Excerpt from He's a Porn Addict...Now What? (Overbay and Shea): "Is there a difference between pornography addiction and sex addiction?"
How do I know if he’s actually an addict? Tony, the mental health professional To be clear, until recently, there wasn’t anything in either the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Classification of Diseases (ICD) that talked about sexual addiction or pornography addiction. Recently, the WHO updated the ICD to include Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder (CSBD) as a mental health condition. While this designation doesn't exactly meet the standard for addiction, it is definitely the strongest statement made by a body of experts in the field of sexual mental health. Let me share a very 30,000-foot view of what is happening to the brain when viewing pornography. When a man watches porn, his brain releases the feel-good drug, dopamine. There is some fascinating research around what is called “The Coolidge Effect.” The idea is that a male will mate with