I have always thought addiction is not a failure of willpower or character but rather a coping mechanism for emotional strife and trauma people. Heck! Even belief it, and said it to one or two people at large. Offer people an outlet to heal their emotional pain and the substance no longer seems necessary to them. Well, this part I still believe is true. Nobody is beyond redemption.
the part that got me writing this article is my early statement- “addiction not being a lack of willpower”.

Recently I stumble into information about addiction that got me questioning all that I think I know about “Addiction”. Aside from the mainstream bullshit we hear from people with interest seeking to sell their products. This, we are about to get into is serious shit and I will entreat that we pay close attention to. So without much I ado let get right in.

First, let start from the beginning as it will help narrow some of the things we think we know.

What Is Addiction?

The term “addiction” has been used to refer to a range of excessive behaviors, such as gambling, video game playing, eating disorders, sports and physical exercise, media use, sex addiction, pathological working, and compulsive behavior.

Addiction is a primary chronic disease of the brain reward, motivation, memory, and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social, and spiritual manifestations. In short, any things that have the ability or stimuli enough to alter structural brain changes of inducing habits to became obligations are addictive. However, some psychologists and clinicians outside the addiction-science field claim it is a mistake to general addiction this way because to them addiction should only be used with substance usage. We will get into that in a minute.

Meanwhile, research has shown that in all addictions, despite their differences, or nature and type showed the same feature throughout subjects use for the study. These were their findings:

1. Craving and preoccupation with obtaining, engaging in, or recovering from the use of the substance or behavior;

2. Loss of control in using the substance or engaging in the behavior with increasing frequency or duration, larger amounts or intensity, or in increasing the risk in use and behavior to obtain the desired effect; and

3. Negative consequences in physical, social, occupational, financial, and psychological domains.

These are the brain changes associated with addiction. (Of course, specific addictions each have unique characteristics as well. For example, heroin addiction drastically reduces opioid receptors, which produces particularly severe withdrawal symptoms.)

The Debate

Some psychologists and clinicians outside the addiction-neuroscience field claim it is a mistake to employ addiction science to understand behaviors like compulsive gambling and out of control consumption of internet pornography. They argue that addiction only makes sense when talking about substances like heroin, alcohol, or nicotine. This view often finds its way into the media. But the latest research into the nature of addiction contradicts this. You may not be aware of it but addiction is perhaps the most extensively studied mental disorder. Unlike most disorders in psychiatry’s bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5), addiction can be reproduced at will in laboratory animals. Researchers then study the causal mechanisms and resulting brain changes right down to the molecular level. This makes perfect sense because addictive drugs only cause addiction because they magnify or inhibit brain mechanisms. Addiction specialists maintain that all addiction is one condition. It doesn’t matter whether it entails sexual behavior, gambling, alcohol, nicotine, heroin or crystal meth — many of which addiction neuroscientists have studied for decades. Hundreds of brain studies on behavioral and substance addiction confirm that all addictions modify the same fundamental brain mechanisms and produce a recognized set of anatomical and chemical alterations. The new definition of addiction refers to addiction involving gambling, food, and sexual behaviors. According to ASAM. The new ASAM definition makes a departure from equating addiction with just substance dependence, by describing how addiction is also related to behaviors that are rewarding… This definition says that addiction is about functioning and brain circuitry and how the structure and function of the brains of persons with addiction differ from the structure and function of the brains of persons who do not have addiction… Food and sexual behaviors and gambling behaviors can be associated with the ‘pathological pursuit of rewards’ described in this new definition of addiction. Outside the addiction field, you can still find vocal addiction naysayers who insist that gambling addiction and porn addiction are not addictions but rather compulsions. This is a fallacy! I have asked these naysayers, ‘how do the neural correlate for a compulsion to use something different from the neural correlate for addiction to something?’ (Neural correlate refer to the brain circuits, neurochemicals, receptors, and genes underlying a disorder.) The ‘compulsion’ advocates never answer because, in fact, there is no physical difference at the brain level between gambling addiction and a compulsion to gamble. There is only one reward center and one reward circuit. Core brain changes seen in behavioral addictions occur equally with drug addictions — and compulsions to use.

Here are some brain changes that show up in all addictions, whether substance (alcohol) or behavioral (pornography):

1. Desensitization, or a numbed response to pleasure. Reduced dopamine signaling and other changes leave the addict less sensitive to everyday pleasures and ‘hungry’ for dopamine raising activities and substances. The addict may neglect other interests and activities that were once high priorities. Desensitization is probably the first addiction-related brain change porn users notice. They need greater and greater stimulation to achieve the same buzz (‘tolerance’). They may spend more time online, prolonging sessions through edging, watching when not masturbating, or searching for the perfect video to end with. But desensitization can also take the form of escalating to new genres, sometimes harder and stranger, or even disturbing. Remember: shock, surprise, and anxiety can jack up dopamine.

1. Sensitization, or an unconscious super-memory of pleasure that, when activated, triggers powerful cravings. Rewired nerve connections cause the reward circuit to buzz in response to addiction-related cues or thoughts — the ‘fire together wire together’ principle. This Pavlovian memory makes the addiction more compelling than other activities in the addict’s life. Cues, such as turning on the computer, seeing a pop-up, or being alone, trigger intense cravings for porn. Are you suddenly much hornier (true libido) when your wife goes shopping? Unlikely. But perhaps you feel as if you are on autopilot, or someone else is controlling your brain. Some describe a sensitized porn response as ‘entering a tunnel that has only one escape: porn’. Maybe you feel a rush, rapid heartbeat, even trembling, and all you can think about is logging onto your favorite tube site. These are examples of sensitized addiction pathways activating your reward circuit, screaming, ‘Do it now!’

2. Hypofrontality, or reduced brain activity in the prefrontal regions, which weakens willpower in the face of strong subconscious cravings. Alterations in the prefrontal regions’ grey matter and white matter correlate with reduced impulse control and the weakened ability to foresee consequences. A recent German review of brain and psychological studies concluded that reduced brain function in internet addicts may be related to their loss of control over their internet use. Hypofrontality shows up as the feeling that two parts of your brain are engaged in a tug-of-war. The sensitized addiction pathways are screaming ‘Yes!’ while your ‘higher brain’ is saying, ‘No, not again!’ While the executive-control portions of your brain are in a weakened condition the addiction pathways usually win.

3. Dysfunctional stress circuits, which can make even minor stress lead to stronger cravings and relapse because they activate powerful sensitized pathways. To sum up, if these neuroplasticity changes could speak, desensitization would be moaning, ‘I can’t get any satisfaction’. At the same time, sensitization would be poking you in the ribs saying, ‘hey, I’ve got just what you need’, which happens to be the very thing that caused the desensitization. Hypofrontality would be shrugging and sighing, ‘bad idea, but I can’t stop you’. Dysfunctional stress circuits would be screaming, ‘I NEED something NOW to take the edge off!’

How The Brain Rewired (Porn Addicts)?

Norman Doidge described strongly suggested that their use of pornography had re-trained, and made significant material changes to, their brains. He explains in his bestseller book “The Brain That Changes Itself”: The men at their computers looking at porn … had been seduced into pornographic training sessions that met all the conditions required for plastic change of brain maps. Since neurons that fire together wire together, these men got massive amounts of practice wiring these images into the pleasure centers of the brain, with the rapt attention necessary for plastic change… Each time they felt sexual excitement and had an orgasm when they masturbated, a ‘spritz of dopamine’, the reward neurotransmitter, consolidated the connections made in the brain during the sessions. Not only did the reward facilitate the behavior; it provoked none of the embarrassment they felt purchasing a Playboy magazine at a store or surfing the internet to view porn. Here was a behavior with no ‘punishment’, only reward. The content of what they found exciting changed as the Web sites introduced themes and scripts that altered their brains without their awareness. Because plasticity (how the brain create new pathways and associations to the reward circuitry of the brain) is competitive, the brain maps for new, exciting images increased at the expense of what had previously attracted them — the reason, I believe, they began to find their girlfriends less of a turn-on… As for the patients who became involved in porn, most were able to go cold turkey once they understood the problem and how they were plastically reinforcing it. They found eventually that they were attracted once again to their mates.

You already know that dopamine sets off the neurochemical events that cause addiction-related brain changes. If you don’t, now you know. But the actual molecular switch that initiates many of the lasting brain changes is the protein DeltaFosB. Dopamine surges trigger DeltaFosB’s production. It then accumulates slowly in the reward circuitry in proportion to the amount of dopamine released when we chronically indulge in natural rewards (sex, sugar, high fat, aerobic exercise) or virtually any drug of abuse. DeltaFosB takes a month or two to dissipate, but the changes it causes can remain. Why am I telling you about DeltaFosB? Unlikely as it may seem, this single neurobiological discovery dismantles the claim that porn addiction does not exist. DeltaFosB accumulating in the reward center of the brain is now considered to be a sustained molecular switch for both behavioral and chemical addictions. What does DeltaFosB do as it accumulates? It turns on a very specific set of genes that physically and chemically alter the reward center. Think of dopamine as the foreman on a construction site barking the orders and DeltaFosB as the construction workers who actually pour the cement. Dopamine is yelling, ‘This activity is really, really important, and you should do it again and again.’ DeltaFosB’s job, as the construction worker, is to have you remember and repeat the activity. It does this by rewiring your brain to want ‘it’, ‘it’ being whatever you have been bingeing on. A spiral can ensue in which wanting leads to doing, doing triggers more surges of dopamine, dopamine causes DeltaFosB to accumulate — and the urge to repeat the behavior gets stronger with each loop.

Today’s internet porn users are demonstrating that human sexuality is far more malleable than anyone realized. Viewers can use today’s hyper-stimulating content to produce supernormal arousal states, which they can maintain for hours. As overconsumption leads to desensitization, the brain seeks more dopamine via novelty, shock, forbidden content, kink, seeking, etc. That’s when earlier porn tastes may no longer do the job. Clearly, there are early windows of development, during which deep associations can get wired in more or less permanently. And of course, during puberty, all erotic memories gain power and are reinforced with each instance of arousal. Avid porn use in teens, whose brains are highly plastic, can cause sexual tastes to morph with surprising swiftness

Rebooting (Reversing changes made to the brain)

Initially, the rebooting process is challenging. Your brain is counting on you to supply the artificially intense ‘fix’ of dopamine (and other neurochemicals) it has adapted to through porn or substance use. It can get very testy when its fix is not forthcoming when it summons you with a craving. However, freedom lies in allowing it to return to normal sensitivity and weaken any addiction pathways. Only then will you be truly free to set your own priorities without loud neurochemical signals stressing you and overriding your choices. When you remove a source of pleasure from the brain, it is like taking away the leg of a table. The whole thing becomes rocky and unstable. And mark my words the brain will fight back. The brain has two options: one, to make you hurt like hell in every way it can think of to ‘encourage’ you to put the table leg back again, or two, to accept that the table leg is really gone, and figure out how to re-balance without it. Of course, it tries Option One first. Then, after a while, it gets to work on Option Two, all while still pushing Option One. Eventually, it seems like the brain re-balances, giving up on Option One, and fully succeeding at Option Two.

I wouldn’t be rushed to suggest a quick fix for this kind of shit, it's a lot than meet the eye on the surface. But the goal now is to seek your pleasure from interacting with real people without a screen between you and awaken your appetite for life and love. At first, your brain may not perceive real people as particularly stimulating in comparison with the novelty-at-a-click furnished by internet porn. However, as you consistently refuse to activate the porn pathways in your brain, your priorities gradually shift.

Here are ways one can cope with or try to escape the unwanted urges not to relapse to porn usage again.

Creative pursuits, hobbies, life purpose

The first few weeks are primarily a battle of distraction. Put all your extra time, energy, and confidence to use on other efforts that keep you preoccupied.

Learn more about what’s going on in your brain

Whether rebooters know a lot or a little about science, they generally value learning how the brain interacts with a supernormal stimulus such as today’s internet porn. It explains how they got where they are and how to change course.

Exercise, beneficial stressors

Of all the techniques rebooters experiment with, exercise seems to be the most universally beneficial. It’s an excellent distraction from urges, also improves self-confidence and fitness.

socialization

Humans evolved as tribal, pair-bonding primates. the connection is some of the best health insurance the planet offers. Go more, meet people. It helps reduce the hormone cortisol, which can otherwise weaken the immune system under stress.

This is not to say they wouldn’t be any drawbacks. Common withdrawal symptoms include irritability, anxiety or even panic, unaccustomed tears, restlessness, lethargy, headaches, brain fog, depression, mood swings, desire to isolate, muscle tightness, insomnia, and severe cravings sexual dysfunction, etc to use porn.

Further Reading:

Gary Wilson’s book

Your Brain On Porn: Internet Pornography and The Emerging Science of Addiction.