Psychology Today claiming porn ISN'T addictive

i am grateful to the underdog for starting this forum. hypofrontality impaired some of my best cognitive skills.

 

The rebuttal at the top of this thread is very accurate and persuasive. I am frustrated that the mainstream media has consistently combined the labels "anti-porn advocate" and "porn-addiction advocate." And I am disgusted that the manner in which a supposedly reputable magazine has chosen to address this question, is by means of an article that calls out one website by name. That type of baiting for a fight isn't appropriate for supposed scientific discussion. If you follow the author's links to all his other articles, you'll see that he has baited YBOP regularly, calling it "hysterical" for example. But he fails to read the YBOP contents, just assumes he knows what the concept is; and in general he takes positions on sex-addiction that actually can be quite in concert with the YBOP approach to things. He's the hysteric kettle, doing a great job of calling the pot black first.

Nevertheless, some of the Psych-Today article seems persuasive, even when taken under the caveats that the rebuttal offers. I have always smelled a bit of a rat in the ideas of "food addiction," "sex addiction," and therefore also in "porn addiction." There's got to be SOMETHING different going on, than in "cocaine addiction," "tobacco addiction," or "heroin addiction," right? Substances are one thing; behaviors are another. Maybe more than one study can be done, with more than a mere 52 subjects, and the self-reportage status of a given subject might be ignored too ("sure, I'll be a porn addict; what, there are no criteria to prove that I am or am not? gosh, I get to PICK whether I self-report as a porn addict? some science ...").

The great advantage of Your-Brain-On-Porn is that it bothers to address porn AT ALL; and gives us some wisdom drawn from the world of behavioral psychology, some other wisdom drawn from the world of addictive-substance psychology, and so forth. I don't think anyone was trying to disprove or prove conclusively that pornography consumption was entirely and exactly the same as heroin or cocaine use. I do think that the webmasters were helping a lot of people by drawing the admittedly loose parallel.

So Psychology Today doesn't get a lot of positive marks from me on this one. It's mostly sensationalism, in a world where pop culture goes bonkers already. YBOP deliberately cuts through the sensationalism to offer potential scientific explanations and theories; then Psych-Today comes in and says, "Aha! caught ya! we can make more of a splash than you can nyah nyah nyah ..." Doesn't help the ongoing debate.

Or to put it all differently, here's a metaphor. Desmond Morris really doesn't look like he gets laid a lot. But he keeps trying to tell us how it is that we're likely to get laid. Why do we keep listening to him? Is he REALLY right, or does he just tell us what SEEMS to be rather useful for the propagation and perpetuation of his, and our, present cultural assumptions?

 

Just because a substance can have additional effects does not change a simple fact. All addictions are initiated by the accumulation of deltafosb, which leads to a very specific set of Brain changes. Citations in my rebuttal post to Ley, or read our post. Porn, Pseudoscience and ΔFosB http://www.yourbrainonporn.com/porn-pseudoscience-and-%CE%B4fosb

We have explained this again and again. You do not see Ley attempt to refute this. You have never seen one opponent refute this. In fact, the DSM5 will have a behavioral addiction category. Be aware that all studies on gambling addiction, internet addiction, and food addiction studies have confirmed the same brain changes. These changes must be initiated by deltafosb, whose function is to turn certain genes on and other genes off.

The other indisputable biological fact is that drugs can only increase or decrease existing cellular mechanisms, So addiction must occur with evolved mechanisms. It is deltafosb, and its evolutionary purpose is to have you crave sex and yummy food. Drugs only hijack this mechanism. Please see this study: Natural and Drug Rewards Act on Common Neural Plasticity Mechanisms with ΔFosB as a Key Mediator (2013) http://yourbrainonporn.com/natural-and-drug-rewards-act-common-neural-plasticity-mechanisms-%CE%B4fosb-key-mediator-2013

When you see the physical damage done by meth, or a heroin addict going through cold turkey, you assume that such addictions are different. What's different is the toxic side effects of the chemicals (meth), or the down regulation of your body's own opioids (heroin). But the most addictive substance is nicotine (60% of users), whereas meth and heroin addict less than 10% percent of users. Nicotine has positive effects on brain functioning.... thus it is clear that toxic effects on the brain are NOT the cause of addiction.

So if all addictions involve activation of same molecular switch, and same gens - that leads to a constellation of shared brain changes, and these brain changes have been seen in all drug addictions and 4 major behavioral addictions, and all addiction share the same core behaviors - tell me how do addictions differ?

PS - there was absolutely nothing in Ley's unpublished study that shows that porn addiction does not exits. Nothing.

 

This is a really good post. I think what you bring up really warrants some thought and discussion. I'm too tired to think about it now, but I think a thread about how anti-pornography views are associated with moral or religious arguments, and who benefits from such misconceptions would make a great discussion. That being said, I DO believe pornography is morally wrong, but I'm not religious.

 

@ Gary Wilson: by your tone, it seems to me that you're taking me to task; but if you check the contents of my post, you'll see that I'm not disagreeing with YBOP and YBR much at all; content-wise, I think Gary and I probably agree a lot more. I didn't address many specifics in my post, because I wanted to come to a rather more generic over-all point of view. Sorry if we rubbed each other the wrong way. I was trying over-all to agree with the stance YBOP and YBR, not disagree.

@ tryin, doneatlast : the citation that tryin quotes, where doneatlast indicates the flip-flop which popular media has undergone, on the question of dogmatism in the porn and sexuality arena, really is a key kernel to the wrong-headedness of the Psychology-Today TYPE of approach right now. Much of the popular media (since Freud became more generally accepted?) wants ANY sexuality of ANY sort to be "good for you," without much concern over the specifics; so, when something like YBOP comes out with some reliable specifics indicating a hole in that theory, the new understanding finds itself dogmatically decried in popular media, possibly because of wrong-headed association with former Puritanical religious dogmatism which tended to indicate that ANY sexuality of ANY sort had to be "bad for you." (As an aside to the dogmatism / Puritanism discussion, I wonder how this would play out in a place like Japan, Holland, or Brazil, where the traditional matrix upon which sexuality is placed does not run exactly parallel to the same matrix lines on which Puritanical or anti-Puritanical religious questions run, simply because their national history does not include such a heavy early Puritanical influence of migrants.)

 

Yes, I am taking you to task over the following statement:

When you say that you smell a rat, I feel the need to say something. Especially when all the science points in only one direction - as described above, and described in the YBOP start here article.

Sorry if I come off a little too strong, but I have reached my limit with Ley's post.

 

Fair enough. You are right to correct my misconceptions, if you perceive them as such, and I certainly don't have the science knowledge or background that you do on this subject. No harm, no foul. I hadn't realized that I'd said something that directly addressed a "sticking point" in the ongoing controversy, when I claimed to make a distinction between behavioral and substance addictions, so, I'm sorry if I did make a wrong connection or two. In general, I make no claims to scientific "truth" here on this forum. I'm learning that the science points to behavioral and substance addictions being rather much more similar than I used to think. But still ... uh ... "food addiction" seems a bit like "air addiction" to me. Sure, I'm aerobic, I'm addicted to oxygen, gotta have it every day ... ?

 

Apologies if this is too dark, just getting some anger out and I hoped it might cheer people up:

Ask Ley to try this simple and extremely unscientific experiment and see if it changes his views on porn addiction:-

He personally spends a couple of consecutive weekends masturbating over internet pornography. The type of P is entirely his own choice (whatever gets him off), as is how often he orgasms.

In a couple of weeks time ask him how he's doing. Does he still think that porn is not addictive? If he still holds that view... well... he has to repeat the experiment every week...

...and we ask him again in three years time. How's he doing now? Work going well? Social life? Close relationships? Oh I'm sorry to hear that David. Bummer. Where do you think it all went wrong for you dude? No I'm sure you're right. It was nothing to do with porn. Any plans for the weekend? no? just a quiet one is it?

 

You are addicted to air, food and water. If you can no longer eat or drink water, you will become obsessed and do everything in your power to attain both. That is the characteristic of all addictions. It is these same mechanisms in the reward circuit that are hijacked with all addictions - both behavioral and drug.

What is addiction? A simple model for understanding addiction is to apply the four Cs:
1) Compulsion to use
2) Inability to Control use
3) Craving - psychological or physical
4) Continued use in spite of adverse consequences
Addiction may also be accompanied by physical dependence and withdrawal symptoms.

Eating to obesity causes the same brain changes and behaviors as other addictions, in humans and in animal experiments.
The 4 Cs applied to a food addict:
1- The compulsion to overeat or eat a lot of high fat/high sugar food
2 - Inability to control eating
3- Craving junk food, even when "full" or satiated,
4- Continued overeating despite wanting to stop. Continued overeating despite negative physical, psychological, and social consequences that arise from obesity.

I could create a similar list for gambling addiction or porn addiction. It is surprising to me that someone on this forum, who I assume has a porn addiction (or has seen a few posts from those who do), would have a hard time believing that behavioral addictions exist.

Your thinking is missing an obvious point: Just because you cannot imagine a food addiction - has no bearing on its existence. Keep in mind that there are billions of people who cannot imagine a porn addiction. Both exist, and both can have devastating effects on ones life.

If you want to read many studies and many lay articles verifying that food addiction exist and involves the same mechanisms and brain changes as drug addiction - see this section of YBOP: Food Addiction http://yourbrainonporn.com/garys-research-food-addiction

 

Not to get off topic but food addiction is very real-and very serious.

Throughout history humans needed to gorge themselves every meal as a survival mechanic, and food typically was not ultra-high in energy enhancing substances (such as sugar). Now humans face 2 problems with this:

1. Over-abundance of food, we simply have too much, and must exert self-control on a regular basis to prevent gorging.

2. The abundance of sugar and sodium in foods today activate reward circuitry in taste buds and (forgive me I am no scientist) reward centers in the brain related to food. Taste buds have a simple job-generally something that gives lots of energy (such as sugar and fats) taste better and this is a signal to eat more.

As I said I am no scientist, but it isn't difficult to take a little bit of human history combined with out current situation, and put two and two together.

 

UPDATE (2/2014) - A peer-reviewed rebuttal of the Prause paper (Steele et al), showing how she mislead the public about her findings. ‘Highdesire’, or ‘merely’ an addiction? A response to Steele et al., by Donald L. Hilton, Jr., MD* http://www.socioaffectiveneuroscipsychol.net/index.php/snp/article/view/23833/32589

UPDATE (8/2014) Cambridge University study says that Steele et al actually found evidence of addiction or cue-reactivity - http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0102419

EXCERPT from "Neural Correlates of Sexual Cue Reactivity in Individuals with and without Compulsive Sexual Behaviours Citation". Citation #25 is Steele et al.

Our findings suggest dACC activity reflects the role of sexual desire, which may have similarities to a study on the P300 in CSB subjects correlating with desire [25]. We show differences between the CSB group and healthy volunteers whereas this previous study did not have a control group. The comparison of this current study with previous publications in CSB focusing on diffusion MRI and the P300 is difficult given methodological differences. Studies of the P300, an event related potential used to study attentional bias in substance use disorders, show elevated measures with respect to use of nicotine [54], alcohol [55], and opiates [56], with measures often correlating with craving indices. The P300 is also commonly studied in substance-use disorders using oddball tasks in which low-probability targets are frequently mixed with high-probability non-targets. A meta-analysis showed that substance-use-disordered subjects and their unaffected family members had decreased P300 amplitude compared to healthy volunteers [57]. These findings suggest substance-use disorders may be characterized by impaired allocation of attentional resources to task-relevant cognitive information (non-drug targets) with enhanced attentional bias to drug cues. The decrease in P300 amplitude may also be an endophenotypic marker for substance-use disorders. Studies of event-related potentials focusing on motivation relevance of cocaine and heroin cues further report abnormalities in the late components of the ERP (>300 milliseconds; late positive potential, LPP) in frontal regions, which may also reflect craving and attention allocation [58]–[60]. The LPP is believed to reflect both early attentional capture (400 to 1000 msec) and later sustained processing of motivationally significant stimuli. Subjects with cocaine use disorder had elevated early LPP measures compared to healthy volunteers suggesting a role for early attentional capture of motivated attention along with attenuated responses to pleasant emotional stimuli. However, the late LPP measures were not significantly different from those in healthy volunteers [61]. The generators of the P300 event-related potential for target-related responses is believed to be the parietal cortex and cingulate [62]. Thus, both dACC activity in the present CSB study and P300 activity reported in a previous CSB study may reflect similar underlying processes of attentional capture. Similarly, both studies show a correlation between these measures with enhanced desire. Here we suggest that dACC activity correlates with desire, which may reflect an index of craving, but does not correlate with liking suggestive of on an incentive-salience model of addictions.


UPDATE - 9/2015: 3rd peer-reviewed paper critiques Steele at al. It's in total agreement with my critique and the other 2 papers cited above.

EXCERPT FROM "Neuroscience of Internet Pornography Addiction: A Review and Update (2015)"http://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/5/3/388

An EEG study on those complaining of problems regulating their viewing of internet pornography has reported the neural reactivity to sexual stimuli [303]. The study was designed to examine the relationship between ERP amplitudes when viewing emotional and sexual images and questionnaire measures of hypersexuality and sexual desire. The authors concluded that the absence of correlations between scores on hypersexuality questionnaires and mean P300 amplitudes when viewing sexual images “fail to provide support for models of pathological hypersexuality” [303] (p. 10). However, the lack of correlations may be better explained by arguable flaws in the methodology. For example, this study used a heterogeneous subject pool (males and females, including 7 non-heterosexuals). Cue-reactivity studies comparing the brain response of addicts to healthy controls require homogenous subjects (same sex, similar ages) to have valid results. Specific to porn addiction studies, it’s well established that males and females differ appreciably in brain and autonomic responses to the identical visual sexual stimuli [304,305,306]. Additionally, two of the screening questionnaires have not been validated for addicted IP users, and the subjects were not screened for other manifestations of addiction or mood disorders.

Moreover, the conclusion listed in the abstract, “Implications for understanding hypersexuality as high desire, rather than disordered, are discussed” [303] (p. 1) seems out of place considering the study’s finding that P300 amplitude was negatively correlated with desire for sex with a partner. As explained in Hilton (2014), this finding “directly contradicts the interpretation of P300 as high desire” [307]. The Hilton analysis further suggests that the absence of a control group and the inability of EEG technology to discriminate between “high sexual desire” and “sexual compulsion” render the Steele et al. findings uninterpretable [307].

Finally, a significant finding of the paper (higher P300 amplitude to sexual images, relative to neutral pictures) is given minimal attention in the discussion section. This is unexpected, as a common finding with substance and internet addicts is an increased P300 amplitude relative to neutral stimuli when exposed to visual cues associated with their addiction [308]. In fact, Voon, et al. [262] devoted a section of their discussion analyzing this prior study’s P300 findings. Voon et al. provided the explanation of importance of P300 not provided in the Steele paper, particularly in regards to established addiction models, concluding,

So while these authors [303] claimed that their study refuted the application of the addiction model to CSB, Voon et al. posited that these authors actually provided evidence supporting said model.



David Ley's Post was removed yesterday, as was my response to it. One of the authors of the study asked Psychology Today to remove my post as she said I misrepresented her unpublished, non-peer reviewed research.

I reminded her that only David Ley was given the study, and my post was only responding to Ley's post. So if Ley's description was inaccurate she should have corrected it.

Here are her comments under my PT article about the Ley's interpretation of the study, and my reply:


Study not requested nor reviewed
Submitted by Nicole Prause, PhD on April 10, 2013 - 1:54pm.

Unfortunately, these authors never requested access to our manuscript, so they actually did not review it. They have made a number of egregious errors misrepresenting the science in this article. I am investigating who to contact to remove this article given the lack of due diligence by the authors.
We are now using this as our course example of the misrepresentation of science in the media now, though, so thank you for that opportunity.

We are responding to Ley's post - as we stated
Submitted by Gary Wilson on April 10, 2013 - 2:41pm.

How could we misrepresent your unpublished study when we haven't seen it? We stated very clearly in our post that said we haven't seen it, and that we had only David Ley's description to go by.

THE FIRST PARAGRAPH OF OUR PT POST: David Ley asserts that a "rigorous, clever" study has single-handedly disproved that Internet porn addiction exists—without providing the actual study, or even an abstract, for detailed commentary. (One wonders how he came by a study that hasn't yet appeared publicly.) In any case, based on his description of this wonder study (and subject to revision if it becomes available), here are some cautionary observations:

Dr. Prause, you may want to reconsider your practice of releasing unpublished, non peer-reviewed studies to selected 'Psychology Today' bloggers who apparently cannot convey an accurate description of your study.

Questions for you:
1) Why did you release your study to only David Ley? As the author of the "Myth of Sex Addiction," and someone who claims porn addiction cannot exist, why was only he the only Chosen One?

2) Why haven't you corrected David Ley's interpretation of your study? It has been up for over a month, and you've commented twice on it in the last month.

3) You commented under Ley's post one month ago. I immediately posted a comment under you comment, with several specific questions directed to you about your study. That was your chance to both respond and offer the study. You did neither. Why are you over here making accusations instead?

It has has been very disappointing to witness the politics of science up close.


She then contacted PT editors and me through emails. Lots of threats. PT pulled my post. I wrote PT editors and surprisingly the editors removed Ley's post too.

Why did this blow up 5 weeks after the fact? Prause posted a link to her groups new study under Ley's article and we responded to her. Their goal is to prove porn addiction cannot exist. They always frame their findings as if the data does prove this. In the following study they found that "hypersexuals" have less emotional response to a single sexual film than do "normals," which in their view "proves" that porn isn't altering emotions in the way they expected. (Huh?)

We said that might be expected as heavy porn uses could be desensitized to vanilla porn, wheres as people who do not use porn would have a bigger emotional response. This caused her to hit the ceiling and go after us.

- No Evidence of Emotion Dysregulation in “Hypersexuals” Reporting Their Emotions to a Sexual Film http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10720162.2013.772874

OUR CRITIQUE of the above Prause study - http://yourbrainonporn.com/study-porn-users-report-narrower-emotional-range

 

Where is she going after you now? It is her move now that you've responded saying that her findings from the hypersexual study are inline with PA ideas.

It's just unfortunate that everyone has an agenda.

 

It took a long time before society accepted alcohol is harmful, and then that smoking is harmful. It'll take even more time for people to accept porn can be harmful as well.

I wish those guys could see me desperately searching all over my house for a scrap of pornography when I had it blocked on my computer and had to look at it. I found it, looked at it for a few minutes and then destroyed it. Minutes later I had the most insane withdrawal crisis of my life.

 

This occurred under my PT post, and in emails to me and to the Psychology Today editors. I responded to her rather nasty emails with a request to see her study, and she refused. It's funny how she accuses me of misrepresentation, yet I am only paraphrasing Ley's description in my PT post. I asked her a month ago for the study and for her to clarify Ley's description, yet she refused both. We are used to such tactics and spin from this group. It's how they roll.

The situation closely parallels smoking in that we have "scientists" with an agenda, who are turning out biased and worthless studies, to support their agenda. The sad fact is that the vast majority of "sex researchers" are in the agenda driven camp.

 

Are they ****ing kidding me?
I would like the doc who made that study explain some patterns:
*HOCD
*Escalation in viewed material, I started with gentle lesbian porn when i was a tennager and you don't wanna know what i watch now.
*Penis size anxiety even though im average.
*Cold dead penis if I do not orgasm.

My logic tells me nothing but porn addiction could have caused those incredibly sexual symptoms, especially the 2nd one which is a classic addiction symptom.
I would also like them to explain how come when I stopped porn for 6 months I could get hard just by dancing with a girl.
I hope there will be more research about the matter and that they will not make porn addiction sound like an illuminaty conspiracy, because it's the real deal.
It's gonna be a rough fight though, the forces behind porn industry are very powerful and include companies like google, and basically almost any software company.

 

The extreme level of anti-scientific investigation going on is really weird and disturbing. What on earth could be the deep investment that someone at, for example, PT, would have, in keeping the perception that porn is non-addictive? I don't chime in on either side of the debate; I just ask about PT's authors' motivations, and PT's editors' motivations for finding so many skewed authors. One would think that data and analysis would rule the day, but noooo ...

 

This is the new research group formed to debunk sex and porn addictions. It is headed up by Nicole Prause. http://www.span-lab.com/about/people.html

We know 3 of the members very well as they have been publishing research in the last 2 years saying that porn addiction does not exist. Two of the three (Timothy Fong & Rory Reid) have also engaged in a few debates on the subject.

Timothy Fong & Rory Reid were cited earlier by Ley in this PT post "The Sky Is Not Falling" (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/women-who-stray/201204/the-sky-is-not-falling

A QUOTE FROM LEY'S ABOVE ARTICLE "

Reid and Fong have published several studies together, while working at UCLA. Fong is Nicole Prause co-author on the study that this thread is all about. These appear to be the only "brain researchers" Ley ever cites.



The following is a letter the editor, and a telling example of Rory Reid's & Timothy Fong's work and attitudes. In it they strongly object to the existence of porn addiction: http://www.surgicalneurologyint.com/article.asp?issn=2152-7806%3byear=2011%3bvolume=2%3bissue=1%3bspage=64%3bepage=64%3baulast=)

In the letter Reid & Fong are attacking Hilton & Clark's - Pornography addiction: A neuroscience perspective - 2011](http://www.surgicalneurologyint.com/article.asp?issn=2152-7806;year=2011;volume=2;issue=1;spage=19;epage=19;aulast=Hilton).

If you scroll down you will see Hilton & Clark respond to Red & Fong's snarky Letter to the editor. In summary they say:

Here's the clincher for me. Reid is quoted in this 2010 article: Is porn a real addiction? Professionals disagree: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700066983/Is-porn-a-real-addiction-Professionals-disagree.html

Fong's buddy, and his co-author on multiple studies and porn addiction debates, is PROMISING that the UCLA team (Fong, Prause etc.) will find no differences in porn addicts brains. He guarantees it. Two and half years later, Fong & Prause have delivered on Reid's promise - by declaring porn addiction doesn't exist in their yet to be published EEG study, which they handed over to only David Ley.

Probably no ones reading this thread anymore, but I just wanted it out there.

 

Sometimes I think that the porn overlords are hiring these guys to tell the world porn is completely safe. I remember that other guy labelling Gary Wilson's work as "dangerous". Dangerous! Like "that monster is taking our children away from porn!".

 

It's possible that, to Fong et al., the porn issue is a tempest in a teapot and an excellent opportunity to self-promote. In other words, it's typical academic tenure-tracking in which the need to create articles and controversies (resolved, of course, in one's favor!) in order to gain departmental approval trumps even the need to state truth.

It's also possible that, to Fong et al., the need to trumpet sexual licentiousness is somehow founded in a misguided notion that all things intellectually justifiable are also anti-Puritanical. In other words, in a zeal to prove themselves to be members of the approvable Harvard-tenured-radicals crowd (you know, the official "Marxists" who spend $15,000 on antique table linens) they feel the need to deride any reduction in ejaculatory activity. Again, the word "tenure" arises.

And a third possibility is that Fong et al. were raised in a profoundly anti- or pro-sexual atmosphere, to the extent that some strange psychosis ensued.

I would think that a consideration of their backgrounds and tenure statuses would be beneficial. I'd like to know what they hope to gain by their subterfuge. Why not just arrange some scans and pilot experiments? If they really think their side is scientifically supportable, why not support it with science? And if they don't think their side is, or if they don't really have a truthful opinion about the science, then why are they so actively supporting the one side (or, to put it more accurately, why are they so actively denigrating the other side)? What REASON, what BENEFIT, what do they GAIN?

Could be publications and tenure. Could be notoriety (lots of people think that if they talk about sex on the internet they're doing something wonderfully scandalous! sorry to tell them, everyone else is already doing it). Could be money?

As far as the actual scientific debate goes (is porn addictive? do we have studies of neuro-transmitter pathways, MRIs, and the like, that prove that the brain-chemical mechanisms are similar to those engaged in, for example, nicotine addiction?) here's my thought:

I don't care.

Either porn IS addictive, I was and/or am addicted, and I found a good therapy that makes my life better;

or

porn is NOT addictive, I am deluded about my past or present addiction, and I found a good therapy that makes my life better.

See, either way, I spend less time in front of the boob tube; whack off in a way that is BALANCED and sane rather than obsessive; depend less on media intake for my definitions of physical female beauty; am more capable of legitimate relationships with real humans in the real world; have fewer computer-use oriented aches and pains; have less screen-oriented visual strain; have greater time for exercise, reading, and face-to-face legitimate socializing; have more ENERGY and INITIATIVE to devote to such worthwhile pursuits; spend more time on productive hobbies like learning a musical instrument, and less time on non-productive hobbies like masturbating; and, generally, am living much more like a grown up human being and much less like a shut-in internet porn-obsessed nerd.

Whether or not the nerd is literally "addicted."

Geez, I don't give a crap what WORD you use for it.

Now then, if we can ALSO prove that the MRI scans demonstrate that the SSRI cycle in the brain is similar to the nicotine addiction cycle? Or we can demonstrate other similarities? Well, then, that's good and useful knowledge, and I'd be happy to learn the truth of it. Too bad Fong et al. aren't so interested in truth. Studies are what's needed.

In the long run, I suspect, most participants here at Brain Rebalanced probably don't give a crap whether porn is officially a "real addiction" or not. What we care about is therapies and interventions that will AID in getting us OVER the need for porn. And benefiting our lives.