Is Sex Addiction A Disease?

When popular culture and media glorify certain acts to pass them off as humorous character traits, it becomes difficult to look at these traitsin any other way.One such “character trait” is serial adultery. 

Hank Moody in Californication, Charlie Harper in Two and a Half Men and countless other similar characters have led to the promotion of a belief that hyper-sexuality is a mere character flaw, if not an outright trait to be revered.

 

This indication makes it unlikely to take sex addiction as a serious disease, making it hard to diagnose it, and even harder to seek help for it.

Let’s take a deeper look at sex addiction, its underlying causes and symptoms.

What is sex addiction?

According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, sex addiction is a primary chronic disease. It’s described as a compulsive need to perform sexual acts in order to achieve a ‘fix’ that an alcoholic would receive from a glass of whiskey, or a drug addict from receive from cocaine. 

While hyper-sexuality isn’t listed as a disorder in the fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, studies have shown that it is, in fact, a disorder because people who have it exhibit a pattern of sexual activity to overcome periods of irritation and distress. 

A sex addict performs a range of behaviors in excess, to the extent that it significantly impacts his/her life in a negative way. It can lead to several detrimental consequences including failure to sustain meaningful relationships.

Causes

Addiction takes root the midbrain. Since the midbrain is the body’s reward system, addiction develops when it mistakes pleasure responses for survival mechanisms.

Studies have linked higher frequency of addictive sexual behavior with dysfunctional and abusive families. Other causes include undergoing a traumatic experience and mental illnesses.

Symptoms

Sex addiction manifests in the form of activities such as; compulsive masturbation, persistent use of pornography, practicing unsafe sex, fallacy, masochistic behavior, prostitution, voyeurism and excessive sexual pursuits. 

Other behavior and attitudes associated with sex addiction include; inability to control sexual urges to respect boundaries, focusing on the physical aspect of the act that’s devoid of emotion, obsession with attracting people and pursuing new relationships, and awareness of the uncontrollable urges despite financial, medical or social consequences.

Treatment

Specialized counseling is used to alleviate symptoms of sex addiction in individuals. Counselors identify triggers for sexual thoughts and compulsive behavior to focus on finding different, less destructive behaviors to help the person deal with stress.

If you think you’re in a similar situation, Omega Recovery Transformational Healthcare’s sex addiction therapy program can help you overcome your addiction challenges by means of specialized treatment designs. Contact them today for a consultation in Austin.