Many people know, in the back of their minds, that compulsively watching porn online can lead to addictive behavior, or that the escorts advertised in the back pages of town papers have a steady stream of business that keeps the ads coming. And research reminds us that consumers of sex in pornography or prostitution often are repeat consumers. But many people, including the consumers of sex, have trouble acknowledging what sex addiction is and that sex addicts are a part of our communities.
Our looking the other way may be because we naturally don’t like to dwell on dark topics. But when I see sex addicts as a therapist in my practice, I see real people working to make positive changes in their lives. The following are some examples (with changed names and from composite) of sex addicts seeking recovery.
The faces of sex addiction
Meet Charlie. He is a successful engineer, married for 15 years to his college sweetheart. They have three children. Or Jerry, who coaches his daughter’s soccer team and is involved in his church. He was reprimanded at work for spending 30 hours in the past two weeks streaming porn on his work-issued laptop.
Brian is a charming and handsome 32-year-old physical therapist. He’s sober from cocaine for 12 years and alcohol for 11.5 years. Hal has a dozen sponsees between his involvement in Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, but he has a secret that he’s afraid to tell his wife. He routinely visits massage parlors and pays for oral sex. He’s ashamed and is considering hurting himself.
Julie is a 25-year-old teacher and artist. She recently had her first showing at an art gallery and her family couldn’t be more proud. Julie has never had a boyfriend but regularly has drunken one-night stands. On the weekends if she isn’t looking for a new partner, Julie searches the Internet for porn and is sometimes surprised by the violent and abusive content in what she seeks out.
Drew is 27 and just got engaged. He recently got his dream job offer of joining the city fire department. Drew’s fiancé knows that he started watching porn when he was in middle school, but when she asked him to stop, he agreed. It’s been eight months since Drew last looked at porn, but his fiancé regularly notices him checking out other women. Drew says, “It’s no big deal,” but inside, Drew wonders why he can’t stop; meanwhile his fiancé wonders, “Why am I not enough?”
Hijacking our humanity
Charlie, Brian, Julie, and Drew come from different ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious backgrounds, but they share the same struggle with sex addiction. We may have a particular image of how we think a sex addict should look or act, but the truth is, they look like you, your neighbor, the person on the street. They are young and old. Religious and atheist. Male and female. Part of the 1 percent and the 99 percent. Like substance addictions, sex addiction does not discriminate. Unlike substance addictions, sex addiction affects an innate part of a human person—his or her sexuality—and hijacks our most primitive and powerful instinct—survival.
The convenience and automation of twenty-first-century life can make it easy to forget that food and sex are essential to human survival. Food enables bodily survival, and sex enables continued survival through offspring. Our biology incentivizes engaging in survival activities through a rewards system. Our brain gives us a burst of the pleasure chemical, dopamine, when we eat or have sex. In fact, sex delivers our body’s most powerful natural surge of dopamine during an orgasm.
Dopamine is a key player in addiction. It floods the brain after the addicts gets a “hit” and delivers a feeling of euphoria. The pleasurable experience gets flagged as something important to seal into our memory, increasing the likelihood that we will carry out the behavior again in the future. This is great news for survival—and terrible news for those dealing with compulsive sexual behavior.
Many therapists and other clinicians are aware of what is called addiction transference, wherein an addict gets sober from one addiction, only to pick up another. This is often why people in recovery pick up smoking or overeating. This is also why I’ve met so many men and women who are sober from substances only to find themselves in treatment for sex addiction.
Surviving to thriving
A person doesn’t need to drink a beer or snort cocaine to survive. Humans do need to eat, and even if a person is sexually abstinent, every person has sexuality (our genitalia and sex organs remind us of this every day). Just as the nature of sex addiction is different from other addictions, the path toward healing for a sex addict includes a fundamental difference than that of substance users. Rather than ending the relationship with their drug of choice, the sex addict must learn how to create a new and different relationship with their sexuality.
The first step in building a new, healthy relationship with sexuality involves allowing the brain to rewire itself. Though sex addiction can seem impossible to heal from, the brain has the amazing capacity to form new neural pathways over time as the body and person changes. This should give tremendous hope to anyone suffering from sex addiction and their loved ones.
There are three steps recovering sex addicts take in the process of rewiring their brain’s pathways.
First, they stop all sexual activity for a period of time. This includes viewing any pornography, masturbation, or any other sexual activity (even if it’s with a husband or wife). For a sex addict, any sexual activity can light up old neural pathways, and the brain needs time to create something new.
Recovering sex addicts also work to catch themselves engaging in the objectification of others and redirect themselves. There are three primary types of sexually objectifying behavior: fantasy, or imagining or picturing something in the future; objectification, that is, of something happening in the present moment; and euphoric recall, calling to mind an experience from the past. FOEs (fantasy, objectification, or euphoric recall) light up old neural pathways. When a FOE comes up—which it will in recovery from sex addiction—recovering addicts have the choice of whether or not to feed it.
Lastly, it’s important that recovering sex addicts connect with others authentically in non-sexual ways. Sex addiction distorts authentic relationships and intimacy. By practicing real friendship, people can rewire their brains for healthy intimacy.
While sex addiction poses deep challenges for relationships and individuals’ mental health, the good news is that there are paths to recovery and that they are not alone. Charlie, Jerry, Brian, Julie, and Drew have learned that. Those interested in joining them toward a life free of sexually compulsive behavior can seek a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT) and begin today.
“Like an alcoholic unable to stop drinking, sexual addicts are unable to stop their self-destructive sexual behavior. Family breakups, financial disaster, loss of jobs, and risk to life are the painful themes of their stories.
Sex addicts come from all walks of life – they may be ministers, physicians, homemakers, factory workers, salespersons, secretaries, clerks, accountants, therapists, dentists, politicians, or executives, to name just a few examples. Most were abused as children – sexually, physically, and/or emotionally. The majority grew up in families in which addiction already flourished, including alcoholism, compulsive eating, and compulsive gambling. Most grapple with other addictions as well, but they find sex addiction the most difficult to stop.
Much hope nevertheless exists for these addicts and their families. Sex addicts have shown an ability to transform a life of self-destruction into a life of self-care, a life in chaos and despair into one of confidence and peace.”
What Defines a Sex Addict?
No single behavior pattern defines sexual addiction. These behaviors, when they have taken control of addicts’ lives and become unmanageable, include: compulsive masturbation, compulsive heterosexual and homosexual relationships, pornography, prostitution, exhibitionism, voyeurism, indecent phone calls, child molesting, incest, rape and violence. Even the healthiest forms of human sexual expression can turn into self-defeating behaviors.While an actual diagnosis for sexual addiction should be carried out by a mental health professional, the following behavior patterns can indicate the presence of sexual addiction. Individuals who see any of these patterns in their own life, or in the life of someone they care about, should seek professional help.
1. Acting out: a pattern of out-of-control sexual behavior.
Examples may include:
· Compulsive masturbation
· Indulging in pornography
· Having chronic affairs
· Exhibitionism
· Dangerous sexual practices
· Prostitution
· Anonymous sex
· Compulsive sexual episodes
· Voyeurism
2. Experiencing severe consequences due to sexual behavior, and an inability to stop despite these adverse consequences.
In Patrick Carnes’ book, Don’t Call It Love, 1991, some of the losses reported by sex addicts
include:
· Loss of partner or spouse (40%)
· Severe marital or relationship problems (70%)
· Loss of career opportunities (27%)
· Unwanted pregnancies (40%)
· Abortions (36%)
· Suicide obsession (72%)
· Suicide attempts (17%)
· Exposure to AIDS and venereal disease (68%)
· Legal risks from nuisance offenses to rape (58%)
3. Persistent pursuit of self-destructive behavior.
Even understanding that the consequences of their actions will be painful or have dire consequences does not stop addicts from acting out. They often seem to have a willfulness about their actions, and an attitude that says, “I’ll deal with the consequences when they come.”
4. Ongoing desire or effort to limit sexual behavior.
Addicts often try to control their behavior by creating external barriers to it. For example, some move to a new neighborhood or city, hoping that a new environment removed from old affairs will help. Some think marriage will keep them from acting out. An exhibitionist may buy a car in which it’s difficult to act out while driving. Others seeking control over their behavior try to immerse themselves in religion, only to find out that, while religious compulsion may soothe their shame, it does not end their acting out. Many go through periods of sexual anorexia during which they allow themselves no sexual expression at all. Such efforts, however, only fuel the addiction.
5. Sexual obsession and fantasy as a primary coping strategy.
Through acting out sexually can temporarily relieve addicts’ anxieties, they still find themselves spending inordinate amounts of time in obsession and fantasy. By fantasizing, the addict can maintain an almost constant level of arousal. Together with obsessing, the two behaviors can create a kind of analgesic “fix.” Just as our bodies generate endorphins, natural anti-depressants, during vigorous exercise, our bodies naturally release peptides when sexually aroused. The molecular construction of these peptides parallels that of opiates like heroin or morphine, but is many times more powerful.
6. Regularly increasing the amount of sexual experience because the current level of activity is no longer sufficiently satisfying.
Sexual addiction is often progressive. While addicts may be able to control themselves for a time, inevitably their addictive behaviors will return and quickly escalate to previous levels and beyond. Some addicts begin adding additional acting out behaviors. Usually addicts will have three or more behaviors which play a key role in their addiction—masturbation, affairs, and anonymous sex, for instance. In addition, 89% of addicts reported regularly “bingeing” to the point of emotional exhaustion. The emotional pain of withdrawal for sexual addicts can parallel the physical pain experienced by those withdrawing from opiate addiction.
7. Severe mood changes related to sexual activity.
Addicts experience intense mood shifts, often due to the despair and shame of having unwanted sex. Sexual addicts are caught in a crushing cycle of shame-driven and shame-creating behavior. While shame drives the sexual addicts’ actions, it also becomes the unwanted consequence of a few moments of euphoric escape into sex.
8. Inordinate amounts of time spent obtaining sex, being sexual, and recovering from sexual experiences.
Two sets of activities organize sexual addicts’ days. One involves obsessing about sex, time devoted to initiating sex, and actually being sexual. The second involves time spent dealing with the consequences of their acting out: lying, covering up, shortages of money, problems with their spouse, trouble at work, neglected children, and so on.
9. Neglect of important social, occupational, or recreational activities because of sexual behavior.
As more and more of addicts’ energy becomes focused on relationships which have sexual potential, other relationships and activities—family, friends, work, talents and values—suffer and atrophy from neglect. Long-term relationships are stormy and often unsuccessful. Because of sexual over-extension and intimacy avoidance, short-term relationships become the norm. Sometimes, however, the desire to preserve an important long-term relationship with spouse or children, for instance, can act as the catalyst for addicts to admit their problem and seek help.
Sexual Addiction V. Other Addictions
Sexual addiction can be understood by comparing it to other types of addictions. Individuals addicted to alcohol or other drugs, for example, develop a relationship with their “chemical(s) of choice” – a relationship that takes precedence over any and all other aspects of their lives. Addicts find they need drugs merely to feel normal.
In sexual addiction, a parallel situation exists. Sex – like food or drugs in other addictions—provides the “high” and addicts become dependent on this sexual high to feel normal. They substitute unhealthy relationships for healthy ones. They opt for temporary pleasure rather than the deeper qualities of “normal” intimate relationships.
Sexual addiction follows the same progressive nature of other addictions. Sexual addicts struggle to control their behaviors, and experience despair over their constant failure to do so. Their loss of self-esteem grows, fueling the need to escape even further into their addictive behaviors. A sense of powerlessness pervades the lives of addicts.
Why Don’t Sex Addicts Just Stop Their Behavior?
Sexual addicts feel tremendous guilt and shame about their out-of-control behavior, and they live in constant fear of discovery. Yet addicts will often act out sexually in an attempt to block out the very pain of their addiction. This is part of what drives the addictive cycle. Like other forms of addiction, sex addicts are out of control and unable to stop their behaviors despite their self-destructive nature and potentially devastating consequences.
Key to understanding loss of control in addicts is the concept of the “hijacked brain.” Addicts essentially have rewired their brains so that they do behaviors (drinking, drug use, eating, gambling, and sex) even when they are intending to do something quite different. The triggers to these maladaptive responses are usually stress, emotional pain, or specific childhood scenarios of sexual abuse or sexual trauma. Breakthrough science in examining brain function is helping us to understand the biology of this disease.