Now controversially spans all sorts of behaviours

porn in his office, and that was the 
trigger for Sam to get help. He is 
now having therapy for pornography 
addiction at the Laurel Centre in the 
UK, and is starting to understand the 
impact that two experiences of 
sexual assault in his teenage years 
had on him. “I understand this as a 
mental illness now,” he says. “I know 
it’s not yet considered an addiction, 
but it most definitely is – no two ways 
about it – and it is only a matter of 
time until it is treated like one.”
Addicted to 
pornography
RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws

---

14 September 2019 | New Scientist | 
45
than gambling, there is some overlap 
in the surge of this chemical in the brains 
of those addicted to substances and those 
addicted to the behaviour.
Clark asked himself what it is about 
gambling that might allow this behaviour 
to hijack the brain’s reward system in a 
comparable way to how drugs do it. One 
answer, he thinks, could be uncertainty.
A reward delivered unpredictably has a 
far greater effect on the dopamine system 
than one the brain knows in advance that it 
will receive. If you know you are about to win 
£5, when you do, there is little change in the 
system. But if you know that one in every 
three goes on a slot machine will win you £5, 
but you aren’t sure which, “the dopamine 
system goes wild”, says Clark.
In both gambling disorder and gaming 
disorder, the first two behavioural addictions 
recognised by the WHO, “it’s the uncertain 
nature of the rewards that allows those 
behaviours to spiral”, he says. Near misses 
amplify that uncertainty – and therefore could 
make a game particularly addictive. 
More recent research into gambling and 
gaming addiction suggest other factors are at 
play too. One is the idea of immersion, the 
heady experience of entering “the zone”, a 
hyper-focused state of flow not unlike a drugs 
high, where you don’t notice time passing and 
troubling thoughts are kept at bay. 
Investigating this phenomenon for one 
recent study, Clark’s team asked psychology 
students and regular gamblers to play on slot 
machines in his “casino laboratory” – carpeted 
and with low lighting and comfortable stools 
(but no cocktail bar). Participants were told 
that some white circles and red squares would 
appear on screens either side of the slot 
machine while they played. They should ignore 
the white circles, but press a button whenever 
they saw a red square.