I have spent the past 15 years of my professional life treating sexual addiction. Back when I started this work, those of us working with sex addicts were more often challenged in the media and in professional communities to “prove” that the diagnosis of sexual addiction actually existed, rather than encouraged to discuss how the problem is diagnosed or solved. The Internet has changed all of that. There are now so many men and women simply checked out day after day from their work, families and social lives from hours spent online – viewing porn, researching and hooking up with prostitutes or finding anonymous sex partners, so many lives are now affected, that question has moved from “is there really such a thing as sex addiction?” to “ok there is a problem, what can we do about it?”
Many in the more conservative and religious communities might consider pornography itself or increased access to sexual interaction to be the problem, but to me that is like saying that alcohol is such a problem that it shouldn’t be widely available because some people get drunk or ruin their lives with drink (recall Prohibition). Human beings are innately pleasure seeking and pain avoiding and will pursue substances and activities to distract us and make us feel good. Some weave these pleasures into the fabric of their lives, getting drunk in college, sexual experimentation in early adulthood, occasional gambling when on holiday. However there are some, who lacking healthier ways of coping with the stressors of day-to-day life, learn to abuse pleasure and distraction in an attempt to tolerate their intolerable emotions. People who obsessively seek relationships with images and strangers because they can’t or don’t know how to get their needs met from those they love are in pain and in need of help.
Cybersex and porn addicts tend to be very isolated, living double lives and often hating themselves for what they feel driven to do. Though some would say that being a sex addict sounds kind of fun, the reality of sneaking around your wife’s sleep schedule several days a week so that you can catch a few hours of porn alone at 3 AM or shoving your kids off to bed as quickly as possible so that you can be alone to enter a sexual chat room, are hardly what anyone would call fun. Sex addiction is not about the pleasures of healthy sexuality and not about orgasm, though for some there are both pleasure and completion. Sex addicts are lost for hours at a time in cruising, chatting, looking and masturbating. Their addiction is to the neurochemical high achieved by focusing on these hyper-stimulating images and experiences for hours at a time and become, lost in the adrenaline, dopamine and endorphin high that the body produces while the are in this activity. While doing this, nothing else matters to the sex addict, no thought, problem or anxiety interfere and that in itself can be a reinforcement to keep doing it.
Those addicted to cybersex and online sexual intensity can get better. They can learn to stop their problem sexual behaviors by incorporating healthier ways of coping and reintroduce themselves to their own lives. But they cannot do this alone. Healing from sex addiction involves professional help, 12-step or other spiritually based support and a commitment to a long-term solution. Unfortunately most sex addicts I have worked with only seek help when they finally begin to have trouble with their families, spouses, in the workplace or with the law due to their sexual behaviors. That is the way it seems to be for nearly all addicts I have known. Only when the pain of the consequences of their actions can no longer be erased by more addictive behavior do they seek help. For those who are ready, I am glad to have something to offer.
Five Signs of Pornography Addiction (Online or Video/Magazines)
1) ESCALATION IN TIME SPENT IN THE BEHAVIOR AND/OR INTENSITY OF THE CONTENT
2) LIFE PROBLEMS IN MULTIPLE AREAS CAUSED BY THE SEXUAL BEHAVIOR
3) LOSS OF TIME RESERVED FOR OTHER THINGS TO PORN USE AND SEXUAL ACTING OUT
4) IRRITABILITY IF ASKED TO STOP OR LOOK AT THE SEXUAL ISSUE AS A PRIMARY PROBLEM
5) PREVIOUS FAILED ATTEMPTS TO STOP
Five Steps Towards Healing From Sexual Addiction
1) ACKNOWLEDGING THE PROBLEM FULLY
2) ELIMINATING PORN ACCESS (SOME CAN’T ACCESS THE INTERNET AT ALL FOR A TIME)
3) BEING HONEST WITH YOURSELF AND LOVED ONES
4) EDUCATING YOURSELF (AND SPOUSE)
5) GETTING HELP (12-step, church groups, addiction-based therapy)
About the Author
Robert Weiss LCSW, CAS is founder and Clinical Director of The Sexual Recovery Institute: Los Angeles, an outpatient sexual addiction treatment center. He is the author of two books on sexual addiction, Cybersex Exposed (2001) and Cruise Control (2005). He has this year appeared on PBS, Oprah and The Discovery Channel speaking about sexual addiction. www.sexualrecovery.com
