Sex Addiction: Is It Real?

Tiger Woods recently admitted to multiple extramarital affairs and said he received treatment. David Duchovny, who plays a sex-obsessed professor on the TV show Californication, underwent rehab in 2008. Then Jesse James, husband of Oscar-winner Sandra Bullock is claiming his indiscretions are the result of a sex addiction. This has left some people asking; is sex addiction real? Sex-addiction seems to be everywhere. You probably know someone who seems to fit the criteria. Still, mental health experts are split on what underlies this behavior. The American Psychiatric Association has proposed that out-of-control sexual appetites be included as a diagnosis in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, to be published in 2013. This book is the bible for mental health professionals on the U.S.

Some studies suggest that hypersexual behavior is an addiction because the affected person exhibits the same type of loss of control that seizes compulsive gamblers or shoppers. For example, in a 1997 survey of 53 self-identified sex addicts in a 12-step recovery program, 98 percent said they had three or more withdrawal symptoms, 94 percent they had tried unsuccessfully to control their behavior and 92 percent they spent more time engaging in sexual behavior than they intended to. In addition, screening tests designed for sexually addicted people have been found to accurately identify people with substance-abuse problems, implying that the disorders have similarities. Patterns of extreme sexual behavior are often described by therapists as an addiction, as a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder or as a symptom of another psychiatric illness, such as depression. This theory has been backed up by research. In a 2004 study of 31 self-defined sex addicts, researchers at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University found that most of the people had an increased interest in sex when they were in depressed or anxious emotional states. This shows that sex addiction, like other addictions, tends to involve other problems as well, making the individual dually diagnosed.