Is sex/porn addiction real?

19 June 2025

 The idea of sex and porn addiction is still, for some, a contentious area. While many ‘addicts’ would swear to the reality of the addiction, there are people who see it as a false condition. 

 Seeing male celebrities blame their problematic sexual behaviour on addiction can come across as entitled men looking for an excuse for their bad behaviour. 

 Then there are the jokes - ‘Sex addiction? - that doesn’t sound too bad!’

 There are also some people who see the idea of sex addiction as something made up by sex-hating prudes who want to claim that sexual behaviour they don’t approve of is some kind of disease.

 These arguments can turn the whole issue into a moral issue rather than a heath issue. 

 But the reality for many people, mostly men but also including some women, can be very difficult to the tabloid presentation. They find themselves spending long periods of their week watching porn, without feeling able to stop, or engaged in other compulsive sexual behaviour, such as paying for sex or ‘cruising’ for sexual partners.

Behavours can be addictive too

 Historically, addiction was only used for substances, such as alcohol or drugs. More recently the definition has been broadened to include behaviours, such as gambling or gaming. In a way, it doesn’t matter that much if out-of-control sex or porn behaviour is regarded as an addiction or not - for the sufferer is still having to deal with the consequences.

 But there are health and political consequences of what it is called. If it is classed as an addiction then it is taken more seriously by the health service and also there is much more availability of funding to carry out research into the condition.

 Because sex and porn addiction has not been officially recognised until recently, there has not been enough research demonstrating the condition is the same as chemical addictions, such as alcohol, or behaviour addictions, such as gambling.

 There has been some research, however. For example, in 2014 Cambridge University performed brain scans on men watching pornography and found that the same areas of the brain were lit up as when people were shown their drug of choice. 

 In 2019 the World Health Organisation (WHO) accepted the term compulsive sexual behaviour disorder (CSBD) in its manual for health experts. This was a major development because, for the first time, it recognised the condition as something to be taken seriously by health professionals.

 The fact that CSBD was recognised by the WHO has also led to much more research into the condition and many people expect that in the coming years it will be moved from being described as an impulse control disorder to being recognised as an addiction. This is what happened in the past to gambling addiction.

Addiction is complicated

 Paula Hall, a psychotherapist and author of Understanding and Treating Sex and Pornography Addiction, says that the addiction is definitely real, as millions of sufferers would vouch for, but that like many conditions they are complicated and not always easy to define. 

 She says: “Like all addictions, problems may be mild or severe, they may have existed for many years with no apparent cause or they may have been triggered by a particular event…or it may be a problem that crops up in someone’s life only occasionally.”

 So, for those who follow an addiction mode when it comes to sex and porn, what does ‘addiction’ mean? It generally means a pattern of out-of-control sexual behaviour that is causing significant negative consequences in someone’s life. Often they will have tried to stop, or cut down, the behaviour but failed, possibly on several occasions.

 In fact, rather than being able to stop or cut down the behaviour, many people who are addicted find that their behaviour escalates. They find that they are spending more and more time watching porn, or visiting sex workers or whatever their behaviour is. Or they find that they are seeking out more extreme content online to keep them aroused because the nature of sex addiction is that we constantly seek out novelty to maintain the same level of arousal.

 Some experts believe that it is not accurate to refer to sex or porn ‘addiction’ and that ‘addiction’ is an overused term, while compulsion, impulse control or obsession would be better descriptions.

 But often those who are against describing the behaviour as addictive do so, at least in part, because they are concerned that a treatment approach would be one of abstinence, such as that adopted by 12-step groups who work with alcohol or drug addiction. That, of course, does not apply easily to sexual behaviour which, unlike alcohol or drugs, is a natural part of being human.

 But there are other treatment approaches for addictions and, according to Paula Hall, the abstinence model of 12-step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), is not suitable for sex and porn addiction. 

Biopsychosocial model

 Rather than using the ‘medical’ model of addiction, such as that adopted by AA, which views addiction as a ‘disease’ she uses what’s known as a biopsychosocial model. This takes into account someone’s biological make-up, psychological issues and social/cultural factors such as religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation. 

 The disease/medical model viewed addiction as causing irreversible brain damage and recommended total abstinence. But developments in neuroscience have shown that changes in the brain can be reversed, through behaviour change. The biopsychosocial model states that as well as biological changes there are psychological and emotional issues that influence addiction and that this all takes place in a social context.

 In sex/porn addiction work experts are increasingly accepting the biopsychosocial model, in which abstinence is not the goal, but rather helping the individual find ways of expressing their sexuality in a non-compulsive way. This obviously takes time because old, addictive ways of relating to sex need to be challenged and, as the person becomes less bound by their addictive behaviour they are able to explore how they want to express themselves sexually in a way that is not about using sex as a way of managing their emotions.