On Sex Addiction and Recovery

At the Men’s Resource Center, we believe that addictions are fundamentally a complex neurochemical disorder involving genetics, pleasure, reward, and memory centers in the brain. Over the years, we have guided people dealing with addiction along the path to recovery and well-being. The focus of this piece is on sex addiction and recovery. — Randy Flood and Al Heystek

What is Sexual Addiction?

There are signs that an individual’s relationship with sex is becoming an addiction. These include:

• the recurrent failure to resist impulses to engage in destructive sexual behavior such as internet pornography, affairs, or use of adult establishments. It includes the unsuccessful effort to stop, reduce, or control these behaviors.
• an inordinate amount of time attaining sex, being sexual, or recovering from sexual experiences.
• preoccupation with sexual activity resulting in failure to fulfill occupational, academic, or relational obligations.
• continued engagement in sexual behavior despite social, financial, psychological, and physical problems caused by or exacerbated by the addiction.
• overwhelming feelings of distress, anxiety, restlessness, and irritability if unable to engage in sexual behavior.
• the need to increase the intensity, frequency, number, and risk of sexual behaviors in order to achieve a desired effect.

The Men’s Resource Center provides an anonymous sex addiction self-assessment on its website as a resource. Self-assessment can provide self-awareness and the opportunity to seek help.

Contributing Factors to Sex Addiction

Male socialization emphasizes a kind of hyper-independence and disconnection from feelings that sets up boys and men to be emotional islands and isolated from the development of healthy intimacy. We believe these powerful cultural messages that bombard boys and men about how to be male contribute to the development of addictions, especially and including internet sex addiction.

Boys and men are taught in a myriad of ways that the vulnerable emotions—fear, hurt, disappointment, sadness—need to be suppressed, even denied. This disconnect from emotion results in a significant loss of real connection with themselves and others.

Friendships with other males are often reduced to superficial, heady, and competitive banter devoid of deep meaning and connection. This suppression of emotions and the resulting isolation from healthy connection creates profound shame, isolation, and loneliness in the male identity. One expression of this is that these feelings become externalized—acting out to avoid unwanted emotions—and ultimately sexualized.

How does Sex Addiction Compare to Chemical Addictions?

In 2011 the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) comprised of medical doctors whose qualifications entail specific training in addiction treatment, pharmacology, board certification, and clinical experience, formulated a more accurate definition for addiction that incorporates current neuroscientific findings. Their extensive research led the ASAM to define addiction as a chronic brain disorder and not simply a behavioral problem involving too much alcohol, drugs, gambling, or sex (American Society of Addiction Medicine. (2011, August 15). New definition of addiction: Addiction is a chronic brain disease, not just bad behavior or bad choices. ScienceDaily.).

ASAM confidently applies this updated definition informed by brain research to both substance and process addictions (explicitly including sex and gambling), based on the commonality of the reward brain pathways involved in both types.

An article in “The Therapist” (Sex Addiction, Jan/Feb 2017, CAMF) explains it this way: “In the last decade researchers and mental health professionals have worked diligently to improve the efficacy of sex addiction treatment based on the neurophysiological addiction paradigm. The resulting theoretical construct—that all addicts whether substance or process (i.e., gambling, overeating, overspending, or sex) are developmental self-regulation disorders triggered by neurobiological deficits from early relational (attachment) trauma—informs cutting-edge addiction treatments. This understanding means that sex addiction treatment must weave together neuroscientific knowledge with genuine therapeutic connection if it is to nourish the client’s self-acceptance and relational capacities.”

Myths About Addiction

Even though the hallmark of addiction is loss of control, a popular myth is that one’s condition is simply a result of personal bad choices. It’s as if a person could choose to become addicted and, once addicted, choose not to be. We’ve had clients say, “I allowed my addiction to get the better of me.”

Yes, people choose to binge drink, use cocaine, try opiates, try internet gambling or internet pornography but they don’t choose to lose control and develop an addiction.

Here’s an example: In the summer months west Michigan beaches are flooded with people. Some will choose to go out into the hallowed waters even when the yellow or red flags are up. And, on occasion, someone is pulled away from shore by a rip current resulting in a tragic loss of life. We could say it was a poor choice to go out into those rough and dangerous waters. We can also say with confidence that the person did not choose to get pulled out by a rip current.

People choose behaviors, yet don’t choose to lose control. Similarly, people choose certain behaviors but don’t choose to lose control and develop an addiction. There is, however, the choice to ask for help and get into recovery.

The Trap of Sex Addiction

Research indicates that the use of internet pornography—with its high-tech, high-speed, and intense imagery providing powerful mood-altering sexual illusions and fantasies—is escalating at huge rates. This visual attraction lures men who unwittingly avoid their anxiety of creating real intimacy in their lives in exchange for the false intimacy of internet pornography; ultimately supporting the core problem of sex addiction, an intimacy disorder.

Male clients at the Men’s Resource Center attest to how the addiction to porn eventually becomes a vicious cycle of pain that creates even more isolation, loneliness, and shame than when they started. They experience the adage that “you simply cannot get enough of what you don’t really need.” Sexual acting out salves the problem, but doesn’t solve it. What seemed at first a promise of endless pleasure has now become a painful, destructive reality that wreaks havoc on themselves and others.

The Fall-out of Sex Addiction

Sex addiction runs roughshod through intimate relationships. It shakes the foundations of trust, safety, and respect, often leaving an intimate partner with feelings of betrayal, self-doubt, suspiciousness, and anger—it’s essentially traumatic revelation.

Men who struggle with sex addiction have lived a duplicitous life to avoid revealing their shameful secret of losing control and experiencing their sexuality as untethered from their intimate relational contract and even their own moral codes. Consequently, the relief they may feel for finally being freed from the darkness of shame and secrecy now casts a dark shadow over their intimate relationship while causing much pain and suffering to their partner. As you can imagine, their shame of being a bad and flawed man now grows in seeing their partner’s distress.

Sex addiction is a multifaceted biomedical problem impacting social, psychological, and spiritual functioning. It impacts social relationships, intimate partners, family, and sometimes work relationships. It damages trust in profound ways. For the addicted person, the pattern of social isolation that contributed to loneliness is now exacerbated.

Some men isolate themselves by literally cutting off connections with others. Other men, rather than literally isolating themselves, can be quite socially active seeking multiple connections with women other than their partners. The shallowness of these relationships creates the same emotional isolation and the covering of one’s true self. There is the need to talk to others about this problem but the internal narrative of shame and guilt makes reaching out extremely difficult. And yet, there is treatment for sex addiction. Recovery is possible.

The Impacts of Internet Pornography

The Men’s Resource Center offers men’s support groups for men seeking treatment for sex addiction. Within the group, they share the effect of sex addiction on their lives:

• Creates momentum; you want it more
• Cuts me off from spirituality and relationship with a Higher Power
• Can’t look my partner directly in the eye
• Desensitizes me; women are less human
• Haunts me. The images don’t go away
• Steals enjoyment and satisfaction in one’s partner
• Pushes me toward depression
• Distracts; steals time and energy

Sex addiction is damaging to a person’s spirituality. It impacts each individual’s sense of meaning and purpose, their sense of belonging, and the ability to make meaningful connections with others or with themselves. Addictions tear at the very fabric of acceptance of one’s belief in oneself and one’s worth as a person. Sex addiction compromises a person’s ability to love and be loved, to forgive and be forgiven.

Sex Addiction Treatment/Recovery

Accountability is a cornerstone of recovery. When a man can be honest and begin to understand how his behavior has impacted his loved ones and himself then doors can open. We invite men into a process where they can begin to see that the choices to act out sexually by looking at pornography have trapped them into a fantasy world that offered connection but instead gave them more isolation and loneliness than they started with.

Our treatment recovery program is designed to treat sex addiction and the stages of recovery and growth. The initial goals are for achieving sexual sobriety, accountability, and support through group therapy, relapse prevention planning, insight building into the dynamics and issues related to sex addiction, and general support to reduce shame and isolation.

Although some men can have reservations about group participation, most men find group work integral to their recovery. They often trade in the old masculine adages of “tough it out” and “real men make it on their own or fix their own problems” with new, healthier versions of masculinity: seeing strength in community, how courageous it is to open up and ask for help, and the bravery involved in facing ourselves and taking off the social masks we hide behind. In our treatment programs we often hear comments such as “I thought I was the only one who struggled with this problem,” “It feels good to know I don’t have to fight this on my own,” and “Bringing this into the light has reduced the darkness and isolation in my life.”

A New Life without Addiction

Because sex addiction can have underlying and longstanding issues with intimacy and emotional intelligence, group work often evolves into personal healing and growth counseling. Men work on childhood trauma, family of origin issues, self-esteem, intimate sexuality, identified character flaws, self-compassion, and empathy for others. They find a circle of men who let them embrace all the wonder of masculinity without having to sacrifice their humanity and intimate and authentic relationships with others. If being caught in the web of sex addiction robs us of our dignity, our self-esteem, our loving and real connection to others—essentially our life—the Transformations Toward a Healthy Sexuality Program at the Men’s Resource Center reinvents and rebuilds our manhood, restores and enlivens our relationships, and gives us back our life!