Toss Your Textbooks: Docs Redefine Sexual Behavior Addictions
A major event has occurred in the realm of addiction science and treatment. America’s top addiction experts at The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) have just released their sweeping new definition of addiction. This new definition ends the debate over whether sex and porn addictions are “real addictions.” They are.The new definition resulted from an intensive, four‐year process with more than 80 experts actively working on it, including top addiction authorities, addiction medicine clinicians and leading neuroscience researchers from across the country. … Two decades of advancements in neurosciences convinced ASAM that addiction needed to be redefined by what’s going on in the brain.
The new definition leaves no doubt that all addictions—whether to alcohol, heroin or sex, say—are fundamentally the same. Dr. Raju Haleja, former president of the Canadian Society for Addiction Medicine and the chair of the ASAM committee that crafted the new definition, told The Fix, “We are looking at addiction as one disease, as opposed to those who see them as separate diseases. Addiction is addiction. It doesn’t matter what cranks your brain in that direction, once it has changed direction, you’re vulnerable to all addiction.” …Sex or gambling or food addiction [are] every bit as medically valid as addiction to alcohol or heroin or crystal meth.
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