Category Archives: addiction

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Dopamine And Sex Addiction

February 9, 2016

The Contribution Of Dopamine In Sex Addiction

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that coordinates information transfer within the brain of human beings. It is mostly associated with information that is mostly related to pleasure of rewards to the body.  Dopamine can therefore be said to be the brain neurotransmitter that passes information from one neuron on the brain to another. The effects of dopamine in the brain mainly depends on where or which part of the brain it is released from, there the intended receiving neurons are located within the brain and the types of the receiving neurons and the receptors to which the dopamine is bonded to within the brain.

It, dopamine, is a neurotransmitter that is mostly associated with the brain or body motivation, attention, lust, addiction and even desire. When a body in in dire need for something or a substance, normally viewed as reward by the brain, it has been found that it is usually the neurotransmitter at work. Naturally, the human brain regards pleasure of any kind the same way, that is, it the same response to different forms of desires provided they bring pleasure. Its basic distinguished signature response to pleasure is the release of dopamine in the nucleus accumbems part of the brain. Some of the rewards the brain considers to bring it pleasure include; monetary reward, drugs, sexual activity, and satisfaction of eating.

Dopamine And Sex Addiction

Whether, the above named pleasurable activities remain a normal daily routine or they become addiction do depend on some factors too. You see a normal life routine would has a normal response to these rewards. However, some of life’s activities such as substance abuse, sex, or even gambling would have a different effects to the brain all together. This can be referred to as short circuiting the brain. The speed with which any of these activities leads to dopamine released to the brain, the intensity of its release and the reliability of its released has been said to be responsible for whether one becomes an addict or not. Let us examine how dopamine do function on the brain of a sex addict. Addiction to something can be said to be the state at which a person has a craving for one thing, in which they have no control over, and continue to have themselves involved in irrespective of the consequences however dire.

Experiencing a sexual activity, desire or pleasure causes a powerful surge of dopamine release on the brain. This is a normal occurrence within the brain in response to and pleasurable encounter. However repeated encounter with far much greater intensity can and do lead to sexual addiction. Dopamine released in the brain interact with others neurotransmitters such as the glutamate and other in order to cause some influences to the brain and the body. Together, these neurotransmitters, dopamine and glutamate, interact and take over the reward sensing brain system. This is the part of the brain system that is hugely associated with motivation and memory and is also the part that associated sex with reward and pleasure for the brain.

Repeated sexual activities causes the nerves cells of the parts of the brain that is responsible for the for the planning and execution of tasks to communicate in a way that is starts by liking the sex, then wanting the sex, then finally craving sex in such a way that the brain is fixed on wanting it so badly that it loses control of the body’s will. This too much sexual craving drives the brain to have a strong desire for sexual pleasure. However, with time, the brain cells adapt to this sexual craving which results into the desire for the sex becoming less pleasurable that was first imagined.

Dopamine and Sex Addiction

Too much sexual activities leads to the brain being flooded by the neurotransmitter, dopamine to an extend that the brain finds it quite difficult to with stand the surge. When the brain achieves this state, the sex addict has a problem at their hands. This will want to solve this new feeling of displeasure by having more and more sex. Instead of getting the desired pleasure, this increased in sexual activity will lead to more production of dopamine to the brain up to the limit where its release is greatly reduced. This reduction on the dopamine release or elimination of dopamine receptors leads to less impact on the brain reward center. This is the stage where the sex no longer provides the pleasure it is associated with hence the brain requires more sexual activity to achieve the same high pleasure state.

At this stage, the person is compelled to have more sexual activities. The pleasure of sex wind down, though, the memory of the desired pleasure remains, hence the persistence of the need for sex. This ultimately, results into sex addiction.

The Contribution Of Dopamine In Sex Addiction

 

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Dealing with the minds perception about cocaine addiction

February 7, 2016

Dealing with the minds perception about cocaine addiction: Coping with craving of cocaine (part two)

Dealing with the minds perception about cocaine addiction

In our part one of this series of articles about the cognitive behavioral approach of treating addiction, we had highlighted some of the areas to focus on as listed below and we were able to explore on the first one i.e. understanding craving. You can actually make reference on that as we progress but for the purpose of this article we want to continue from where we left and see how best we can describe craving which is one of the biggest elements when it comes to solving the problem of addiction. Our team of experts from the home of addiction solutions (AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center) under the able leadership of doctor Dalal Akoury who is also the founder of the facility, we want to explore on the possibilities of dealing with the minds perception about cocaine addiction with a view of finding lasting solutions to the scourge of addiction.

Dealing with the minds perception about cocaine addiction: Describing craving

Having understood what cravings is our next point would be to get the essential sense of the patients’ experience of craving. This can be very broad and may include having the knowledge about the following information.

What is craving like for you? – Doctor Akoury says that cravings or urges as it is commonly known is experienced in many different of ways by different patients. Like for instance an individual could say, the experience is primarily somatic that is to say, a patient would just get a feeling in the stomach or the heart races or just start smelling the element being craved for. For others, craving is experienced more cognitively; like for example one would say that “I need it now” or “I can’t get it out of my head” or “It calls on me.” Or it may be experienced effectively; for example, “I get nervous” or “I’m bored.” Depending on your individual experience, it is important that when seeking for help, you let your therapist know your experience with craving, this way they will be able to get to the roots of the problem and offer solutions effectively.

Are you bothered by craving? – There is tremendous variability in the level and intensity of craving reported by patients. For some, achieving and maintaining control over craving will be a principal treatment goal and take several weeks to achieve. Other patients deny they experience any craving. Gentle exploration with patients who deny any craving especially those who continue to use cocaine often reveals that they misinterpret a variety of experiences or simply ignore craving when it occurs until they suddenly find themselves using. Other, abstinent patients, who deny they experience any craving often, when asked, admit to intense fears about relapsing.

How long does craving last for you? – In this journey doctor Akoury says that to make the point about the duration and nature of craving, it is often very important for professionals to point out to their patients that they have rarely let themselves experience an episode of craving without giving in to it.

How do you try to cope with it? – Getting a sense of the coping strategies used by patients will help the therapist identify their characteristic coping styles and select appropriate coping strategies.

Dealing with the minds perception about cocaine addiction: Identifying triggers

The next point to focus on would be the identification of the triggers to the substance of abuse. It is important that therapists should work very closely with their patients to develop a comprehensive list of their own triggers. Some patients become overwhelmed when asked to identify cues. From experience doctor Akoury says that when handling addicts, you will notice that someone may even associate breathing with cocaine use. Again, it may be most helpful therefore to concentrate on identifying the craving and cues that have been most problematic to the patient in recent weeks. This should commence immediately during the therapy session and this should include self-monitoring of craving so that patients can begin to identify new and more subtle cues as they arise.

Dealing with the minds perception about cocaine addiction: Avoiding cues

When considering the avoidance of cues it is always advisable that you keep in mind the general strategy of “recognize, avoid, and cope.” These strategies are particularly applicable to craving for all substances and not necessarily cocaine. Doctor Akoury says that real experts would first identify the patients’ most problematic cues then make an exploration of the degree to which some of those could be avoided. This will come with certain sacrifices including breaking ties or reducing contact with individuals who use or supply you with cocaine, getting rid of paraphernalia, staying out of bars or other places where cocaine is used, or no longer carrying money, as in the following example:

Finally in dealing with the minds perception about cocaine addiction one needs not to let any stone unturned. I am saying this because we are all aware that cocaine is an illegal substance but other substances like alcohol which are legal can form a perfect avenue for the consumption of cocaine without being noticed. Besides that the ability to pay for the substance is another point of consideration. When the financial strength allows users to access cocaine could easily form a solution in an alcoholic drink. Therefore experts from AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center recommends that for any meaningful treatment to be realized, therapists and other professionals in the line of substance abuse must spend considerable time exploring the relationship between alcohol and cocaine with patients who use them together to such an extent that alcohol becomes a powerful cocaine cue. Specific strategies to reduce, or preferably, stop alcohol use should be explored. We appreciate that doing this may not be easy for many people and that is why doctor Akoury will be readily available on call for you to schedule for an appointment so that any pending or unclear issues relating to addiction can be attended to professionally.

Dealing with the minds perception about cocaine addiction: Coping with craving of cocaine (part two)

 

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Digital-sexuality

Digital Revolution and Sexuality

February 4, 2016

Just how much has digital revolution impacted on sexuality?

The world has come a long way regarding the way information is accessed, received or even passed on. This is concerning the time it takes and the efficiency with which one takes to get or pass on a piece of information. Thanks to the digital revolution, information access, retrieval, and dissemination have become quite efficient. On the pre-digital era, it would take considerable effort for one to get a piece of information and yet still, to pass on that same information to the intended recipient. However, with the great revolution that has taken place in the recent years, information access is now a click away.

Digital revolution has seen the emergence of computer technology as the main form of searching for, accessing, retrieving and sending of information from one point to another. The Internet has emerged and with it the social media; WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter among others. It is, therefore, a common knowledge that this development in information availability has some profound effect. The article now talks of digital revolution and sexuality.

Digital revolution and sexuality

Sexuality has, since the ancient times, been treated as sacred. It is sexual feeling or behavior that surfaces when two people are intimate, a state that is now under threat. Thanks to the digital revolution, the sacred value of sexuality is quickly becoming extinct. The emergence of so many digital gadgets and platforms has made in practically impossible for sexuality to be between just two people.

Sexual morality in public and private has been greatly jeopardized through the digital revolution era. The internet is full of sexual contents ranging from nude photos of celebrities and even unknown individuals who post them there for attention from the public. Apart from the nude photo, the internet, and many social media platforms are full of sex tapes and pornographic videos. Exposure to this kind of information has led to great moral decadence. Prostitution has become the in thing as people now tend to pay for sex and others willing to get paid for sex. These are just ideas people who were previously morally upright have got from the digital world.

The digital era has also brought about bad habits like child sex abuse. Teenagers get exposed to sexuality at a very early stage in their development due to the technological advancement, or digital revolution. From the erotic videos they get exposed from the Internet and other networks with explicit sexual contents, teenagers develop the inappropriate urge to explore and experiment on their sexuality. They, therefore, end up having sex at a very early age.

Revolution in the digital world has also brought vices like sexual harassment and violence in sexual practices. People watch those commercial erotic videos and porn posted on the internet, and because of the violent nature of some, they want to put into practice the same. This also leads to addiction in sex as one would get aroused every time they think of porn or watch.

Sexual satisfaction with their partners is also affected by this digital revolution. When someone is addicted to watching porn and the sexual videos available over the internet, they ran the risk of experiencing some dissatisfaction when they have sex with their partners. This is because they will want to put into practice what they watch and because their partners do not have the same experience will not meet their expectation. Apart from that, they may also feel dissatisfied with their bodies. Sexual dissatisfaction with one partner will drive the porn addict to find other partners ending up practicing dangerous sexual practices. Having multiple sexual partners may lead to sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

Digital revolution and sexuality

The sexual dissatisfaction caused as a result of too much exposure to the internet pornography, and the unmatched expectations may also lead to practices such as masturbation. This come as a result of the desire for sex that is developed by the individual but is unable to have sex for so reason such as lack of presence of a partner or poor socializing habits that are also developed due to over indulgence on porn watching.

In cases where one is over indulged or addicted to porn viewing, such medical conditions as erectile dysfunction do arise. Victims of porn watching may suffer from the above in that it becomes so hard for them to achieve a normal erection without depending on those videos. It, therefore, make personal relationships for them hard to keep, for whereas one partner will normally function, the other would need some stimulation.

Just how much has digital revolution impacted on sexuality?

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sex

Brain Activity In Sexual Addiction

February 4, 2016

Understanding Brain Activity In Sexual Addiction

Brain activity was studied while the subjects were looking at pornographic pictures.  The researchers responsible for this study used fMRI which uses a BOLD signal to monitor brain activity.  They studied the responses of 19 male subjects who were self-admitted sexual addicts who were unable to control their sexual behavior and whose sexual behavior was causing significant problems for them. They then compared these findings with 19 other young men who were classified as being healthy and who had no problems with controlling their sexual habits.

Compared to the 19 healthy volunteers, the men afflicted with compulsive sexual behavior had started looking at pornographic pictures at a younger age and spent significantly more time looking at pornographic literature than did the healthy volunteers.  In many ways, the patients resembled people who are addicted to drugs, in that they continued behaviors that were having negative impacts on their relationships and jobs.  The objective of the study was to find out if their brains mirrored the same type of activity as did the brains of drug addicts.

Brain Activity In Sexual Addiction

To this end, both the healthy volunteers and the patients were shown a series of short videos.  The videos were either sexually explicit in nature, or they were oriented towards sports.  While these videos were being shown, their brain activity was monitored using an fMRI which uses a BOLD (blood oxygen level dependent) signal.  The result was that the patients brains had significant increases in activity in three separate areas of the brain, the ventral striatum, the dorsal anterior cingulate and the amygdala, are regions that are also particularly activated in addicts when shown drug stimuli.

The ventral striatum is involved in processing rewards and motivation while the anterior cingulate is involved in anticipating rewards and therefore in drug craving.  The amygdala is involved in the processing of the significance of events and emotions.  The participants in the study were asked to fill out a questionnaire which asked them to rate the videos they saw as to the level of sexual desire experienced while they watched the videos and how much they liked each video.

The reason for the questionnaire was to measure the amount of desire experienced and compared that to the amount of liking.  This is because drug addicts are driven to seek their drug because they perceive a need for it, but have little or no enjoyment of it. In fact, many addicts will state that they don’t use drugs because they enjoy the high any more but because they become really ill if they don’t.

 

The result of the questionnaire was as expected—the sex addicts rated the amount of desire experienced while watching the sexually explicit videos as being high or very high, but rated the liking of the same video as being poor or very low.  This means that the experience perceived by the patients was while stimulating, not very enjoyable.  The patients also experienced higher interactions within the regions of the network identified—with a greater amount of cross-talk between the three regions specified—while watching the sexually explicit rather than the sports videos.

The researchers also found a higher correlation between the age of the patients and the amount of brain activity—the younger patients had higher levels of activity in the ventral striatum in response to pornography. This association was strongest in patients with abnormal sexual activity. The frontal control regions of our brains—the brakes that control our compulsiveness—continue to develop into the mid-twenties.  This imbalance may account for the greater impulsivity and risk-taking associated with young people. The age-related findings in these patients suggest that the ventral striatum may be involved in the development of compulsive sexual behavior much as it is in the development of drug addiction.

Also, a second study seems to show that people with compulsive sexual behavior are more susceptible to cues that trigger their compulsion than are healthy men.  This study showed the men, who were divided between “healthy” men and sex addicts.  They were given identical tasks.  The first task involved looking at a series of images in pairs. These images were of naked women, furniture, and clothed women. They were then shown another series of images, some of which were familiar, and others which were not and told to choose a pair of pictures to win a specified amount of money. The researchers found that the sex addicts were more prone to choose the novel over the familiar choice for sexual images relative to neutral object images but that healthy men were more likely to choose the novel choice for neutral female images over neutral object images.

 

A second task involved learning to associate certain images overlaid with patterns with reward—similar to Pavlov’s dogs.  The men were then given a choice between those images and novel images. This time, the addicts were more likely to pick cues associated with monetary and sexual rewards. This supports the theory that seemingly innocuous cues can trigger a sex addict to seek out sexual images.

Understanding Brain Activity In Sexual Addiction

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pornography-brain

Effects of pornography on brain

February 3, 2016

How Watching Pornography Affects Your Brain
Watching pornography, just, like any hard substance that are abused can have a lasting effect on those who engages in it. This is because, like hard drugs, watching pornography over a long period does affect the brain. Human brains have chemical compositions that aid in the co-ordination of its activities. These chemicals, like dopamine, a neurotransmitter responsible for sensing reward and pleasure has been known triggered addiction in the case of drugs or substance abuse. It has been therefore noted that, in the case of watching pornography, the release of this same chemical is triggered and as so, the continuous watching leads to addiction.
Addiction in watching pornographic materials, be it photos or videos can have serious effects to the brains of the victims who engages in such practices. Take, for example, a case of a marriage or a serious relationship where one partner is an addict of watching porn. The relationship may get affected since normal intimate communication between the couples may get ruined. Watching pornography, therefore, has the following effects on the brain of the victims.

effects of pornography on brain
First and foremost, there is the question of addiction and dependency. Watching pornographic materials causes the victim not to be able to function normally regarding sexuality. That is to say, they need exposure to porn or have their thoughts focused on some porn materials to get aroused during intimacy. Normally this becomes a problem because the normal partner finds it tough to understand the victim more so if they, normal partner, themselves are ready. When the above scenario occurs, communication becomes difficult between the couple.
Pornographic materials, more specifically, videos are known to be violent in their form. The kind of sexual activities in these videos normally lack the tender that is or should be associated with making love. It has, therefore, been realizes that watching porn makes the victim view love making as just having sex. So for them, the notion of lovemaking is lost to them and do not make any efforts to try and bring out the aspect of intimacy with their partners.
Too much indulgence in watching porn also affects the sexual urge or desire of the victim. The sexual desire or libido of an individual addicted to watching porn is considerably lowered in most cases. Intimacy between two people in love or even a married couple is normally heightened by making love. However, in the case where one partner finds themselves addicted to porn, the intimacy is usually affected. This is because the effects of watching porn leave one with poor sexual libido. It has been found that those who are addicted to porn are so much affected by it to the extent that their sexual lives are affected because they find their partners not to be as good as the porn seemed. This makes them lose interest in making love to their partners as soon as the act begins, hence affecting the relationship in the long run.
The main beauty of making love or being in an intimate relationship with a partner is the ultimate satisfaction that comes with the connection the bodies make. In a normal and healthy relationship between two people, this connection should not just be physical. The intimate connection should also involve some emotional feelings between couples. However, watching pornography drives away the emotional feeling that intimate sex should bring. A victim of Porn views sex as just a physical affair, losing the emotions hence little enjoyment for the partner and even themselves.
It is common knowledge that for one to enjoy intimate sex, all the partners should have to be in the right mood. Consequently, it is of no use for a couple to have sexual intercourse when either does not have the feel of it. When one partner is addicted to watching porn, their sexual needs tend to be self-centered. Porn, therefore, causes selfishness in a relationship. The addicted individual becomes obsessed with their sexual needs that they tend not care for the feelings of their partners. Sex now become their personal need and may not want to listen to any protest from the other partner or even any needs of their own.

effects of pornography on brain
Making love between two intimate couple or in a marriage should be a process, and not just having sex. It is a process that involves foreplay as they get themselves physically and psychologically prepared for the lovemaking act. That is what a normal love making process should sound like, but not when one is addicted to porn. They, the porn addicts, lose the significance of getting the body prepared for the actual act of lovemaking.
Lastly, porn has the effect of creating some sexual disorder to the addicts. Just like the intensity of having sex in porn, the addicts normally apply the same in their normal lives. In such cases, the addict ends up having premature ejaculation and sometimes, even erectile dysfunction as they find it tough to maintain a prolonged erection.
How Watching Pornography Affects Your Brain

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