Can someone actually be addicted to porn?

There are a lot of people, particularly Christians, who would say that "claiming to be addicted to any sexual sin is merely an excuse".  However, I would beg to differ...

Now, that being said, let me be clear.  It does not excuse the sin by any means.  However, I think looking at the addictive aspects of this problem helps us to better understand what is going on.

Certainly any type of sexual sin is rooted, at its base, in disobedience to God.  There is never an excuse for that.  In fact, that is the whole reason Jesus did what He did on the cross.  Anyway, there is also a side to this sin that is, or at least can become for some, an addiction.  By that, I mean a chemical addiction, just like drugs or alcohol.

When we look at the psychological processes that take place in a persons mind and the physiological processes that take place in a person's body when they engage in sexual sin, in this case pornography, we see the same processes as a person who takes a drug to get high.  Let me explain...

When we become sexually aroused, our brain begins to endogenously produce and release a myriad of chemicals into the system.  These chemicals are mainly natural dopamines, which is why there is the euphoric feelings experienced, including epinephrine, adrenaline, ACTH, norepinephrine, and the list goes on and on.  Really, the only difference between this chemical release into the body and a person taking drugs is that it comes from within the body itself, via different glands, and not from an outside source.  However, there is still a chemical high that is experienced.  Because it is a chemical process, if one's body gets used to this happening often, it begins to crave it.  When the cravings are fed, in the wrong way of course, those cravings become dependencies.  Our brain can become dependent on the release of these chemicals in the same way it becomes dependent on drugs or alcohol.  Its just simple chemistry.

However, God created our bodies to produce these chemicals did He not?  He also created us as sexual beings, did He not?  So, what is wrong with experiencing these processes if it is natural and God gave them to us.  In and of themselves, nothing.  However, it is the means by which we access, or stimulate these processes that becomes the problem.  When we do this in a self-gratifying and sinful way is when we cross into the issue of morality.  God gave us these abilities and feelings, so that we can experience them through the gift of sexual experience within the covenant of marriage.  That means that there is a Godly way of experiencing everything I just wrote about above.  That is between a man and woman in marriage.  That is why scripture says that "the marriage bed is undefiled".  God wants us to experience sexual pleasure and high with our spouse, co-experiencing it together in marriage.

Satan has taken this God-given gift and presented it to us in a way that is ungodly and sinful.  It is by these sinful, self-gratifying methods, such as looking at pornography and masturbating, that we become addicted to the chemical high experienced when doing such things and become ensnared in our own sin.

However, there is hope.  God gives us the ability and resource to resist and defeat any temptation and any sin that the world can through our way.