#no worries I getcha I didn't feel it was accusatory or anything

[northwest-cryptid]

This post goes over most of it

The big thing that was explained to me a while back also has to do with how an actual addiction is formed, by alteration of the brain to create an artificial dependency.

Essentially the idea is that when you use a substance it releases dopamine in such quantities that your brain actually has to recover from it. The receptors that respond to dopamine are unable to respond to as much and your brain can't produce as much. So the only way you're getting to feel that good again is by abusing the substance to force more dopamine into your system.

Something I've come to understand is that addiction can form one of two ways but only one is actually classified as addiction. That one being the aforementioned alteration of the brain resulting in a dependency that shouldn't otherwise be necessary.

The second, and mind you this isn't real addiction; is a sort of behavioral decision made from poor impulse control and not really being able to prioritize in a healthy manner.

What I mean by that is that someone may decide on impulse to engage with behavior they wouldn't normally prioritize if the immediate benefit outweighs other behavior's payoff.

As an example let's say I have to make a quick decision. I can either spend time with my friends, which is a social interaction, they want to play some online game; so now I'm required to be social and dedicate some level of effort to the interaction. It's easy to say this would be a healthy way to obtain dopamine, I get to enjoy a game with friends. In fact this could provide prolonged dopamine over a few hours.

Or I could sit alone in my room, which doesn't require social interaction, and just watch porn; so that's no effort, immediate dopamine and a lot of it all without having to socialize. This likely would actually result in more dopamine as my stupid monkey brain keeps producing hormones that trigger reward chemicals in my brain for this behavior. However this behavior is less desirable overall from the standpoint of myself being a social individual and not a shut in who watches porn as my only source of dopamine.

Now if I'm suffering from depression and none of my family or friends is really helping with that, it's a very easy answer to just turn to something like porn that gives immediate and extreme amounts of dopamine. However this is literally normal behavior, like my body is producing hormones that make this behavior fun in the first place. So my brain isn't going to be altered by something it's literally built for. I may form a sort of behavioral preference but it's not an actual addiction, at that point it's just lazy decision making based off impulse and not actually wanting to change.

I think the big thing about that to consider is that, it's ultimately not hurting them if they're normal about it.

As someone who has worked in NSFW fields for over a decade I've come to know a lot of people who consider engaging with porn to be just a normal hobby, no different than they might decide to watch a movie or play a video game.

I think people are far too quick to call something an addiction without considering what an addiction really is, from a scientific perspective.

I have ADHD and I'm autistic, so impulse control isn't exactly at the forefront of my best skills, this is why for most my life I thought I must be addicted to MMORPGs. It wasn't until I was sat down and asked why I played these games that I understood the reasoning behind my decisions.

From an outside perspective it's very easy to see a kid shut themselves in a room and play online every day and say that's addiction. If I'd rather play a game than focus on school, social relations, or family; it must be addiction right? Well... If we look at the fact I was literally depressed to the point school wasn't going well for me, I didn't have friends who didn't play online games to begin with and I saw what few friends I had at school every day, and my family was constantly telling me I needed to fix my life; it suddenly becomes a lot more understandable that in reality online games were a way for me to even remotely feel like I'm good at something, which in turn helped me to not be so depressed all the time.

It's not that I was addicted to gaming it was that my behavioral patterns preferred playing games to other activities because I got the most dopamine for the least amount of effort from it. There's no logical reason for me to develop other behavior patterns because the only people telling me I need to are like, my parents and such; which ultimately weren't helping with my depression.

At the end of the day it wasn't addiction, I had control over my actions; it was just the logical right thing to do in my head. This is what I mean when I say addiction fetishists won't admit that porn addiction isn't real.

Because if they really do have control over it but are just choosing to engage with porn obsessively then it not only goes against their kink, but suddenly they feel a need to justify that behavior logically or admit to being some "perverted porn freak" instead of just being an unfortunate victim.

In reality, engaging with adult material isn't actually bad, it doesn't actually inherently do anything to you. It can wrap your perspective of sex, it can change how you view people, sure; but those are things you'd almost need to already be thinking about for it to convince you to a degree you can't just think for yourself. In other words you'd have to be agreeable to the idea before it's proposed to you at which point it's likely not the cause and effect the was people think and rather that people gravitate towards that kind of porn because of their pre-existing views.

Anyways this is just what I'm aware of, there are proper scientists and studies and such that are done by people with degrees and the like and if you poke around the Internet you can find plenty on the topic.

Never try to explain to a NSFW community that you can't be addicted to pornography. That it literally is not an addiction. That it cannot change your brain chemistry in that way. That this has literally been proven.

Not only will they not accept it, you will make them sad.