I don't think negative habitual behavior equals addiction.
Not to marginalize people who has problem with porn or food habits, but poor self-control and bad habits does not equal addiction in my book. I'm probably wrong definition wise, but I think this stance trivializes real addiction.
I mean, yes, dopamine and all that. Reward of negative behavior. But you make your own decisions in life. You're not an insect, you're a conscious human being.
I was under the impression that the definition used traditionally in medicine is that denial of the addictive substance results in physiological withdrawal symptoms; hence caffeine and heroin are addictive, but cocaine is not. [Edit: wrong about cocaine.]
Increasing tolerance is a feature of some definitions. "Drug seeky" and "drug keepy" are other features - people who hide bottles of alcohol around the house, or people who need to find more of the drug when their supplies are running low.
Saying that cocaine isn't addictive would be a strange definition of addiction.
Yes, I was wrong about that, as apparently there are withdrawal symptoms with cocaine.
Do you regard the human brain as belonging to the physical universe, or somehow apart from it? If the former, where and what is the "you" that is making the decision?
Can I just suggest that if you are not a conscious human being who makes choices, but instead, like a billiard ball, are whacked around by the myriad balls and cues you encounter in your meaningless existence, with thoughts caused by minds caused by brains caused by effects chaining back forever...
then being swayed by one more argument or not makes zero impact on your status. You remain a mere effect of your circumstances.
If you want to pretend to take part in a rational discourse, you should also pretend to be a conscious human being to whom discourse makes a difference and reasons can be better or worse as they conform to reality or not. Your alternatives are limited by the nature of the forum you've chosen.
I'm cautious about the new addictions, and I think there's some misunderstanding in sensationalising in pop therapy, but I can see how porn addiction or sex addiction can happen.
It's pretty well established that people can be addicted to gambling, and I don't see much difference between that and other non-substance based addictions. Gambling is more well known because it is so well tuned to exploit the addict.
In combination with external factors (like stress) I can totally see why people are returning to addiction again and again.
Most of the time, getting out of addiction takes more than your run-off-the-mill consciousness and self-control.
If you're not examining it in a scientific way, then you have no business making conclusions.
Remember your criteria for addiction doesn't match that of the medical community's, and for good reason.
Very well put. I am no expert in this subject, but it feels to me that the web is taking advantage of this pattern a little too much.
I am not just talking about porn, its social networks, video sites, gaming sites, aggregators all of which are being engineered to optimize for engagement.
Ask any serious WoW player how the game has impacted their life. From what people have told me, the social relations in-game are such that one becomes reliant on a group and vice-versa to advance in the game. Soon those reliances become responsibilities that start to overshadow real life.
Some anime is specifically drawn and written to take advantage of the type of person that would obsessively envelope themselves into their favorite anime's branding. Do a google image search for otaku, and you will immediately see the kind of profits people peddling 50 different editions of the same figurine must be raking in.
Take a look a bluelight.ru and erowid. The former is a forum for discussion of psychoactives the latter a index of chemicals and experience reports submitted by users. Instead of the harm reduction espoused, it encourages dangerous behavior in the name of 'sharing research'; which is just ingesting what could be a chemical without much human research and just writing about it. One wouldn't be compelled to put themselves in such a position if it wasn't normalized and encouraged by a community that was warped by a pattern of addictive behavior.
Grouphug.us is another example. Reddit certainly is as well. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc all provide that supplemental 'reward' of positive human interaction without the human component. Your brain isn't stupid, when actual human interaction doesn't provide the reward you WANT, it will learn where it can get it. Psychological addiction is quite the beast.
Today, someone can find a lab willing to synthesize a chemical for very cheap with the intention of selling it for a huge profit online. That person then posts on a board such as bluelight or erowid, where the first introduction of its ABUSE is documented. Users of the board are attracted to the novelty of the new substance, and are encouraged by the community to follow the behavior of 'researching and sharing' by acquiring said substance, ingesting, and then relaying back to the board about the experience. They are likely some of the first people in all of history to ingest the substance. If you don't think this is inherently dangerous behavior I don't know what to tell you. I don't think it detracts from their goal of harm reduction, but that element of the community exists and I do think it warrants more scrutiny than immediately dismissing my argument.
If you want to read a well researched book on the phenomenon, pick up Drugs 2.0 by Mike Power. It's on amazon's UK site.
As long as quasi-legal analogues and new substances are going to be sold as cheap highs in head shops and adult video stores and the like, which they most certainly are now that more and more designer drugs are being produced everyday, I certainly want knowledgable people sharing their bad, and good experiences with others.
If some people enjoy beta-testing new substances knowing their long-term safety profile is completely unknown, would you rather it be done completely in the dark, or at least with ideas of dosage ranges, knowledge of warning signs of overdose,etc etc.
While it's clear that Shulgin was more responsible than a lot of budding teenage psychonauts, that's not always the case (Lilly's use of ketamine comes to mind), and it's not clear what he was doing was inherently less dangerous. He was often the first person in history to test a substance.