Addiction stories are big business. As a society we’ve always loved watching addicts. There’s something almost romantic about the stories of addicts as demonstrated by the number of books and movies that have focused on their struggles. In a way, you could say that Americans have had an addiction to addiction for generations.
The idea of being addicted to something – or someone – has been used in storytelling since the earliest days of literature. Romeo and Juliet were addicted to each other, an addiction that ended up with an impressive body count and a love story that has remained popular for more than a century.
Today we see the word addiction applied to a number of different things. Of course we understand now the power and impact addiction to drugs and alcohol can have on someone’s life. But we also have a better understanding for things like an addiction to gambling.
Recently, people have started talking about sex addiction. If you’re anything like me, you probably laughed the first time you heard about it. Addicted to sex? Uh, yes, please! What’s wrong with wanting a lot of sex or checking out porn if that’s your thing? Masturbation is downright good for you and fantasizing about sex can boost your creativity and make you a better lover. So where’s the harm?
It turns out, like many other things, when it comes to sex there really is such a thing as going too far.
The Reality of Sex Addiction
When you read about sex addiction you come across a lot of information written by people who clearly don’t like commercial sexuality or who have their own agenda to push. Websites that want to offer recovery services or which classify any kind of sexual activity as ‘sinful’ go to great lengths to produce articles and editorials about the evils of sex addiction. That makes it difficult to determine just how prevalent or possible the condition is.
Here’s what we know – when people engage in any kind of sexual activity, it ignites all kinds of feel good receptors and mood enhancing endorphins and hormones inside your body. As we develop a better understanding of the neurochemistry of sex, it becomes easy to see how some people could experience a drug-like rush from various sex acts and how that could spiral into addiction. It doesn’t take a lot of digging to find stories from people who have put themselves in dangerous situations, lost their spouses and even lost their jobs all because of sexual compulsions they felt they couldn’t ignore.
Does that mean sex addiction is the next great plague of the modern world? Hardly. While there are plenty of doomsday websites that claim sex addiction is eroding the very fabric of society, the truth is that true sexual addiction appears to be fairly rare.
True sexual addicts engage in compulsive sexual behavior that begins to affect their life in a negative way. It’s when people engage in these acts long after it stopped being fun. It isn’t about pleasure anymore, it’s about the true depths of addiction. To put it in perspective, some people liken it to alcohol. There are people who develop a problem with it, but there are a whole lot more who don’t.
Although sex addiction isn’t as wide spread as some would have you believe, that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. As we learn more about how sexuality affects us mentally and physically, the mechanics its addictive nature become clearer. Ultimately, this could also lead to new ways for people prone to addiction to avoid having their sex lives become a problem.
