedge/leverage for some other agenda. Yes, I’d have to agree that ‘porn’ has played a role in relationships coming apart, but I would argue that in many cases, porn was simply the catalyst for change that was going to happen anyway.