The Roman Catholic

Time Magazine’s recent article on addiction is an enlightening one as it explains how we get addicted and also how we could get over our addiction as well. The article lists the following substance and behavioral addictions that Americans are struggling with today:

• Alcohol - 18.7 million people
• Drugs - 3.6 million
• Tobacco - 71.5 million
• Caffeine - ?
• Food - 4 million
• Gambling - 2 million
• Shopping - 15 million
• Sex - 16 million
• Internet - ?

Surprisingly, there’s no mention of pornography as an addiction in this article. This behavior is definitely one with a huge addicted following which membership has been contributed greatly since the Internet arrived on the scene for Jane and John Doe in 1995. Pornography on the Internet is probably difficult to get a grasp on as it facilitates utmost privacy and optimal accessibility.

Let’s see what the experts say about addiction:

1. Dr. Nora Volkow (Director, U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse) defines addiction as the inability to stop when you want to despite being aware of the adverse consequences and it permeates your life as you spend more time satisfying your craving.
2. Dr. Martin Paulus, Professor of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego states that addiction is not just about substances but is about disrupting the processing of pleasure; the balance point is shifted so you keep creating more and more urges and you keep wanting more and more.
3. Scott Lukas, McLean Hospital says that addiction is a chronic and relapsing brain disease. It persists even when the individual is aware of the the ill effects on health and social well being.
4. Joseph Frascella, Director, Clinical Neuroscience, NIDA mentions that addictions occur when behaviors start to be become excessive. Addictions are the way our brain says that the addiction is good and we should repeat it.

We are aware of people who claim that pornography doesn’t harm anyone. Obviously from the verdicts of the expects above, such a claim is an expression of denial. Similar to substance abuse, pornography addiction destroys the lives of the addicted individual and relationships the person has with others.

For those of you who have a loved one who is addicted to pornopraphy, there is a Roman Catholic website that helps them to kick the habit. You may access it by clicking on the link the website named, PornNoMore.com

This entry was posted on Monday, July 23rd, 2007 at 1:00 and is filed under Catholic Answers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.