What is the difference between having a naturally high sex drive, and having a porn/sex addiction?

8 comments

1. Not an expert an porn addiction per se but addiction generally means that you spend more and more time and resources on the source of the addiction, prefer it to other things to do even though you enjoyed them before and that it hurts your relationships.

   So if you mostly prefer porn to the real thing most of the time that could be a sign or if you “lose control” over when you watch porn and for how long

2. My take on it is, a addiction start coming before other things in life.
   So school / work / assigments and you are making the choices to stay doing an activity / substance or habit that is not good for you as you are addicted to it.

   Destruction of normal / useful / needed / have to do things like sleep, eat, etc.

3. If you’re neglecting other aspects of your life, like work/school/family, because you’re so occupied with porn/sex, then at that point I would call it an addiction.

4. Porn fucks with the neurons in your brain and messes up dopamine receptors so you don’t have a high libdo you might just like the stimulus of porn which also is a super stimulant

5. The difference is how much of your mind and life are dedicated to it. If you’re at work and a significant amount of your time is spent fantasizing and scoping partners, that’s considered an unhealthy preoccupation. If you don’t have other social outlets, group involvement, hobbies and interests but you have a rich porn folder and think about sex all the time, it’s considered unhealthy. Because it interferes with your functioning in other domains of life.

   If you just like having sex every day, that’s a high sex drive.

   The data on porn is pretty strong. If you watch porn every day, and you have any difficulty NOT watching porn, you have a serious problem. And compulsive porn use increases sexual preoccupation, making it more likely to interfere in other areas of life.

   Signs of an unhealthy relationship with *anything* include secrecy, shame, and defensiveness about it.

6. Sex drive is how often you want/need it. The other part is how you are choosing to take care of it.

   It becomes an addiction when it starts taking away from other necessary aspects of your life.

7. If I was held at gunpoint at forced to put a number to it, I would say 5+ times a day and you are unable to go a few days to a week without it due to circumstances or higher priorities. Even then it would be an unhealthy behavioral compulsion or coping mechanism, not an addiction.

   If it’s just something you do, that doesn’t significantly impact your ability to function, and you don’t hurt anyone with it — it’s not. Another way to look at this is the Hawaiian Missile scare a few years back. Thousands of people thought they were about to die and stopped watching porn, followed by one of the largest reported spikes in viewer count by Pornhub. Those people were not addicted.

   It’s perfectly okay for sex, porn, or masturbation, to be an important hobby.

8. Nothing. An accusation of sex addiction is just another way of slut shaming.