“Drugs originally designed to treat alcoholism, depression, and ED have all been suggested. “The use of medications ‘off-label’ to treat ‘pornography addiction’ also appears common,” the authors wrote.
The treatment can be costly, as much as $677 per day for inpatient care, according to the study. In the report, Ley and his colleagues conclude that the pornography and sex addiction industry makes many claims for treatment and success with little if any data to back up those claims. This issue is discussed at length among sex researchers and is actually very complex.” Regarding Prause’s research last summer, he wrote, “We have no way of knowing how it might have differed if more explicit, more intense, or stimuli that better mapped to personal preferences were used instead.
In a 2013 issue of Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity: The Journal of Treatment & Prevention, Reid argued that hypersexual activity should not be classified as an addiction despite having similarities with substance disorders.īut he maintains that the existence of sexual problems cannot be denied. Rory Reid, a practicing provider of treatment for sexual disorders and gambling and substance abuse problems at UCLA, critiqued Prause’s earlier work, saying he doubts whether brain markers of any kind can predict the absence or presence of a disorder. By studying subjects who viewed sexual images during an EEG, she showed that simply having a high libido, absent of a problem, creates a strong brain response. She made headlines last summer when she co-authored a study claiming that the response someone has to pornography has nothing to do with addiction. Prause is no stranger to the sex addiction debate. Get the Facts: 12 Ways Sex Helps You Live Longer » The result is research that is subject to “many forms of bias” and not applicable to larger populations, he said. Ley, a clinical psychologist in Albuquerque, N.M., said the studies that justify the addiction are usually “cross-sectional.” This means they may describe how certain groups of people act, but they don’t show any real cause and effect. “They base their writings upon their own clinical experience and anecdotes.” “Many of these clinicians are themselves self-identified porn addicts, who are treating others who self-identify as addicts,” Ley said. Their work, published this month in the journal Current Sexual Health Reports, points to poorly conducted experiments, conclusions based on anecdotes, and limited samples.ĭavid Ley, the study’s lead author, told Healthline that the limited research that exists on visual sexual stimuli (pornography) is usually written by people working in what he calls a “lucrative” industry. So say the authors of an analysis of previous research on the subject. The dirty truth about pornography and sex addiction is that they probably aren’t real. Authors claim that the pornography industry and the sex rehab industry are behind flawed research.