Sex Addiction Article

[Smoking Monkey]

Here's a link to a Newsweek article about sex addiction. I'm sure most of us are ok, but there might be a few here that have some problems. I thought it was very interesting. Comments anyone?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newswee...-epidemic.html

[MsElena]

I already know I'm addicted to sex.

[Sami]

Don't know that I would call it a addiction, but I sure love it!!

[SexyKaylen]

i just love sex...
but i am addicted to bbbj...big time

[don12073]

Originally Posted by SexyKaylen

i just love sex...
but i am addicted to bbbj...big time

I knew there was a reason I wanted to see you......

[Allie_Kat]

Sex addiction? Count me in!

[Grizzly]

Yep especially with my high sex drive cant seem to get enough lol

[Guest 101012]

Im A~DICK~ted Love it cant get enough of it ~ ummmmphhhhh xoxoxox

[BigDeal]

Im gonna need some therapy.... Kaylen....Allie.....Sami.....M s Elena.....
I will need you all to set me up for an intervention....at the same time!!

[KCQuestor]

Salon Magazine had a pretty interesting reply to the Newsweek article:
Don’t believe the sex addiction hype

"[W]hat they’re advocating for is a moral system, not a medical one."

[Sami]

Originally Posted by bigdeal

Im gonna need some therapy.... Kaylen....Allie.....Sami.....M s Elena.....
I will need you all to set me up for an intervention....at the same time!!

[ss4699]

not sure if SM meant this to be humous, or serious. And the first few comments were full of fun and nice comments, but there is a serious - addicitive aspect to this question!

anonymous hookups in fast-food-restaurant bathrooms, affairs with married men, and one-night stands too numerous to count. But Valerie couldn’t stop. Not even after one man’s wife aimed a shotgun at her head while catching them in flagrante delicto. Valerie called phone-sex chat lines and pored over online pornography, masturbating so compulsively that it wasn’t uncommon for her to choose her vibrator over going to work. She craved public exhibitionism, too, particularly at strip clubs, and even accepted money in exchange for sex—not out of financial necessity but for the illicit rush such acts gave her.

A matter of addiction not enjoyment! The inability to stop, to moderate, or control.

sex was a form of self-medication: to obliterate the anxiety, despair, and crippling fear of emotional intimacy that had haunted her since being abandoned as a child. “In order to soothe the loneliness and the fear of being unwanted, I was looking for love in all the wrong places,” she recalls.

After a decade of carrying on this way, Valerie hit rock bottom.

The despair, similar to other addictions - booze, and a number of illegal things that have a discussion ban on this site - is prevelant in these actions.

she grew despondent and attempted to take her life by overdosing on prescription medication. Awakening in the ICU, she at last understood what she had become: a sex addict. “Through sexually acting out, I lost two marriages and a job. I ended up homeless and on food stamps,” says Valerie, who, like most sex addicts interviewed for this story, declined to provide her real name. “I was totally out of control.”

Yes many of the ladies and gents here enjoy sex. But there are associated problems that are very serious. The artilce sums in up:

“Sex addiction” remains a controversial designation—often dismissed as a myth or providing talk-show punchlines thanks to high-profile lotharios such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Tiger Woods. But compulsive sexual behavior, also called hypersexual disorder, can systematically destroy a person’s life much as addictions to alcohol or xxxxs can. And it’s affecting an increasing number of Americans, say psychiatrists and addiction experts. “It’s a national epidemic,” says coauthor of Pure Eyes: A Man’s Guide to Sexual Integrity and leader of the X3LA sexual-addiction recovery groups in Hollywood.

For those who fall into this depth of dispair, seek help. I am sure there are those here who would help you find that help and others that would dare to take advantage of that sickness. So be careful, but seek help as soon as you can. Now back to the fun stuff.

[Area Man]

Sex addiction is bullshit. If anything, it's compulsive behavior that happens to be sexual in nature. I saw that article a while ago. The first comment I read was from a non-American who said, basically, that "Only in America will people bend over backwards to pathologize sex." Another quote from a clinical psychologist in the Salon article KCQuestor linked to: "The sex-addiction concept is a belief system, not a diagnosis; it’s not a medically supported concept. The science is abysmal.

I'm a regular listener/reader of Dan Savage and other sex advice columnists and not one of them buys into it. The concept of sex addiction seems to be either championed by the same people who are convinced that all sex work is slavery or by lazy marriage counselors. Every time I hear "sex addiction" rolled out it's usually by a woman who has no interest in understanding the non-vanilla sexuality of her husband. (Not a dig on women, just on those women who champion traditional gender roles.) It also stinks of the sensationalist and completely invented nonsense you hear on the news about how 8 year olds are giving each other blowjobs over rubber bracelets.

[guest010313]

Well said!

[KCQuestor]

Originally Posted by Area Man

Sex addiction is bullshit. If anything, it's compulsive behavior that happens to be sexual in nature.

Exactly. As the article I linked to mentioned: "A lot of the research that has been done shows that between 70 and 100 percent of these alleged sex addicts have some other major mental-health problem — there is some other diagnosis, whether it is substance abuse, depression, anxiety or a personality disorder."

Just last week, Dan Savage had a caller who said "My husband recently told me he is a sex addict. He has had a mistress for the past eight years. I really want to help him get over this addiction." Your husband isn't a sex addict, lady. he is having an affair!

The label "sex addiction" is applied if someone masturbates every day until their genitals are raw OR if they watch pornography all the time OR if they go out once a week and have a one-night-stand. It is a catch-all term for any of a number of behavior disorders when they happen to involve and aspect of sexuality.

No one would say that someone who washes his or her hands all day until they are raw is a "cleanliness addict". They wouldn't say that someone who watches ESPN all the time is a "sports addict". And they wouldn't say that someone who goes to a disco every week is a dance addict.