Can One Be Addicted To Sex?

You might recall that in 2021 there was a horrific mass shooting in 3 massage parlours in Atlanta, Georgia in which 8 people, including 6 Asian women, were killed. While I in no way want to minimize the horrific and clear racial aspect of this slaughter, I thought it might be useful to offer some comments about the claim that the sex addiction of the perpetrator was instrumental in motivating him to commit this massacre.

To this end, I offer a brief overview about the nature of addiction and whether there is justification to claim that individuals can be addicted to sex and/or pornography. While researchers who study human sexuality and addiction are in disagreement as to whether it should be a psychiatric diagnosis, there is evidence to support the claim.

To begin with, it’s important to consider how we define addiction. One can choose this fairly narrow, physiologically-based definition: Using drugs or performing behaviours that result in tolerance effects and withdrawal symptoms. Tolerance refers to the finding that after a few doses of the drug, the intensity of the pleasure felt declines noticeably, prompting the user to take a stronger dose.

However, I prefer a much broader definition: a dependency on some drug, or behaviour, to the extent that the user ignores other pressing responsibilities, including family, work and social obligations.”

This introduces a list of qualifying behaviours that is surprisingly long. As I detail in my book, addictions have been documented for drugs and alcohol, eating, gambling, surfing the Internet, sex, consuming Internet pornography, checking a cell phone for social media, shopping, and running, just to name a few.

There is evidence that Internet pornography is one of the fastest growing forms of addiction. This is most likely due to the fact that there is abundant free pornography available on the Internet. In addition, it can be watched in private and at any time. This has been referred to as the Triple-A engine; accessibility, affordability, and anonymity.

In addition, every conceivable type of content, and probably some that are difficult to even imagine, are available on one website or another. The numbers associated with viewing pornography on the Internet are staggering. According to the review statistics published by Pornhub for 2019, around 42 billion visits to the site were made, which is 8.7 billion more than the previous year. This means about 115 million visits were being made each day! It’s also worth noting that 32% of these visits were made by women, so this is a pursuit less male-dominated than commonly thought.

So, can we truly call this addiction? Two strong pieces of evidence tell us yes. First, sex or porn addiction is highly likely to show tolerance. Many accounts of Internet users found on the Internet confirm major tolerance effects. Not only do users report needing to spend longer amounts of time during sessions, they also are likely to begin to view more and more extreme pornography. Second, if we take a more brain-based approach, there is lots of evidence that pornography strongly activates the same pleasure pathways triggered by drugs of abuse.

Perhaps an even more distressing aspect of this is that it’s a vicious cycle that stymies the hopes of young men for actual sexual relationships. A young man who lacks self-confidence or is shy, or fearful of rejection, can easily access highly stimulating erotic images. This then makes him less likely to initiate real relationships, which in turn, makes him more likely to resort to porn. It’s easy to see the path to addiction in this case.

Thus, it would be wrong to blame his sex addiction alone for the gunman’s horrific act. However, we should accept that given the power of sex and porn addictions, they could definitely be important contributing factors.