Sexual Addiction

What is "sex addiction"?

The major difference between sex addiction addict is the preoccupation with sex, sexual intercourse, pornography. The idea that it's not love looking to be loved but its sexual intercourse. It's power, it's dominance, or the act of sexual intercourse involve or something like that.

Can sex addicts be involved in loving relationships?

It's my experience that true addicts, sex addicts, love addicts, do not have healthy -- do not have the tools to have healthy, ongoing, ebb and flow relationships. They're very rocky and their preoccupations are such that it's difficult to manage the normal ebb and flow of a relationship. So they don't seem to have casual relationships or casual partners. They explode rather quickly; they go through many relationship in a rather short period of time because they're trying to go about it, to bring about the act with too much pressure to really negotiate the difficult -- to have an intimate relationship with someone. A healthy relationship.

Will sex addiction stop on its own?

I believe that some people really do grow out of it. I really do believe that some of these addictions are time-specific, era-specific. They may be in our teenage years where love and romance are much more prominent, are much more socially endorsed. But the reality is some don't. In some people, it will escalate and it will get worse. But on the other hand, some people do seem to grow out of it, mature out of it would be a way of talking about it. It's not as paramount to have these kind of relationships at 50 than it was at 20.

What should I do when I see signs of sex addiction in myself?

The first key step is not to deny your sex addiction and not to feel ashamed. Don't say things to yourself like "I am a bad person", "I am a fool" or "I am an idiot." Don't demoralize yourself. Look at yourself and say to yourself "I am human and I have some leanings, this is my leaning." See if you can observe the signs of sex addiction. If your sex addiction starts to escalate then there is a certain set of processes you should probably get involved with such as therapy or discussions with a professional. If more people could step out of this notion that sex addicts are immoral people, encouraged by the medical community, there could be self-correcting action the individual could take to re-channel these propensities in a more healthy, less destructive way.

How are sexual behavioral addictions treated in the harm reduction model?

All of these sort of similar addictions are, first of all, not often treated in cognitive behavioural therapy, not treated in self-help groups; not treated at all. Most of this stuff is underground. Most of this is done secretly. Self-recovery, or life changes happen and they evolve out of it. Treatment really hasn't been developed all that much, to date, on these things. There's too much shame and embarrassment around it, not only for the client, but for the professional. It's not easy, as a psychologist, to hear some of the stories you might hear when you're talking with a client with these sort of problems. So, there's shame going both ways, and unless the therapist has an ability to transcend that, they're going to actually make the problem worse because they're going to inundate the individual with shameful imagery about themselves, and self-esteem is going to plummet, et cetera, et cetera.

How would you treat a sex addict in your care?

I do not have a separate distinct protocol for a sex or love addict. There are certain domains that are identical to other addictions. It's still in my basic premise or formulation with a client that they're filling something up, distracting themselves, trying to change how they feel inside, whether it's lonely or boredom. So I would approach it in a very traditional way, a cognitive behavioral way, of helping them finding adaptive ways of coping with these feelings or managing these feelings. But on a practical level, there might be very distinct suggestions or homework assignments, where it's not so much. Let's say a pornography addict, it's about teaching them that they can be social and proactive in the community. So their homework will be based on learning that they can get comfortable out in a social situation, where a different sort of addict, I might actually encourage them to be alone and learn how to be able to tolerate their own body sensation, their own sense of life and feelings.