You May Be A Sex Addict If....

Considering the amount of attention paid to the various celebrities and other ne'er-do-wells who use it as an excuse to justify questionable behavior and various bad choices, you may be surprised to learn that the medical community is by no means in agreement that there is any such thing as “sexual addiction.”  Significantly, it is not mentioned in the DSM-5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, the 2013 edition of the volume that serves as the authority for psychiatric diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association.

No one denies that men and women who are engaging in serial sexual activity at the expense of their families and careers aren't suffering from a very real malady. But since “words mean something,” many in the psychiatric community have come to describe the ailment as “hypersexual disorder” (HD). As such, it is no more about “sex” than an eating disorder is about “food,” with the ailment serving as an indicator of other anxiety, stress, depression and/or shame which must needs be addressed in treatment. In many ways, HD is similar to obsessive compulsive disorder. In fact, medications used to treat OCD have been used to rein in the compulsive sexual nature of HD sufferer, and many in the scientific community prefer ratcheting down the nomenclature from “hypersexual disorder” to merely “sexually compulsive behavior.”

A 2013 study clearly established that the neuro-chemistry behind such behavior was markedly different than that of alcohol or drug addiction. The researchers hypothesized that if sexually compulsive behavior was clinically an addiction, then the neural reaction of such patients to pornography should duplicate the neural responses of drug or alcohol addicts to their drink or drugs of choice. But the scientists discovered that higher and lower “degrees” of sexual obsession did not predict neural responses at all.

Certainly, everyone agrees that those afflicted with HD or whatever you want to call it are in need of help. But there is no formal diagnostic test you can undertake to determine whether you have this ailment – you cannot “self-diagnose.” So how do you know if you are a candidate for treatment?

Psychologists agree that if you:

Experience shame, embarrassment or even self-loathing over your sexual acts;

Have become inordinately preoccupied with sex;

Feel powerless over how you act sexually;

promise yourself you’ll change, but fail to keep those promises;

Believe that your sexual choices are endangering you or your loved ones;

...then you likely are in need of help and a candidate for treatment.