Is It Addiction?

Classification

 

Debates have been wrangling, and will continue to do so, regarding whether consistent and perceived-as-detrimental pornography use can be viewed as addictive. Researchers are questioning the old belief that only substances administered from outside the body could be addictive (Clark & Zack, 2023). I have spoken to enough people whose use of pornography showed classic signs of tolerance, use despite harm, etc to believe that such a thing as pornography addiction exists. The current research backs this perspective in that the same brain changes that have been found in people addicted to substances are seen in people who have used pornography in compulsive ways. (Georgiadis, J. & Kringelbach, M. 2012)

 

The World Health Organisation (2019) decided to put Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder into its International Classification of Diseases (ICD11). Its description is as follows:

 

Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder is characterised by a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges resulting in repetitive sexual behaviour. Symptoms may include repetitive sexual activities becoming a central focus of the person’s life to the point of neglecting health and personal care or other interests, activities and responsibilities; numerous unsuccessful efforts to significantly reduce repetitive sexual behaviour; and continued repetitive sexual behaviour despite adverse consequences or deriving little or no satisfaction from it. The pattern of failure to control intense, sexual impulses or urges and resulting repetitive sexual behaviour is manifested over an extended period of time (e.g., 6 months or more), and causes marked distress or significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. Distress that is entirely related to moral judgments and disapproval about sexual impulses, urges, or behaviours is not sufficient to meet this requirement.

 

 

Is it really addiction?

 

More moons ago than I’d like to recall, when I was a drugs worker at a South London police station, I was told that cannabis and cocaine were not addictive, because they did not have a direct effect on any neurological systems. As research continued and people found receptors for endocannabinoids, plus the effect of cocaine on the dopamine and adrenaline systems, the theory had to be revised. Similar effects are being seen for people who, like my drug-using clients, find it immensely difficult to curtail their use of pornography even if they desperately want to. Debates go on all over the internet between neurology researchers, pro-pornography bloggers and advocates, psychology magazine editors etc. regarding whether pornography can be an addiction. It might be wiser just to deal it as something that ensnares people to the extent that they act in ways that feel like they go against their own will, and escalate and cause great amounts of heartache and destruction in many areas of life….and have associated neurochemical and physiological correlates. 

 

In recent years, neuroscientists have been finding that the same brain changes that they see in people addicted to e.g. methamphetamine, are seen in people with unchecked use of e.g. food or pornography (Hilton, 2016). Even though we are creatures with spirit, we have a biology that underpins our behaviour in great measure and, as I’ll discuss at another point, we cannot truly separate the biological and spiritual aspects of ourselves (I am my body book).

 

When researchers look at the kinds of biochemical activation involved in addiction to obvious candidates for compulsive use, such as cocaine and alcohol, they find that the same neurotransmitters are involved when the brain responds to sexual stimuli. An example is where MORs (mu opioid receptors) are shown to increase in activity in response to sexual cues in the environment, and after mating (Balfour, Yu & Coolen, 2023). These same MORs are becoming increasingly viewed as highly relevant to models of addiction (Contet, Kieffer & Befor, 2004).

 

I do not want to make the focus of this book the word ‘addiction’. My focus is on whether pornography is a problem…for you, for others whom you know, for society. The concept, though, of addiction, can be helpful in answering the question of why someone might feel desperately like they want to quit an activity that they know is detrimental, but cannot.

 

 

Regardless, it affects your biology

 

If we set aside debates about whether one can become addicted to sexual behaviours, what can be said is that there are biological markers associated with the experience of hypersexuality (say what this term means). Hypersexuality is associated with changes even to the degree of the tiny molecules (microRNA4456 for anyone technically minded) that interact with our DNA to create new proteins (Bostrõm et al, 2020). This particular research suggested that some of the areas affected would be the amygdala, where anxiety is processed, the hippocampus, connected with memory processing (check) and the oxytocin pathways, which are associated with social and sexual bonding. The researchers suggested that the MicroRNAs were part of the aetiology of addiction, but, given that life events and psychotherapy can affect these same types of molecules (Maffioletti et al, 2021), it is also likely that their levels are being affected by behaviour and do not necessarily represent a predisposition.

 

Regardless of whether some people are genetically predisposed, or whether people’s biochemistry is being affected by their biology, my take-away is this – that God knew what He was doing when he invested us with the incredible amount of nuanced biochemistry that we take for granted. When we expose ourselves to environments that God knows to be bad for us, we run the risk of imbalancing very delicate chemical interactions.  

 

 

Learning

 

When we experience something, the associated feeling, pleasurable or otherwise gets stored in memory circuits, especially if those experiences were intense. The stimulus and the response get coded together, and the association gets stronger with each update, each time the stimulus leads to the same response (Osorio- Gómez et al, 2023). Thereafter, attentional, motivational and anticipatory processes are also affected as the brain has learnt what the outcome of engaging with the stimulus will be. If you can predict a pleasurable outcome, then the stimulus becomes something you will want, at least on some level, to engage with. Attentional bias means that people will start thinking about the potential outcome when cued by something that someone else might not even see. When I was a drugs worker in Sutton, I recall sitting in a police cell with an arrestee. It was summer and she looked at my bare arms. She commented on what great veins I had. I didn’t even get what she meant at first, being fairly new to the job. The sight of my prominent median basilic vein was a trigger for her to think about heroin, a memory consolidated by all the pleasure that she’d had from the experience that had been updated many times.