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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

I think what I am trying to convey is that it is not an addiction like nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, heroine, where the brain wants the substance itself.

With porn, it is the brain making a cost benefit calculation that putting in the effort for the real thing is not worth the cost relative to cost/benefit ratio of porn.

As in do I make all the effort to get my wife in the mood, or do I open a website and be done with it. Or do I control my diet and exercise, or do I open a website and be done with it.

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I understand what you're trying to convey and I'm sorry but it's just not true.

Brain scans show the pathways for porn addiction are very similar to those found in cocain and amphetamine addicts. Perhaps this is true for you, but don't discredit porn addiction as not a "real addiction" when it's an established fact that it is one on par with substance abuse.

An addiction can be sometimes a masked emotional need/problem.

-I want porn, because I carve intimacy

-I want to smoke, so I can relax or be seen as Y.

-I drink a lot of coffee because I dont have time for Quality Sleep.

Almost every single drug addict and alcoholic has an emotional basis for their addiction. Be it childhood trauma, a predisposition to anxiety/depression, etc.

The fact that these reasons exist doesn't make the addiction any less of an addiction. It's often a reason why rehab centers try to take a holistic approach and not only tackle the addiction, but the surrounding lifestyle choices that further enable the addiction.

It's not "addiction is a masked emotional needs problem" it's, "addiction is often accompanied by emotional needs problems". Subtly different, but different nonetheless.

Established fact? You are trying to make a porn addiction appear as bad as a meth addiction and that is just not based in reality. The outcomes and damage of substance abuse are more severe and should not be conflated.

The established fact is that porn addiction utilizes the same nuerological pathways as substance addiction.

I said nothing of the outcomes, though I wouldn't be so sure. We don't have any data on the outcomes of porn addiction. I wonder how many young men have committed suicide in large part due to their porn addiction, or how many have lost their jobs. It's certainly a non-zero number.

Established fact?

Not according to the American Psychological Association [1]

A brain scans showing a similar response to other pleasure stimula is far from "addiction".

GP has a valid point. Blaming porn for sex issues is an oversimplification of a very complex issue involving deep interpersonal dynamics.

[1] https://www.insider.com/guides/health/mental-health/porn-add...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3050060/

I didn't blame porn alone, but I said I wouldn't discount it's contribution to the issue as GP did. I agree it's a complex issue.

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