If you would read the link I posted, you would see that the physiological/neurological component is almost identical. The only difference is that alcohol is a substance and sex is not
Damien I've always been rather puzzled and curious about this whole concept of "sexual addiction." It seems to me that it became sort of chic in some psych circles a few years back to use that word "addiction" in numerous non-substance related contexts: gambling addiction, shopping addiction, etc. Personally I think of these things as compulsive behaviors rather than addictions. And admittedly they can be enormously destructive.
But what puzzles me at the moment is that that seems to be the essential conclusion of the link you posted (http://www.freespeechcoalition.com/FSCView.asp?action=preview&coid=133)
In summary, before rushing to the judgment that pornography is addicting, we must take note of the following: So-called sexual addiction may be nothing more than learned behavior that can be unlearned; labels such as "sex addict" may tell us more about society's prejudices and the therapist doing the labeling than the client; scientists who have undertaken scientifically rigorous studies of exposure to sex materials report that despite high levels of exposure to pornography in venues such as the Internet, few negative effects are observed. For the average person the message of violence against women must be present for negative effects to occur. For other forms of pornography the effects are an interaction between personality and exposure to pornography. Professionals who encounter both compulsive and impulsive sexual acting-out behaviors in their patients have experienced too many conceptual problems with the notion of sex addiction to be able to separate their preconceived ideas from whatever pathology they may observe in their patients. This difficulty in communication has fueled so much skepticism among psychiatrists and other mental health professionals regarding the case for including sex addiction as a mental disorder that they have not recognized such a classification.
What am I missing?