“Looking back now on the whole sexual scene we can see that our species has remained much more loyal to its basic biological urges than we might at first imagine. Its primate sexual system with carnivore modifications has survived all the fantastic technological advances remarkably well.”  – Desmond Morris

Most DIMwit problems can be linked to addictions that are so ubiquitous they aren’t considered addictions. Two particularly dangerous (unacknowledged) addictions are to sex and esteem. Both are natural dopamine-induced behaviors, popular with DIMwits and chimpanzees, and both are highly effective at getting clueless primates to replicate driven future generations of sex and esteem addicts. Along the way, contenders indifferent to sex or esteem naturally selected their DNA out of the gene pool.

With chimpanzees, esteem addiction remains a means to a natural end = sex. With DIMwits, sex and esteem addictions turned into destructive ends unto themselves and potential dead ends for the species. Genetically driven to spread primitive DNA, our too-clever-for-their-own-good ancestors bred a species of self-deceptive sex/esteem addicts rendered incapable of honestly evaluating any information that threatens esteem.

Ironically, the addictions that helped Homo sapiens reach the 21st century might prevent future generations from making it into the 22nd century.

Why? Because esteem addicts’ only concern is protecting dopamine flow (by ignoring, denying, and dismissing symptoms that threaten to expose addictions) and triggering dopamine flow (with deceptions that inflate esteem).

Like all addictions

Sex and esteem addictions include seductive pulls backed by fail-safe pushes.  The pulls for sex addicts include visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile cues that trigger dopamine-induced expectations of s-e-x. The push (referred to as withdrawal, DTs (delirium tremens), hunger, thirst for nicotine, opioids, alcohol, food, water) is called the hots, itch, lust, passion, concupiscence, and horniness for sex.

For esteem addicts, the pulls include dopamine-induced expectations of winning approval, being acknowledged, boosting status, feeling important and/or envied. The pushes include daunting fears of being ignored, marginalized, mocked, demeaned, dismissed, or rejected.

Researchers have recently discovered…“Rejections elicit emotional pain so sharp it affects our thinking, floods us with anger, erodes our confidence and self-esteem, and destabilizes our fundamental feeling of belonging.” (From Rejection is more powerful than you think.)Which is why esteem addicts dislike, hate, attack, and avoid threatening information, situations, and individuals.

Whatever it’s called, withdrawal keeps addicts scrambling to protect and trigger dopamine flow in the hopes of achieving temporary homeostasis.

That’s why withdrawal is a key symptom of all addictions, along with self-deception, denial, and a disregard for consequences resulting from addictive behaviors. And why sex, esteem, heroin, and other addicts seldom worry about morality, honesty, integrity, or the future of our species.

Evidence of esteem addiction:

• Elephants and sharks tortured and decimated so needy esteem addicts can own ivory and brag about eating shark fin soup.
• Drug addicts flaunting abuses, alcoholics pretending they’re connoisseurs, nicotine addicts calling themselves aficionados, food addicts passing as gourmets.
• Donald Trump, Bill O’Reilly, Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter.
• The information contained in this post isn’t common knowledge.

Evidence of sex addiction:

• Growing STD epidemics among teens and seniors.
• Big porn. According to a 2001 New York Times Magazine cover story, “Naked Capitalists: There’s No Business Like Porn Business,” “…pornography is bigger than any of the major league sports, perhaps bigger than Hollywood.” Porn is “no longer a sideshow to the mainstream…it is the mainstream.”
• Human sex trafficking. The FBI classifies human sex trafficking as the most common form of modern-day slavery. Estimates place the number of victims in the millions, mostly females and children enslaved in the commercial sex industry for little or no money.
• Rape stats. Estimated number of women raped every year: 300,000 to 1.3 million. Percentage of rapes not reported: 54 percent. A woman’s chance of being raped in the U.S.: 1 in 5.
• National child abuse stats. 20% of adult females and 5-10% of adult males recall a childhood sexual assault or sexual abuse incident.
• The primitive courtship ritual routinely reduced to lies, deceptions, machinations, infidelities, and drugs.
• Humans courting, marrying, procreating, and spending miserable lives with mates and offspring they dislike, resent, and often hate.
• Countless unwanted, unloved, neglected, abandoned, abused children who turn into dysfunctional grown-ups (as opposed to healthy adults) burdened with unmet needs that predispose them to acknowledged addictions (to drugs, gambling, food) and unacknowledged addictions (to safety/power, acceptance/approval/attention, esteem/status, money, belief systems, and sex).
• An unsustainable population explosion threatening our species’ survival.

Bottom line: sex addiction is driving humans to naturally select our dysfunctional DNA out of the gene pool while esteem addiction is preventing us from acknowledging problems/symptoms that threaten to expose addictions.

If our species does self-destruct it won’t be because of addictions. It will be because of the dishonesty caused by additions.

 “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”
― Saul Bellow