ArchangelMichael
Posts: 243
Joined: 8/21/2004
From: New Orleans, LA
Status: offline
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Warning: Some of this is going to get technical.
This seems like the classic signs of an addiction. Anything can be addictive if you allow it to be, including sex and BDSM. Getting so lost in BDSM to the point where you forget about everything else and the rest of your life suffers isn't much different from drug addiction or alcohol addiction. Most of the time, there are some underlying causes that can drive a person to be addicted. Often, this is because someone is trying to escape something in the real world, perhaps problems that they can't deal with. So they retreat into some fantasy world. Maybe it's the feeling that goes with being drunk or high or maybe they've become high on their own endorphins. I've heard the joke that a masochist is defined as an endorphin addict. Well, that may not be so for every masochist, but it can happen.
So it's important that we can recognize the signs of addiction. If you're spending too much time on BDSM activities and not on doing what's important in your non-BDSM life, there may be an addiction there. Although this would be a non-chemical addiction, there are bio-chemical influences. I mentioned endorphins, which are the body's natural painkillers. It's possible to become addicted to the postivie effects of endorphins. But there are also neurotransmitters (chemicals in the brain that stimulate your brain cells) such as serotonin and norepinephrin that are linked to the pleasure centers of the brain. When we experience pleasure from some activity (sexual or non-sexual), our brain produces a little extra of these neurotransmitters, so we get a small high. We learn to associate this high with the pleasurable acitivity. This is, chemically, why we seek out activities that bring us pleasure or make us happy. Sometimes, we can become addicted to these acitivities if we depend too much on that little high we get. If BDSM activities bring us this kind of pleasure, then they have the potential to be addictive.
Learn the signs of addiction. Most often an addiction can be identified by the major symptoms of tolerance, dependence, and withdrawl. If you enjoy BDSM activities to the point where nothing else can give you any pleasure (and I mean anything, like you forsake your usual non-BDSM hobbies for it), then you have become dependent on BDSM. If you need to experience more BDSM each time you do it in order to get the same pleasurable feeling as before, then you have built up a tolerance. If you experience negative physical symptoms by not participating in BDSM activities, then you are going through withdrawl.
And if you've heard this before, yes, this is the standard way to assess whether or not someone has a drug or alcohol addiction.
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"Open up your mind; Let your fantasies unwind." -The Phantom, Phantom of the Opera
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -Toulouse-Lautrec, Moulin Rouge
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getting lost in the BDSM lifestyle... - 
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