The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

by Gabor Maté

Sex addiction, for example, has nothing to do with a “high sex drive” and everything to do with dopamine. New York social worker and former Fordham and Rutgers Universities adjunct professor Zachary Alti specializes in sex therapy and behavioral addictions, particularly addiction to porn. “Studies are suggesting,” he told me, “that when viewing a pornographic image, we get a dopamine spike in our brain. When viewing images after images, we get spike after spike after spike. Whereas with substance addictions you typically get one or a few spikes just before use, with behavioral addictions dopamine itself is the substance, the primary component. Especially in pornography addiction, these dopamine spikes happen over and over and over again.” As with smartphone and app companies, pornographers are well aware that their profits rest on the hijacking of their consumers’ brains. The