A new report claims increasing numbers of young men are addicted to Viagra - but that's just fantasy, argues Dr Brooke Magnanti.
We’re addicted to
addiction. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that doesn’t have some special
interest claiming it is habit-forming and dangerous these days. Eat too much?
Not poor impulse control, no! Addiction. Like to exercise regularly? Addiction.
I had two instant hot chocs last night – I’m probably well on the slippery
slope to addiction.
If you think I’m
being dangerously flippant about addiction think again. I have known addicts:
proper, drug-dependent, twitching-when-they-don’t-get-a-fix addicts who need
medical intervention in order to live through withdrawal. Hell, I have people
like that in my family. I've held the sick bucket and called the ambulance. So
I know full well what addiction is and what it looks like.
What really is addiction?
Let’s pause a sec,
because this blog is useless without definitions. What is addiction? Concisely,
addiction is a physical and psychological dependence on some substance; if
there is no gross physiological change in the body that renders normal function
impossible without the substance, there is no addiction.
Silly uberfeminist
crusader Tanya Gold once called me a sex addict in a
national newspaper. To normal cash-craving ‘slebs
(note I didn’t say addicted?), that would usually be the cue to go running for
the libel lawyer because accusing someone of a mental disorder they have never
been diagnosed with is, you know, libel. Only I did not because if had Tanya
read more of my book,
she would have realised I don’t actually think sex addiction exists. To some
people it would be the gravest insult; to me it was the intellectual equivalent
of claiming I am Father Christmas.
I think the industry
arising out of diagnosing people with this affliction is based on the worst
kind of cargo cult science. In
fact I devoted an entire chapter to the topic but I guess Gold didn’t make it
to page 32? (I could tell you more about why sex addiction is totally made up,
but don’t just take my word for it – here’s someone
else’s really thorough breakdown of the issue.)
Craving can be an
obsession but it’s not an addiction. Habituation can occur with many things but
it's not the same as addiction. No bodily function dependency, no addiction.
And we are dangerously obsessed with and habituated to calling things
addictions.
Viagra addiction: you for real?
So to read The
Daily Mail’s take on Viagra today: young
men, it claims, are addicted – piqued my interest.
Viagra is a
pharmaceutical drug, after all, could it perhaps be comprised of compounds
which they have found, through thorough combing of the scientific literature,
are producing a heretofore-unreported trend of physical dependency in young
men?
Erm, no. They
interview exactly one guy who uses Viagra a lot during sex. Because he’s
‘young’ and ‘fit’ we’re supposed to take that to mean there’s no way he can
possibly suffer from erectile dysfunction. Nice try but no Freudian cigar.
Helpful hint: while erectile dysfunction is more prevalent in older men, anyone
who’s ever had sex with young men can attest, as per the film cliché, “hey,
don’t worry… it happens to everyone.” Because it does.
They also interview
one – one! – Harley Street ‘psychosexual counsellor’ (whatever that is when
it’s at home) who says this is ‘just a small sample of the problem.’ Well, he’s
certainly right about it being a small sample. Care to offer us any stats on
the extent of the problem? Any studies, any published papers? Any scientific
research in any labs anywhere? Because I keep looking and don’t see any. At.
All.
Reading further down
the article I see their real target: porn ‘addiction’. Ah. Now that is
something that really exists, right? Wrong. “But… but… Susan Greenfield!” I
hear you splutter. Professor Greenfield, who has been whipping up a media frenzy about the dangers
of the internet, yet has yet to produce an actual
study to back her claims? Yeah. I await the no doubt
edifying results of her scientific investigation with great interest.
Don’t even come at
me with that ‘brain chemicals’ nonsense. Chemicals are what the brain does.
Claiming a surge of these (always nebulous, always undefined) ‘brain chemicals’
prove something is addictive is like saying going to the toilet is proof the
body is addicted to excretion.
The problem? Sexually empowered women of course
After porn, the next
supposed cause of this Viagra addiction is - wait for it - sexually empowered
women. Yes, you read that right. Women being more outspoken about what they
want in bed is supposedly putting men off, the poor lambs. How dare the ladies
express interest and enjoyment in sex! Why won't we just lie back and think of England
like we're supposed to!?
I’m afraid the
evidence (for there actually is research in this area) proves that assumption
wrong. Analysis of scenes in mainstream porn demonstrates the majority of porn
shows women who are vocal and responsive about what they enjoy in sex; if men
didn't want that, I can assure you porn would
not feature it. Many critics of the mainstream porn
still consider that female-led,
female-friendly porn is a good thing.
Until the day when
anyone comes out with credible challenges to these facts… porn addiction does
not exist. Internet addiction does not exist. I say this so often, you’d think
I was addicted to saying it. But I’m not. It’s just a compulsion.
No comments:
Post a Comment