Individuals with sex addiction can develop tolerance, requiring more potent forms of pornography or engaging in deviant/illegal sexual activities over time.

“one of the things that's been very interesting to me in treating patients with sex addiction is to see how tolerance manifests many of these individuals start out with kind of runof-the-mill legal types of Engagement with pornography or what have you but over time as their brain adapts to those rewards they develop tolerance they need more potent forms to get the same effect and they find themselves a year 2 years 5 10 years later then engaging in highly deviant or violent or pedophilic pornography or engaging with um you know sex workers legal activities”