Underlying reason for addiction

I do believe there is always a reason you become an addict, whether it be psychical addiction or mental, there is always something causing the craving.

 

Guess I can stop blaming my childhood. Good to know people that didn't have trauma can get addicted. Makes sense. There does not always have to be a reason. Sometimes looking for one is a waste of time. Bottom line.. we were horny, it was available, we couldn't resist, and it formed a habit

 

I believe they did a study where they tried to addict mice to some drug. Turned out that mice locked in a small cage with nothing to do will become addicts, but mice living in a perfect mouse environment with adequate access to food, space, other mice to "socialize" with, etc. did not become addicts. They didn't care about the drugs.

I think that even if there's no underlying trauma, the human environment for many people in modern civilization can be a lot like the cramped, boring, and lonely cages that the addict mice were forced to live in. Everything about your life may be "normal," but normal is still far from ideal in terms of what we were adapted to--hunting and gathering in tightly knit groups no larger than 50 or so.

 

Honestly I don't even know mine. My first orgasm happened without porn, without pillows and without girl. Gosh, I actually was with girl (naked and stuff) before that and nothing happened, I guess I was just too young. But then it happened out of nowhere. I was lying in my bed and... Well, basically things happened. Since then it became automatic. See a good looking chick on a cover of a magazine and boom. Hormones explode, strange feeling in stomach and heart rate rises up and up. Next thing you know there's magazine in one hand and dick in another. Don't quite remember how porn happened, tbh. Me and my friends used to visit this one dude who was obsessed with sex stuff (younger than us) and he would tell us how his mom fucked with other dudes and how he saw anything, then he showed us porn videos on his PC. I mean... I don't even know where he's now, since that thing was with him since he was like 11. Crazy.

 

@fapsz

Your first post hit it. No other reason than loving a dopamine high is necessary to get addicted. Sure, you may have other issues, but, if you did not get that dopamine high, and love it, via porn, you would not watch porn. Too many people arrive here wanting to blame this problem on some other problem. Big mistake, and big detour in fixing it. We, human beings, humanity, like sex and to think about sex, because that is how our brains are wired. Nature considers that a huge survival and success trait, because animals that think about sex, tend to have it, and having it tends to lead to babies, and the most successful survival trait any species can have is the ability to reproduce massively. We invented High Speed Internet Porn around 2007. About that time we first began to use the phrase "porn addiction". That is no coincidence. Everyone here can be just fine, but knowing what you are hooked to is key to becoming unhooked. Are you hooked on porn? No. HSIP is just the delivery method; if you are hooked, you are hooked on using it to generate sexual thoughts, and those, in turn generate the thing you love and do not want to give up: an artificially enhanced dopamine high. Know yourself. Get Educated.

Thanks Fapsz, for the insight, and teaching.

Will I AM.

 

I had the same experience, a very good childhood yet active pm+ addiction. Reasons are not helpful if they become blaming. Fatalism helps if it is more like acceptance but it can easily become despair. Point is reasons can be distracting, much better for me has been to focus on "I'm an addict" k keeping it dirt simple. The nice thing is if I'm just an addict and I didn't have trauma then I don't need medication, therapy etc I can just focus on the solution to addiction, undoing what I built with all that pm+ I did.

 

This is so true. Porn addiction itself isn't the problem. It's the underlying cause of the addiction that needs to be addressed.

Personally, I tend to fall back into this hole because of my loneliness. Having never been in a relationship, porn gives me that high which creates an illusion that I'm "getting it" so to speak, but obviously, it is anything but that. To tackle this, I've been reevaluating my priorities and focusing on things I can do to improve my lifestyle overall. Instead of prioritizing relationships, I'm prioritizing my career, my future, my physical and mental health and my social skills.

 

My question to you : how do you know you don't have anxiety?
The other question is: what your confidence level ( from 1 to 10)?

 

Just because it's not a big monumental event it doesn't mean it isn't a reason, you said even in the OP there's no other reason - meaning that it self is a reason.

I actually think a big reason is unfortunately a distraction. People don't think in terms of the small cause and effect relationships between events anymore, but rather "think" by attributing overarching generalizations with the commonly accepted "solution" which doesn't require them to understand anything about their life and mental process, just try this or that and end up not being clear about whether it worked, just maybe it kind of makes them feel better - or BECAUSE they do feel significantly better they conclude solution X worked, therefore no need to think much about it.

If there is cause and effect there's a reason for everything. It could be a form of mental laziness to not pay attention to the smaller causes. But on the other hand, with trauma it may in fact be easier to look at the smaller everyday stuff and get a handle on it instead of just thinking it's that traumatic event, trauma runs deep and there's nothing to do about it even if you kind of keep going to therapy. Everything in our day is a choice and opportunity to steer our life even if it doesn't directly change that. The power isn't in whether it's big or small, it's in understanding the causal relationship of it all.

 

True and I agree, small reasons are enough. That's what I'm getting at though as sort of a side point, it's still important and we feel it is important enough or else we wouldn't be here.

What I'm kind of afraid of is the people who HAVE experienced abuse will not listen to people who haven't, because they may think "they don't know what it's like" and yes that's true, but that doesn't mean other people can't have helpful information to share.

 

It doesn't have to be trauma or mental disorder. From what I've read on the topic the origin of addiction is always some sort of pain. Eckart Tolle: "Every Addiction starts with pain and ends with pain." Gabor Mate:" Ask yourself not why the addiction, but why the pain." Now this pain doesn't have to be some traumatic past event (but it very often is), it could be something as innocent as feeling empty inside (lack of connection with others or with "higher being"), lacking direction or purpose, goals to look forward to… The fact is that people who have found long lasting inner peace of mind and have a feeling that they can adequately function in a society, usually don't get addicted. They can use alcohol or drugs recreationally or indulge in highly dopamine rewarding activities occasionally without the worry of becoming psychologically addicted. Dr. Mark Lewis writes that pain can be physical (chronic pain, chemical imbalances...), psychological (mental disorders originating from past trauma or inadequate coping skills) or spiritual (feeling of emptiness, inner void, purposelessness...). You can have a perfect childhood but still be a candidate for becoming addicted because of particular personality type, like being too sensitive/empathetic (which can be a good thing) without appropriate coping skills to shield yourself from it. Clinical studies have shown that between 8-12% patients who were administered morphine for a long period as a pain relief treatment develop psychological addiction (all develop physical addiction). This is the risk group who would probably get hooked if they tried it by themselves too.

Here is very good explanation of the process:

STRESS = NO.1 REASON FOR RELAPSE (59:00):

The Hijacked Brain Part 1: Understanding Addiction


The Hijacked Brain Part 2: The Power of Denial


The Hijacked Brain Part 3: Recovering Reality

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