Two weeks ago, when Harvey Weinstein was scampering off to sex rehab in order to try and convince us that he isn’t a monster, the topic of sex addiction once again came to the fore.

We covered what the experts had to say in our story HERE. A summary of that would be no, scientists are pretty much united in their stance that sex addiction isn’t a medical condition, and various health organisations have rejected any classification of sex addiction as a mental health disorder.

That being said, an article on Quartz titled “What it feels like to battle a sex addiction” paints a picture of someone battling serious demons.

Part of a series called Craigslist Confessional, let’s hear from Harrison (not his real name), who is in his late 40s.

Some pretty frank language ahead:

My first sexual “encounter”—let’s call it that, because I’m not sure it was abuse or any of those other labels that people throw around—was with a seventeen year old neighbor. I was ten. I used to play tennis, and he asked me if I wanted to play a few matches. Afterwards, he bought me a Slurpee and invited me over to his house. He had a basement bedroom, and he showed me these 8mm porn tapes. They were very graphic, and he had a closet full of them. We watched two or three; I remember feeling turned on, but also really conflicted. He said, “Do you mind if I touch myself?” And I just kind of shrugged. I had never masturbated before, so I just watched him and he watched porn.

My day is filled with pitfalls. They are honestly everywhere I look—tits, asses, bare midriffs, and short skirts worn by women barely old enough to drink, or sometimes women old enough to be my mother. Or sometimes men young enough to be my sons. I don’t discriminate. I don’t even see people anymore; I just see body parts. For me, it’s all the same. And I know that maybe for you, that’s hard to believe. You probably think that this is just an excuse to cheat on my wife…

I think that most of the sexual choices I’ve made haven’t really been choices at all. I started having sex with my sister when I was 15, with one of my guy friends when I was 13, and then with his sister shortly afterwards. I really have no recollection of how all of that came about; I just know that it happened, and it all seemed out of my control. I never differentiated between male and female, relative and stranger, good or bad—because to me, sex is sex…

I am not gay; in fact, I have a strong sexual preference for women. However, as the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers. I have unprotected sex whenever I can, and sometimes with prostitutes. I take part in large orgies with as many as twenty people or more in the room. I go to Korean spas—they’re called jjimjilbang, which I find hilariously pertinent—and have sexual encounters with men.

Health experts might say Harrison is describing hypersexuality, “a clinical diagnosis used by mental healthcare professionals to describe extremely frequent or suddenly increased libido”, rather than sex addiction as understood through terms like nymphomania.

Let’s skip ahead to how he is trying to battle these urges and behaviours, because I think we get the picture from that above:

Sex is unlike any other addiction because the high, at least for me, wears off the second I orgasm. As soon as I’m finished, I immediately start thinking about another—more extreme—way to get off. It’s a total torment. I don’t think I can think of any point in time when sex hasn’t been on my mind in some capacity, whether it’s feeling guilty about sex, trying to find someone to have sex with, trying to hide from people that I just had sex…or trying to avoid thinking about the health repercussions of my sexual activity…

Every time I think I’ve hit a new sexual low, I end up doing something even worse. Everything I do is totally antithetical to how I carry myself in public. I take no pride in any of this. I know that it’s not okay. I know that it’s wrong. But I cannot stop.

I don’t think I’m smart enough to figure out how I turned out like this. I think it’s because of what happened; I feel extremely guilty about the fact that I kept going back. And I know people love to say— “oh, that wasn’t your fault/you were just a kid/you have to learn to forgive yourself”—but that’s all just psychobabble bullshit and I know it. Was it really against my will if I returned out of my own volition? I didn’t even have to tell anyone; I could have just stopped going. It was completely in my own hands.

There’s a big difference between the story of Harrison above, and what seems to be a case of hypersexuality, and those told by the likes of Harvey Weinstein.

Hopefully Harrison gets the help he needs, and sexual predators like Harvey, who use their positions of power to prey on women, get the prison sentences they deserve.

[source:quartz]