A session with my psychiatrist

Good for you for reaching out to a psychiatrist! A lot of people are not comfortable reaching out about this addiction. There're a lot of people in this community you can speak to!

 

Trust your instincts. If youre using PM to cope and its affecting your life then it is. You know yourself better than anyone else. In the case of any addiction if its causing destruction in your life and she cant realize that then she might the person whos wrong

 

Anything can become an addiction, and porn is no exception.

 

my psychiatrist is the same. I wonder how these people got a degree. Anything that messes with the brain's striatum can spiral into an addiction, especially something as dopamine related as pornography.

 

He may be able to help you despite his idiocy. There is a great danger with psychologists in telling people things are normal and good when they don’t know what in the world they are talking about. I’d look at it this way, you have your goals and your beliefs. He can either help you achieve what you desire or he can’t. Like any other service provider if he can’t then find another who can.

 

Lots of psychiatrist don't take time to study latest neuroscience studies regarding compulsive addictive behaviours (CAB). They still insist on 30 yo OCD paradigm when it's clear that any substance addiction/CAB in healthy brain (brain traumas or tumors are another story) is nothing else than deep learned behaviour (neuropathway engraved into our midbrains where all automated behaviours resides). It makes little difference to a brain if you're addicted to cocaine, heroin, alcohol, sex, gambling etc, neurological mechanism behind it is the same. The only difference is how bad acute detoxification is and how strong cravings will be in post acute phase of recovery (higher dopamine reward -> stronger cravings). It's a shame so many "medical professionals" don't bother learning mechanisms behind addiction. How can you help clients, when you don't understand how their brains work?

 

This is covered in the book 'your brain on porn', and yes porn addiction is an addiction. Unfortunately, not all the 'experts' recognize that.

 

He is right in saying you need to sort your problem and deal with the reason why you want to escape with porn but if you need to talk to someone change therapists or better yet see a sex therapist who specialize in this area.

Just say to him, "when I get stressed I want to go and watch porn and I can't stop myself and I regret it later". I'll tell you that's why its not worth it. You need to find ways of dealing with you stress but he is also right in saying a natural urge will come in 3,4,5 days its going to hit (for sure) but if you wanna overcome the addiction you can't use porn. Imagination is a better option but if you can't do it and need the porn then that means its not real libido, its a porn addiction, tell him.

 

I work for a Psyc, im in a psyc office right now. The reason they all say PMO is not an addiction is that the doctor's book of diagnoses does not classify porn as an abusable substance. This could change in the future. For instance, a doctor can not by definition diagnose a porn addiction, they can a sex addiction just not porn.

 

That's not entirely true. It seems like your docs are not up to date with 11th revision of ICD:
"On 18th June 2018, the World Health Organization’s authors of the International Classification of Diseases, 11th Revision, put out a press release announcing that the implementation version of the upcoming ICD-11 included Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder (CSBD) for the first time...
..Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder [6C72], at last offers healthcare professionals a formal, self-evident diagnosis for inability to control sexual behaviour despite negative consequences. "
->https://www.rewardfoundation.org/co...health-disorder-by-world-health-organization/
->https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http://id.who.int/icd/entity/1630268048