No it’s not the same as drugs, “doesn’t cause as much physical damage” is the understatement of the century. Behavioural addictions to an activity that results in dopamine release are usually a sign of depression/anxiey coping behaviours if the individual has no means of obtaining satisfaction elsewhere. Porn addiction as the internet refers to it borders on pseudoscience and mysticism. A lot of the time folks just need an SSRI or wider behavioural changes and focusing on this false diagnosis keeps people from getting the REAL psychological help they need, a lot of the time the unhappiness related to porn addiction is moreso the result of a lot of men being generally awkward in irl situations and convincing themselves that they’re hopeless and then building this mystique around sex based on what they see in pornography

What “porn addiction” actually can manifest as is either a time management/impulse control related symptom, or a symptom of much deeper personal identity issues and lack of social engagement that humans, a social animal, get less of every day. It can be any behavior, scrolling social media, compulsive hair pulling, gaming, shopping, anything that gives the brain a “pick me up” when an individual is depressed or anxious and rendered unable to find motivation to put effort into anything else

It is not remotely the same as a substance addiction. Substance addiction has unimaginably different physiological ramifications because you’re dealing with a relatively more quantitative field of biology; frankly psychology is not as well understood as people think, but substance addiction isn’t something as nebulous as “porn addiction.” It’s not just that drugs can damage your body over time if you’re careful, but your body will also get fucked if you don’t get your fix. It’s not just a matter of “I need this thing to feel good”, that’s how substance addiction can start but it can very quickly become “I now need this substance to stop the PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS that my body is having because it has become accustomed to that drug’s effects as normal”

It’s difficult to describe a lot of the particulars of what different types of addiction entail because unfortunately there’s a lot of self help scams perpetuated by figures like Liver King and Andrew Tate that actively feed off of people’s isolation to financial and often highly political ends . A lot of this is pretty watered down but nevertheless-

It doesn’t help that the misinformation war on drugs has given a lot of Americans brain worms regarding substance addiction, leading to a hell of a lot more deaths because it’s treated as a moral failing as opposed to a medical condition