Colby Cosh: Who says sex isnt a real addiction?

Joey

Joey

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If the term “sex addiction” sounds like a total crock to you, you’ll be happy to hear that CNN agrees. Late last week, in the wake of a ghastly murder rampage at Atlanta-area massage parlours, police told reporters that the suspect had complained of sex addiction issues in explaining his motives to them. He had been “kicked out of his family’s house because of his sex addiction, which included regularly watching pornography for hours,” and acquaintances have said “sexual addiction was something the suspect was being treated for and was distraught over.”


The cable news network’s Kristen Rogers, observing that killers have often claimed to suffer sex addiction, used this as a proper occasion to point out that the existence of sex addiction isn’t accepted by mainstream psychiatry. It’s a high-quality article which presents the position of recognized experts very well.
ple.news/Ade1Dl0rVRZ-dDp3_zqmgfg


Sex addiction has been treated as real by talk shows and trashy magazines since at least 1980, and its treatment is a large therapeutic industry. Nevertheless, DSM committees decided that it lacked scientific warrant as a true disease of the mind, unlike other recognized forms of addiction.


Research into sex addiction and “hypersexual disorder” is certainly a subjective, disorganized mess driven by a small claque of credentialed scholars. Moreover, they have an annoying habit of characterizing themselves as daring scientific explorers who are decades ahead of their time. Having said that, I am not sure I would like to bet a very large amount of money that they won’t ultimately be seen that way. At this point, psychiatry couldn’t get the disease model of addictive behaviours out of the DSM with anything short of dynamite. If it’s true that you can be addicted to overeating or to drinking coffee, why shouldn’t it be true that you can be addicted to internet pornography or patronage of sex workers?


While CNN doesn’t mention it, legal considerations factored into the background discussion prior to the publication of DSM-5. Psychiatrists feared that giving the stamp of mainstream approval to “sex addiction” would lead to its abuse by defence lawyers. This has arguably already happened on a low level: you can confirm this for yourself by searching the Canadian legal database CanLII for “sex addiction.”


You might also look for “Sex Addicts Anonymous,” a 12-step movement that is found in the CNN article carefully disavowing any scientific standing. This doesn’t stop the members of the group from citing their participation in SAA meetings as a mitigating circumstance, on their own behalf or that of others, when someone is facing a criminal sentence for some revolting offence.


So far this kind of thing hasn’t made much headway in courts, compared with the officially endorsed addictions and their treatment modalities. But the sex addiction advocates are there with their well-worn comebacks. Courts used to treat alcoholics as drunks, and heroin addicts as junkies, didn’t they? If we had left it up to neurologists or psychiatrists to discover alcoholism, we might have waited forever. It was unschooled amateurs and the general public who discovered the disease of “alcoholism,” and treated it by trial and error for decades, before the disease model won over the scientists. It’s possible that this was itself a mistake, but that would be another column, wouldn’t it?
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I think sex can be addictive or the endorphin rush of orgasm, denied orgasm, arousal, sexual Sadism/masochism, sensations, etc.
 
I think we need to start dividing addiction from compulsion. I see addiction as involving drugs exclusively. Compulsion involves food, sex, gambling, video games, checking your lock 5 times, etc. They are very similar, but a heroin addict and a gambler need very different treatments for many reasons

Sex obsession/compulsion can become a very real problem and needs to be treated as such

I dont feel any empathy for this dick any more than I feel bad for heroin addicts who shoot pharmacists trying to cop oxy or something. Theres being a degenerate, then theres being evil. He cared so little about human life he'd rather kill a bunch of people than grow some discipline. That's some legendary level of lazy and selfish
 
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