/lit/ - Literature

>>16595527
It's not recent, it's well known that dopamine isn't linked to pleasure but to motivation and reward. Heavy addicts do not even feel an inch of pleasure when the usage becomes too regular and lasts too long. It"s just tension relief.
Dopamine was supposed to motivate you to search for necessary supplies like food and sex. Drugs can hijack this system by giving you something that resembles dopamine, or in the case of porn of sugar, direct dopaminergic satisfaction as they are distorted versions of the necessary behaviours, which gives them very strong "motivational salience", as much as necessary behaviours.
With the years however, the addiction spirals form the dopaminergic "reward" system to the close and related "habit system", for which motivational salience and pleasure from intake aren't even necessary anymore, you just engage in the addictive behaviour whether you like it or not.