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A fantastic video explaining the rise of internet pornography and the dangers of addiction.

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High Speed Internet Porn and the Experiment Generation

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Essay 4: Can an Individual Become Addicted to Pornography?

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Essay 4: Can an Individual Become Addicted to Pornography?

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Central Question: Can an  Individual Become Addicted to Pornography?

I found different articles explaining evidence for every position,  including yes, no, as well as unknown.

I learned that while it is not universally agreed upon, and while pornography addiction may not be identical to substance addiction, pornography addiction definitely shares some similarities with behavioral addictions as well as substance addictions,  and through my special experience, I found testimony from others who feel they are addicted to pornography.

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Can an Individual Become Addicted to Pornography_  (3)

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KADIANI, A. et al. Pornographic Addiction: Is it a Distinct Entity? Medical Journal of Dr. D.Y. Patil University, [s. l.], v. 10, n. 5, p. 461–464, 2017. DOI 10.4103/MJDRDYPU.MJDRDYPU_303_16. Disponível em:

This article focuses on a specific case of a man suffering with porn addiction, as well as his diagnosis and treatment. It also goes into detail some of the specific, real life symptoms and implications of addiction and how pornography fits these criteria. It also has some more details on why pornography addiction didn’t make it into the DSM-5.

I used this source for the yes option to my question, if an individual can become addicted to pornography, as it details a specific case of a man suffering from compulsive pornography use, the similarities between compulsive pornography use and other behavioral addictions, as well as what needs to be done in order to classify pornography addiction.

Clinical studies show brain and behavioral abnormalities commonly seen in those suffering with substance abuse disorders. The patient's "Mental status examination revealed low mood and depressed affect. His thought process showed the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness regarding his inability to control his behavior. On the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D) he scored 9. There were no delusions or hallucinations. His judgment and insight were intact. We ruled out, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), depression and personality disorder through serial and separate interviews of the patient and the wife.”

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Pornography addiction, is it a distict entity

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Hilton, Jr. ..Donald L., and Clark Watts. “Pornography Addiction: A Neuroscience Perspective.” Surgical Neurology International, vol. 2, no. 1, Jan. 2011, pp. 87–90. EBSCOhost, doi:10.4103/2152-7806.76977.

This article explains that all addictions create chemical changes in the brain, as well as anatomical and pathological changes which result in various manifestations of cerebral dysfunction labeled hypo frontal syndromes, essentially the brain being unable to put on the breaks. This in turn results in the protein DeltaFosB being overexpressed, which is something people suffering from hyper-sexual disorders share with people with other behavioral addictions or even drug abusers.

This source details the neurobasis of addiction, the similarities between unnatural “drug” and natural addictions to that of food, sex, and gambling. It also provides information on the evolving attitude and acceptance as pornography as a cause for addiction, as well as push-back halting this type of development. I used the an individual can become addicted to pornography side of the argument.

Naturopathic doctor Volkow Fowler: “studies of addicts show reduced cellular activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, a brain area…[relied upon]…to make strategic, rather than impulsive, decisions. Patients with traumatic injuries to this area of the brain display problems— aggressiveness, poor judgment of future consequences, inability to inhibit inappropriate responses that are similar toto those observed in substance abusers.”

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"Porn Addiction" explains some basic facts about porn addiction, some societal arguments for whether it is or is not an addiction, as well as some treatment and identifying factors.

This source breaks down some more "yes" and "no's" to my question, and I used it primarily for a societal position for an existing "no" answer to my question..

“There’s little proof that either sex addiction or porn addiction are problems. In a position statement on the topic, the group cautions against making consensual sexual behavior a disorder” (Casarella, 2020).

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SOURCES:

Kraus, S. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, published online Sept. 8, 2017.

Kühn, S. JAMA Psychiatry, published online May 28, 2014.

American Psychological Association: "Is pornography addictive?"

Love, T. Behavioral Sciences, published online Sept. 18, 2015.

American Society of Addiction Medicine: "Definition of Addiction."

Steele, V. Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology, published online July 16, 2013.

Voon, V. PLoS One, published online July 11, 2014.

Vaillancourt-Morel, M. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, January 2017.

Grant, J. The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, September 2010.

Mayo Clinic: "Cognitive behavioral therapy."

Sexaholics Anonymous: "Who Are We?"

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration: "Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator."

University of California, Santa Barbara: "Am I Watching Too Much Pornography?"

Fight the New Drug: "Pornhub's Annual Report: Can You Guess 2019'S Top Searched Porn Terms?"

Biological Psychology: "Modulation of late positive potentials by sexual images in problem users and controls inconsistent with "porn addiction."

Current Sexual Health Reports: "The Emperor Has No Clothes: A Review of the 'Pornography Addiction' Model."

Journal of Clinical Medicine: "Online Porn Addiction: What We Know and What We Don't -- A Systematic Review."

American Association of Sexuality Educators Counselors & Therapists (AASECT): "AASECT Position on Sex Addiction."

ICD-11 for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics: "6C72 Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder."

Neuropsychopharmacology: "Can Pornography be Addictive? An fMRI Study of Men Seeking Treatment for Problematic Pornography Use."

Mayo Clinic: "Compulsive sexual behavior."

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Pornography Addiction: Why Pornography Is Addictive?

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SOURCES: Kraus, S. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, published online Sept. 8, 2017. Kühn, S. JAMA Psychiatry, published online May 28, 2014. American Psychological Association: "Is pornography addictive?" Love, T. Behavioral Sciences, published online Sept. 18, 2015. American Society of Addiction Medicine: "Definition of Addiction." Steele, V.

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"Is pornography addictive" breaks down various studies done on compulsive pornography use, some showing it to share similarities with substance addictions and others not.

I used this article as a large part of the unknown and no answers to my central question, before I added my scholarly sources. It has some examples of research done on compulsive pornography use, one pointing to the "unknown" possibility and the other pointing to the "no" possibility.

Dr. Voon took MRI scans of compulsive porn users while they viewed erotic images, and tested “whether they show brain activity patterns similar to substance abusers viewing beer bottles or drug paraphernalia.” In a 2015 British documentary called “Porn on the Brain,'' Voon described the brains of compulsive porn users in this case as “alcoholics watching ads for a drink.” Despite these findings however, Voon finally stated that it was “too early to put compulsive porn users in a box with people who suffer from drug or alcohol problems.” (Weir 2014).

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Pornography is a loaded subject. Opponents argue that it can ruin marriages, lead to sexual addiction or other unhealthy behaviors, and encourage sexual aggression.

Proponents claim that erotica can enhance sex lives, provide a safe recreational outlet and perhaps even reduce the incidence of sexual assault. (After pornography was legalized in Denmark in 1969, for instance, researchers reported a corresponding decline in sexual aggression.)

But in some ways, both arguments are moot: Whether or not you think it's moral, the fact is, people like porn. Various international studies have put porn consumption rates at 50 percent to 99 percent among men, and 30 percent to 86 percent among women, according to Gert Martin Hald, PhD, and colleagues in The APA Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology (Vol. 2).

"Porn is practically ubiquitous," says Ana Bridges, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Arkansas. And the Internet has made it easier than ever to get an erotic fix. The late sex researcher Alvin Cooper, PhD, called this the "triple-A engine" effect: The accessibility, affordability and anonymity provided by the Web have put adult content right at our fingertips.

Many people argue that's a good thing. In a 2002 survey conducted for PBS/Frontline by the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University, 86 percent of respondents said porn can educate people, and 72 percent said it provides a harmless outlet for fantasies. Among those who reported using pornography, 80 percent said they felt "fine" about it.

"There are a lot of people out there using a lot of porn who have no problems with it whatsoever," says Erick Janssen, PhD, a senior scientist at the Kinsey Institute. "So when does it become an addiction?"

That, of course, is a key question for researchers trying to understand pornography's dark side.

Real-life relationships

While many viewers of adult content don't seem to suffer ill effects, porn can become problematic for others. The Kinsey Institute survey found 9 percent of porn viewers said they had tried unsuccessfully to stop.

When pornography use becomes excessive, romantic relationships can suffer. Destin Stewart, PhD, and Dawn Szymanski, PhD, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, surveyed female college students and found that those who perceived their boyfriends' porn use to be problematic experienced lower self-esteem, poorer relationship quality and lower sexual satisfaction (, 2012).

But it's not always that simple. In a 2013 study, researchers at Brigham Young University and the University of Missouri surveyed heterosexual couples who were married or living together and found that men's use of porn was associated with lower sexual quality for both men and their partners. Female use of porn, however, was associated with improved sexual quality for women (Journal of Sex Research, 2013).

Bridges and Patricia Morokoff, PhD, reported similar findings: When men used porn, they tended to report lower levels of sexual intimacy in their real-life relationships. When women used porn, however, intimacy increased (Personal Relationships, 2011).

Bridges points to two possible explanations for the finding. First, she says, while men tend to view pornography solo, women are more likely to watch it with their partners in a shared sexual experience. "This was something that they incorporated into their lovemaking ritual," she says.

Also, men and women typically use different types of porn. Men are more often drawn to videos showing sex acts absent of context. "You might not even see anybody's face," she says. Women, though, tend to watch "couples porn," with story lines and softer angles. "When partners use porn together, they tend to watch things where both people are more egalitarian participants in a sexual act," Bridges says.

Although some couples seem to benefit from pornography, that's not the case for everyone. When one partner uses porn at a high frequency - typically the men in the heterosexual couples Bridges has studied - there can be a tendency to withdraw emotionally from the relationship. Those men report "increased secrecy, less intimacy and also more depression," she says.

It's not clear, however, whether pornography is the proverbial chicken or the egg. Does a person turn to pornography because he's already in an unsatisfying relationship? Or do women pull away and lose interest in sex when they discover their partner is spending quality time with adult film stars?

Bridges says both scenarios are probably true, based on the couples she's interviewed. And indeed, the two scenarios tend to feed off each other. If a couple goes through a dry spell, the man may watch more porn to fill the void. Some women may feel threatened or confused by that response. They often report feeling less attractive, like they could never measure up to the X-rated actresses. The result: even less sex, even more porn and a relationship that continues to falter.

Bridges is now testing interventions to help men curb their excessive pornography use, primarily using cognitive-behavioral interventions. Eventually, she hopes to develop a couples-based treatment manual to help both partners come to an understanding - one that may or may not include pornography.

Addicted to love?

Relationships aren't the only area where compulsive porn use can be damaging. Psychologists describe anecdotal reports of people losing their jobs because they couldn't control the urge to visit adult websites at work, for instance. "When porn use becomes so intense in frequency or duration, it starts to interfere with the other aspects of a person's life," Bridges says.

However, experts disagree over how to classify excessive porn use. "We're still not completely sure what this behavior is," says Bridges.

When the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) was being drafted, experts considered a proposed diagnostic addiction called hypersexual disorder, which also included a pornography subtype. But in the end, reviewers determined that there wasn't enough evidence to include hypersexual disorder or its subtypes in the 2013 edition.

If compulsive pornography use is not a hypersexual disorder, could it be considered an addiction akin to drug or alcohol addiction? That's what Valerie Voon, MD, PhD, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of Cambridge, is exploring. By scanning the brains of compulsive porn users with MRI while they view erotic images, she's testing whether they show brain activity patterns similar to substance abusers viewing beer bottles or drug paraphernalia.

So far, the brains of compulsive porn users resemble the brains of alcoholics watching ads for a drink, reports Voon in a 2013 British documentary called "Porn on the Brain."

Despite her early findings, Voon says it's probably too early to put compulsive porn users in a box with people who suffer from drug or alcohol problems. "We need more studies to clearly state that it's an addiction," she says.

Other research has turned up contrary results. Nicole Prause, PhD, a researcher in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues recently studied brain responses in people who have trouble regulating their porn consumption.

Prause used EEG to measure a brain response known as P300, which is a component of the brain's electrical activity that occurs about 300 milliseconds after viewing a stimulus. This activity increases when people are emotionally engaged with that stimulus. When people with drug addictions view drug-related images, for instance, they show a clear bump in the P300 value.

Prause used three separate scales to identify people with hypersexual problems. Then she showed them a variety of images, including sexual ones. She predicted she'd see a dose response: Those people who reported having greater difficulty controlling their porn use would experience a greater spike in the P300 value. "Frankly, I thought this would be a slam-dunk easy finding," she says.

Surprisingly, that was not the case. People who reported greater problems controlling porn use had no clear change in the P300 value related to their level of sexual problems, whether they viewed porn or neutral images such as food or people skiing (Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology, 2013). "Our findings don't make them look at all like addicts," she says.

Meanwhile, a 2013 study by researchers at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom suggests that a penchant for porn may be more compulsion than addiction. In a study of porn use among 226 men, the researchers found that certain traits - neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness and obsessional checking behaviors - were correlated with high pornography use (Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 2013). Men who have trouble resisting the lure of porn websites might simply have dispositions that make them more vulnerable to compulsive problems in general, the researchers concluded.

Ensuring effective treatment

Putting a label on a porn habit isn't an idle exercise. Understanding what drives the behavior is a necessary step toward designing effective treatments for people who can't control the urge.

While science is far from settling this debate, some treatment programs continue to push the idea that porn is an addiction. "There's a tremendous treatment industry that needs this to be a disease - a thing they can charge people to treat," Prause says.

But promoting certain therapies may be ill-advised. "You can harm patients by using treatment models that aren't research-supported," Prause says.

Whether or not pornography is a diagnosable addiction, it's clear it hurts some people. For them, there just isn't much evidence about how best to control this behavior. "There is a real dearth of good, evidence-based therapeutic literature," Voon says.

A handful of researchers are working to close that knowledge gap but it's not an easy field to work in. "[Pornography] is a highly politicized and sensitive topic," notes Janssen. "It's hard to get funding for sex research in general, unless it's in the context of sexually transmitted diseases."

Prause has experienced the difficulty firsthand. While she'd be thrilled to see things change, she says, funding agencies are still squeamish about sex. "It's difficult to have it taken seriously," she says. "But it really is a science like any other."

Kirsten Weir is a journalist in Minneapolis.

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Pornography is a loaded subject. Opponents argue that it can ruin marriages, lead to sexual addiction or other unhealthy behaviors, and encourage sexual aggression. Proponents claim that erotica can enhance sex lives, provide a safe recreational outlet and perhaps even reduce the incidence of sexual assault.

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"The Brain" dives into a plethora of neurological topics, including development and decision making.

This was helpful to me, as I took some concepts regarding addiction and how decisions were made in order to further explain addiction.

Eagleman writes, that our minds are made up of a “congress” of neurons fighting over control of every little decision (Eagleman, 107).

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This is a very subjective question. Meaning it always depends on who you're asking. Because none of this has yet to be "proven" people will argue for This is a very subjective question. Meaning it always depends on who you're asking. Because none of this has yet to be "proven" people will argue for whoever's research and theories they agree with. I can give you some of my own personal (and I try really hard to be objective and steer clear of opinions, but that will always have a role so that's just my warning label of sorts, ha) but because this is such a big topic today it'd help if you were more specific... do you mean subconscious mind just basically like how we make decisions, fears, etc or do you want to go deeper meaning the abnormal subconscious mind and/or subconscious mind of trauma, etc. there are so many good out there. If you want recs let me know, but another good way to find is to do a bit of research online and/or going to a book store and looking at several books that deal with your specific questions... I hope this helps! ...more (less)

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This is a very subjective question. Meaning it always depends on who you're asking. Because none of this has yet to be "proven" people will argue for This is a very subjective question. Meaning it always depends on who you're asking.

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"Brain Images of Addiction in Action Show its Neural Basis" explains how substance addiction forms in the brain, and the different parts of the brain it effects on a neurological level.

I used this source to gain knowledge on addiction in general, how it effects the brain, and later relate it to pornography.

“Italian researchers reported in the journal ‘Nature’ that the mesolimbic dopamine system was active in nicotine addiction, adding tobacco to a roster that includes heroin, morphine, cocaine, amphetamines, marijuana and alcohol” (Daniel Goleman 1996).

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This is a digitized version of an article from The Times's print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

SOME neuroscientists are experiencing what amounts to a natural high. For the first time, they have captured images of the brains of addicts in the throes of craving for a drug, revealing the neural basis for addiction.

The finding caps a decade or more of intensive brain research seeking the grail of substance abuse, the neurological circuitry that compels addicts to pursue the next fix. And the discovery confirms a number of emerging scientific hunches about the neurology of addiction.

For instance, no matter what the addictive substance is -- amphetamines, heroin, alcohol or nicotine -- all seem to activate a single circuit for pleasure deep in the most ancient part of the brain. This circuit, for the neurotransmitter dopamine, is the site of the high that addictive drugs bring.

And fine-grained studies of brain cells reveal that repeatedly dosing the brain with addictive drugs is akin to a chemical assault that alters the very structure of the neurons in the circuitry for pleasure. These changes starve brain cells of dopamine, triggering a craving for the addictive drugs that will once again swamp the brain with it.

A drumbeat of findings from dozens of scientific laboratories, several within the last few months and as yet not published, herald these conclusions, which ''offer an extraordinary insight into the brain basis of drug addiction,'' said Dr. Alan I. Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He added, ''There have been a tremendous number of major advances in the last year.''

The identity of this brain circuit for addiction is a scientific flashback of sorts, if not a hallucinatory deja vu: the same brain area was the focus of intense study as long ago as the 1950's, when psychologists routinely implanted electrodes into rats' brains in the region they then called the brain's ''reward center.'' After the rats were trained to push a lever to stimulate this center, they would do nothing else, even forsaking food and water to dose themselves with dollops of rodent bliss -- an animal model of addiction. But the specific neural circuitry involved was, at the time, a scientific mystery.

Today that mystery seems to have been solved by using positron emission tomography scans of the brains of patients being treated for cocaine addiction. Reports from three different laboratories using PET scans show that when addicts feel a craving for a drug, there is a high level of activation in a strip of areas ranging from the amygdala and the anterior cingulate to the tip of both temporal lobes.

This mesolimbic dopamine system, as it is called, shows heightened metabolic activity ''when people are in a profound state of craving for cocaine, primed to seek it out and take it,'' said Dr. Annarose Childress, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania who did one of the PET studies. The work has been reported at scientific meetings but has not yet been published. The same system seems to be ordinarily in play to provide a sense of pleasure in whatever people find rewarding, like sex or chocolate or a job well done. Dopamine may also be part of a reward system in creatures as different from humans as bees, other researchers have shown.

In Dr. Childress's study, PET scans were done on patients under treatment for cocaine addiction while the patients were being exposed to cues that had made them crave cocaine in the past -- like seeing a videotape of people taking cocaine or handling crack pipes or other drug paraphernalia. Drug treatment programs routinely caution patients to avoid such Pavlovian cues, which addicts have learned to associate with the drug high itself, because the cues have long been known to trigger the craving for the drug.

The PET scans showed activation in the mesolimbic dopamine system as the addicts described feeling intense cravings for cocaine.

The mesolimbic dopamine system connects structures high in the brain, especially the orbitofrontal cortex, in the prefrontal area behind the forehead, with the amygdala in the brain's center, and with the nucleus accumbens, a structure that in animal research has proved to be a major site of activity in addiction, although in humans it is about the size of a squished pea, too small to register in PET images. The ultimate source of this dopamine system is the same brain region where psychologists stuck electrodes decades earlier to make rats endlessly stimulate themselves for pleasure, a location called the ventral tegmental area.

These brain areas have emerged in the last several years as hot spots in research on every addictive substance studied, and some that create dependency, if not strict addiction. Last month, for instance, Italian researchers reported in the journal Nature that the mesolimbic dopamine system was active in nicotine addiction, adding tobacco to a roster that includes heroin, morphine, cocaine, amphetamines, marijuana and alcohol.

In addiction studies with lab animals, a main site of activity is the outer layer of the nucleus accumbens. In humans, a nearby interconnected structure, the amygdala, ''is more important in craving,'' said Dr. George F. Koob, a neuroscientist at the Scripps Institute in San Diego. ''If people have a lesion in a section of the amygdala, they no longer link pleasure to its causes -- they wouldn't experience a favorite food as enjoyable,'' he said.

What ties years of brain research on addiction together in a ''final bow,'' Dr. Koob said, is the new finding by Dr. Childress and others that ''what lights up during craving is the temporal lobe, particularly the amygdala, where all these pathways converge.'' Dr. Koob reviewed earlier findings on the dopamine system in the May issue of the journal Neuron.

The various brain pathways he is referring to all have a particular kind of cell that has the D2 dopamine receptor, which is distinct from other dopamine receptors, like those involved in Parkinson's disease. PET images of cocaine patients taken over several weeks after they stop using the drug show a drop in those neuronal activity levels that is consistent with a lessened ability to receive dopamine. Although the degree of this reduction lessens over time, it is evident ''even a year and a half after withdrawal,'' said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the Division of Nuclear Medicine at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. She has also done some of the other recent PET studies.

This pattern of reduced brain activity directly reflects the course of the craving. ''The highest risk of relapse for cocaine addicts is during the third and fourth week after they've stopped taking the drug,'' said Dr. Joseph C. Wu, a psychiatrist at the University of California at Irvine who has made PET images of cocaine addicts that verify the other reports. ''You see the lowest levels of activity in the mesolimbic dopamine system during that time.'' This work has also been reported at meetings but is still unpublished.

The brains of addicts are almost back to normal after a year without the drug, though not completely, he said. ''If you can stay abstinent for about a year,'' Dr. Wu said, ''you've weathered the periods of greatest vulnerability.'' Scientists are still debating whether the dopamine cells ever fully return to normal.

The gross patterns of brain activity detected in PET scans represent changes at the microscopic level that are so dramatic that they are akin to the kinds of changes that result from a brain injury, in the view of Dr. Eric J. Nestler, a neuroscientist at the Laboratory of Molecular Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. In an anatomical study of dopamine cells in rats who had become addicted to morphine, Dr. Nestler's team found that the neurons with D2 dopamine receptors had become 25 percent smaller and had lost much of their ability to receive dollops of dopamine from nearby neurons. Their report will be published later this year in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The afflicted neurons also underwent a drastic change in their internal dynamics, altering the workings of the so-called second messengers, proteins like cyclic AMP. After a molecule like dopamine latches on to a receptor on the cell surface, the second messenger acts within the cell to coordinate its response, like the release of neurotransmitters to signal other neurons.

''When you take a drug like cocaine, it floods the neurons with levels of dopamine never seen in nature,'' Dr. Nestler said. ''The addictive drugs have an impact on the dopamine circuitry like a sledgehammer, storming through this pathway with an intensity that never occurs ordinarily. Taking drugs over and over perturbs these systems, and they try to adapt by making the dopamine less effective.''

Once the cells adapt this defensive maneuver and become less responsive, the cells are left bereft of normal levels of the neurotransmitter if a person stops taking a substance that floods the mesolimbic systems with dopamine. These changes seem to be the neural engine driving the craving for more of any drug.

''You find the same changes not just with cocaine,'' Dr. Volkow said, ''but also with other addictions, such as to heroin and to alcohol,'' although each drug affects the dopamine system through distinctive neural routes.

The shift to addiction seems to occur as dopamine deprivation produces chronic unpleasant feelings, depression and a loss of motivation, which leads to the need to take the drug to feel better. ''Once these cellular changes occur,'' Dr. Nestler said, ''addicts will take a drug just to feel right, not for a high.''

What does all this portend for the treatment of drug addiction? ''The research suggests a common biological essence to all addictions,'' Dr. Leshner, of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said, ''though I don't think we'll ever have a single magic bullet. We might instead one day have neurochemical cocktails that are specific to each addictive drug that would break the cycle of craving.''

In the meantime, Dr. Leshner sees a continued role for behavioral treatments of addiction. Approaches that count on people's ability to resist craving, like that of Alcoholics Anonymous, are still the most successful, many studies have found. ''If addiction means the brain has changed, then the task is to change the brain back to normal,'' Dr. Leshner said. ''But that doesn't mean treatments have to be biological. Behavioral treatments can change the brain, too.''

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Brain Images Of Addiction In Action Show Its Neural Basis (Published 1996)

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Neuroscientists are coming closer to an understanding of the nature of addiction; severals studies have found that no matter what the addictive substance--amphetamines, heroin, cocaine, alcohol or nicotine--all seem to activate a single circuit for pleasure deep in the most ancient part of the brain; this circuit, for the neurotransmitter dopamine, is the site of the high that addictive drugs bring; repeated drug doses overload normal neurotransmitters systems, and cells compensate by becoming smaller and making dopamine less effective; diagrams (M)

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This was my special experiences, where I asked Reddit Users on the pornography recover board "NoFap," whether or not they considered themselves addicted to pornography.

I used Reddit to get some real life testimony related to my question, asides from just general views. I implemented  some responses from self described pornography addicts into my essay.

He also added that since the beginning of lockdown, he began watching more depraved pornography that made him “very very disgusted with (himself)” (Anonymous #2 2020).

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Hello fellow NoFappers! I am doing a paper on porn addiction for a college English class, and I need a "special experience," which is some first hand experience from others to include relating to my topic. I would much appreciate it if you could tell me:

1. If you consider yourself addicted to porn, and how you know

2. If so, tell me some ways in which porn addiction has effected you and your life.

Just know I may include part of your answer in my essay, but it will be completely anonymous and isn't going to be published anywhere outside of my class. Any responses would be highly appreciated!

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Tell me about your experience with porn addiction.

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Hello fellow NoFappers! I am doing a paper on porn addiction for a college English class, and I need a "special experience," which is some first hand experience from others to include relating to my topic.