DRUGSAs with drugs, habituation can also occur with pornography, in
which the starting “dose” no longer works as well. When sex addicts
were repeatedly shown the same sexual images, their interest dimin-
ished. The activity measured in their dopamine circuits also decreased
as the images were shown over and over. The same thing happened
to healthy males who were repeatedly shown the same pornographic
video. When they were shown a new video, their dopamine systems
revved up again. This experience of a dopamine rush, followed by a
dopamine drop (repeated images), followed by another dopamine rush
(new images), pushes addicts to continually seek out fresh material,
which may explain why browsing internet sex sites can become com-
pulsive. It’s hard to resist the demands of dopamine circuits, especially
with something as evolutionarily important as sex. The researchers who
performed the study also identified a wanting/liking divide similar to
what is seen in drug addiction: “Sex addicts showed higher levels of
desire when watching pornography, but did not necessarily rate the
explicit videos higher in their ‘liking’ scores.”
ARE VIDEO GAMES ADDICTIVE, TOO?It’s not just pornography that can ensnare computer users. Some scien-
tists claim that video games can also be addicting. In certain ways, video
games are similar to casino games. Like slot machines, video games
surprise players with unpredictable rewards. They do more than that,
though, which can make them even more potent agents of dopamine
release. In researching this problem, psychologist Douglas Gentile of
Iowa State University found that nearly one in ten gamers ages eight
to eighteen are addicted, causing family, social, school, or psychological
damage because of their video game playing habits—a rate of addic-
tion more than five times higher than that among gamblers, accord-
ing to the National Research Council on Pathological Gambling. What
accounts for this large difference in how many users get addicted?
Part of the difference is that the video gamers Gentile studied
were adolescents. It’s unusual for adults to experience serious negative