Ley is famous for trying to debunk the "porn is addictive" myth. I think the truth is: porn is addictive, porn addiction exists, but not every guy who watches porn becomes addicted to it. The false premise in Ley's reasoning can be found in the first sentence of the article, which reads:
There has been a tremendous amount of hyperbole about porn use, with many authors and doomsayers claiming that viewing porn triggers dangerous neurochemical changes in the brain. But, groundbreaking new research says that it just ain?t so, and that people who are problem users of porn are actually people with high libidos, NOT people whose brains have been warped sex and porn.
YBOP and Gary Wilson have never made the claim that porn triggers "dangerous neurochemical changes" in the brain or that the brains of people who watch porn have been "warped" by porn. Ley overstates Wilson's position, and then having overstated it, proceeds to critique it.
Gary Wilson's claim is far subtler and less inflammatory than Ley's description of it. Wilson claims that all of us, every man and woman, have evolved to seek sex as a means of promulgating the species. This desire to seek sex, lust if you will, is "rewarded" with a dopamine spike. We love dopamine. It is a motivational brain chemical that rewards seeking sex. What Wilson claims is that some people get a dopamine spike by viewing porn. He says, basically, that while on one level we know sex and porn are completely different things, the part of our brain that rewards seeking for sex with a dopamine fix does not distinguish porn from sex, and thus rewards porn with a dopamine fix. It is probably not a great analogy, but think about a candle that smells like apple pie. If you walk into a house for the first time, maybe for Christmas dinner, and you smell the candle, before you know better, what your brain interprets the smell as apple pie. Point being, our brains can interpret A as if it were B, can be fooled, can be wrong, can fall for the counterfeit, and when it comes to porn our brain interprets porn essentially as sex, and rewards porn with a dopamine spike.
Problem is, Wilson says, that unlike real sex, which we can only experience once in a while, maybe only a few times a week for the most sexually active of us, and during our lifetimes, for most, only a handful of partners, porn, specifically High Speed Internet Porn (Wilson does not make the claim with magazines) allows for multiple dopamine hits every day, for days on end, stretching to months and years, and that over that amount of time for some people, the brain's reward pathways become "wired" to porn, coming to prefer porn over sex as a means of getting repeated dopamine highs through artificial sexual stimulation, leading to addiction. Wilson does not actually claim porn is addictive, but if you read him closely, the actual claim is that dopamine is addictive, the brain chemical is released in response to sexual thoughts, which everyone one occasionally has, but the porn addict, by choice, has repeatedly, every day, via HSIP, released multiple hits, and this causes the brain's reward center to be "rewired" to porn.
One interesting thing, for guys with ED, and considering the chemical reaction to porn, is that often, usually even, guys with ED, guys who cannot get it up with a real partner, have no problem PMOing. They can get it up to porn, but not to an actual sexual partner? Why? Because their dopamine reward centers have become "desensitized" to actual sex, and "sensitized" or "rewired" to reward porn. It is not that these guys cannot get hard, it is not that they cannot reach O, it is that they can only get hard, keep it up, and reach O with porn, not with sex.
Wilson does not actually claim that dopamine addiction is "dangerous" or that those who are addicted are warped. Rather, what he says is that dopamine is addictive, and the addiction can lead to unfortunate side effects for some, such as ED and DE. Sad, but not dangerous, and he does not claim those guys are "warped", but rather that suffering as they do from porn addiction they have wired their reward center to reward porn over sex, which is why the guys develop ED and DE; their brains have been trained to reward porn, through years of abuse, and the solution to their problem is simple--reboot the brain and rewire it to reward actual sex again. This is done by eliminating porn from their experience and concentrating again on, and only on, their sexual partners.
Don't believe that porn is not addictive. Acknowledging the addiction was, for me, one of the biggest first steps in getting clean. I am now over 500 days clean, no porn, no PMO, no MO, but plenty of sex with my SO. I had DE before I got clean, and since being clean, no longer do.
Hope this helps.
Peace.
Will I AM.
Merry Christmas!