Even though Im contestably the worlds worst actress, I found it easy to pass for a sex addict at my first attempt to infiltrate the tormented world of those who suffer sex as a disease. That was the first inkling I had of what became my most surprising discovery: that any average person can more or less qualify as a sex addict. The SAA (Sex Addicts Anonymous) group in my area is CD (Closed Discussion), meaning I had to be a sex addict to attend, so I posed as one. 
SAA is the progeny of SLAA (Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous), a group that emerged in the 70s in Boston as an offspring of the AA, modifying the twelve-step system to treat selfish sexual needs. SLAA defines sex and love addiction as a progressive illness which cannot be cured but which, like many illnesses, can be arrested. It may take several forms, including a compulsive need for sex, extreme dependency on one person, and/or a chronic preoccupation with romance, intrigue, or fantasy. Since this is a broad umbrella, the important question must be who determines what is too much.
The term sexual addiction was coined in 1983 in Los Angeles by Patrick Carnes, an ex-prison psychologist, in his book The Sexual Addiction, where he defined sex addicts as people whose sexual behavior become excessive and unstoppable, despite severe consequences like job loss, family breakdown, STDs. He included a 25-question screening test; response in the affirmative to 13 questions or more suggests sexual addiction. Many questions describe habits familiar to us all: Have you ever felt that you had to have sex? Have you subscribed to or regularly purchased sexually explicit magazines? Have you ever worried about people finding out about your sexual activities? Has sex been a way to escape your problems? Do you feel that life would have no meaning without a love relationship or without sex? Do you need to have sex or fall in love in order to feel like a real man or woman? Do you feel the need to hide your sexual activities from others? SLAAs Big Book, the sex-addicts bible, based on Carness work, came out in 1985. SAA was formed in 1987 by members who found SLAAs system of setting ones own bottom-line sex quotas too loose. SAA recommends abstinence from all sex including masturbation, which in due time is followed by long-term monogamy (at this transition the treatment usually fails). The first weekly SAA meeting was held in Charlotte, N.C. Today there are over 1,200 SAA groups meeting in churches or hospitals worldwide.
Patrick Carnes founded The Meadows clinic on a 14-acre dude ranch near Phoenix, AZ, where for $1,000 a day addicts get treatment. The Meadows reconstructs sex addiction as a pyramid, with rape and incest at the top, peeping in the middle, and porn use (including phonesex, cybersex, strip clubs, prostitutes) at the base. SAAs manuals list 10 types of sex addicts with 114 behaviors; sexual self-abuse is the second most common compulsion. Carnes estimates that up to 6 or 8 percent of adults (22 million Americans) are sex addicts. Other research shows 81 percent are men, 19 percent women, 90 percent white, 41 percent married, 63 percent heterosexual, and 38 percent have had postgraduate education. Only 16 percent are in recovery (compared to 48 percent for alcoholism).
Patrick Carness prototype of the sex addict has a low self-esteem and a sex-negative personal belief system. According to dogma, addicts turn to sex to fill a void in their lives; when theyre down on themselves or feel abandoned or need attention, they compensate by having sexual pleasure, which remedies their pain, gives them a sense of success and emotional balance. The preoccupation with sex is their way to disassociate from stress: sex works as analgesic. But, in time, the remedy becomes mechanical, and temporary, lasting as long as the last fix. Then the sadness and loneliness return, along with shame, and addicts need to increase their risks to get the same kind of high. This escalation spins out of control until the sex becomes more painful than the pain its covering up.
Does sex addiction exist? The American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Society of Addiction Medicine refuse to recognize it as a clinical condition. Critics accuse Carnes and his colleagues of inventing a disease to fit the trend of victimization; they say it diminishes personal responsibility and doesnt meet the criteria for addiction (psychological dependence on a substance, withdrawal symptoms). They say that if a patient has an OCD or bipolar disorder (which can be expressed as any compulsion), he must be prescribed serotonin reuptake inhibitors or lithium.
Undaunted, the National Council on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity has sponsored an annual conference and published a medical journal for the past six years, trying to get sex addiction included in the American Psychiatric Associations Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. (The 1994 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders lists sexual addiction under Sexual Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, defined as distress about a pattern of repeated sexual relationships involving a succession of lovers who are experienced by the individual only as things to be used.) And Carnes claims that sex addiction does have a physiology: when we have sex, our brain produces dopamine, the same neurochemical our body metabolizes from alcohol. He says sex involves a chemical release (and trancelike pleasure) which is highly addictive, and addicts experience depression, lethargy, anxiety as sex-withdrawal symptoms.
I joined SAA to experience the recovery movement. The basic ritual involves standing up alone before strangers to reveal oneself in the ceremonial group terminology (Hi, Im Paul and I molested prepubescents). The healing method involves treating one powerlessness with another powerlessness. First a 12-stepper admits hes powerless over his urges, then he appeals to a higher power for help to experience sex as a spiritual act.
It was easy introducing myself to the assembly as helplessly sexual. But I couldnt act terrified of sex or repentful, and their cultlike sexophobia alienated me. I was assigned Paul as my sponsor (a seasoned, sober SAA who is a healthy model). The goal is to avoid chaos, drama, the loss of boundaries that people bottom out on, Paul explained. We must rewire ourselves. Our rule of thumb is SAFE (no Secret, Abusive, Feeling-altering, Empty sex). 90 meetings in 90 days is our method for starting recovery. But isnt all sex chaos? Our lusts are messy; they ride over our will to be just, faithful, trustworthy. I told Paul his prescription seemed too facile. He gave me a beneficent smile.
Paul is the scion of a rich banking family, has a three-year-old son, and was molested by an uncle as a child. Childhood abuse is the classic addiction trigger, and addicts look to their past to discover the origins of their behavior: the underlying trauma. As Christians are victims of Eves original sin, so addicts are victims of an original wound (a father seeing a daughters breasts or wanting a massage or chiding a son for masturbating; a strict Catholic upbringing). Paul lives in a halfway house sponsored by SAA. Hes a Level Two addict: an offender. His wife, who fears he might molest his own son, has denied him visitation rights. I found him paternal and articulate, even though his fixed expression of expert empathy struck me as the McDonalds of compassion.
I asked him to define the difference between addict and nonaddict sex. Dont both addict and nonaddict sex stem from the same need to lose ourselves in pleasure? As I see it, meaningless desire is what runs the world. Paul impatiently objected: Nonaddict sex is monogamous, out of love, more metaphysical than physical, he explained. All the rest is the addiction. Therere pleasures in life that dont involve sex; like self-acceptance.
Paul belongs to a group of people who attend meetings every day, driving as far as necessary to join their SAA comrades, monitor their progress, expunge their unacted desires. He has attended the best thirty-day sexual rehab programs in the country, has had round-the-clock counseling, named his every memory, contacted his perpetrators, taken inventory of himself, accumulated five six-month-sober bronze medallions, done his work. I asked if SAA replaced the confessional. Had the meetings become the addiction? Yes, he said, in that were never free of addiction; we learn to use it for good rather than bad. SAA gives us discipline and makes us accountable. We watch out for HALT-Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired-the times we medicate. Things go wrong, you act out; then you feel shame and guilt, and deal with it by wanting to act out again, so you wont crash. Or things go well, you get tired or confident, you act out, feel horrible, you go act out again. Pauls dizzying cycles of self-loathing run on the assumption that casual sex involves a loss of self-control akin to a loss of self.
Matt, a doctor, is secretly bedding an average of ten women a month for the past fifteen years. His male friends think his exploits are the epitome of masculinity. Without this pursuit of sex, he told me, Id be celebrating my suburban death right now. Sex is a validation. I know my work goals twelve years ahead. I know my days off. In sex Im unpredictable. My daily life needs an element of chaos. He feels no compunction about adultery so long as he doesnt hurt his wife, who doesnt know. I grew up in a well-off Christian family. My first fantasy was being the only male on a womens planet. In my teens, I suffered worlds for fucking my high school teacher. After I had therapy, I stopped reacting to the world with guilt. I cant afford to hate myself. Hes a Level One addict: socially harmless. Sex addiction is like a split personality, he said. The allure is in the secrecy. It gives me a power rush. But we all enter another self in bed than the everyday persona; that metamorphosis is half the delight of sex. Working it out takes planning, presence of mind, he said, proud as a farmer looking upon a plowed field. You coordinate like a general. Is the time and concentration invested in it worth it? Worth it? People sit home watching TV all the time! Hunger lit up his face. Ive been with Turks, Chinese, Latinas, I learn from all, he went on. I pendulum in, figure out all I want, pendulum out. If I say Im gonna get fucked now, I can just grab a woman and dance with her, and shell take me home and put me through the ringer. Its that easy. Because Im good at cutting through the rubbish and saying, I want you. Its human curiosity. In and of itself, sex is shallow. I crave quantity to convince myself its real. What Im seeking is no different from what everyone seeks in life, which is the meaning of it. I dont spend my life contemplating it; I act out. But hasty mechanical reiteration limits the full potential of sex, I said. Love is an aphrodisiac: it makes even miserable lovers seem sublime. All he gets is fast-lust. Love takes up time, he argued, and I dont like to trifle with womens hearts; I dont want responsibility. Perhaps addicts never use up their desire because its object is mute, pornographic. If their impetus is to escape time and mortality, then sex is their bid for eternal life-the other side of a religious quest. Each conquest is a clean slate and carries a hope of redemption that may detonate the monotony of daily life.
Jackie, the lone woman in the group, had one hundred partners in the last six months. Wow, Id said. Good sex is hard to find, she said in wise-woman tones, especially consistently. Ive never had a partner I didnt like, but very few make me go for a repeat. Im like an art collector. I make the time. She is a pert, wholesome blond in cutoffs and a Mets T-shirt from a good family. Women today know that sex is fun and free; but men still believe it comes at a price-babies, dinners, attachments, entanglements-the Last Tango in Paris syndrome, she complained. I have guys I talk to and guys I fuck; not both. Shed like a relationship, but mens postcoital fear of entrapment compels her-out of pride and practicality-to reject them emotionally before they do her; she knows ownership and power-conflicts accompany intimacy. I felt jealousy eating at me when I was in love, she said. If I thought my guy went with someone, Id go with four men to get even. I had compulsive sex not for me, but to punish him. I fucked out of insecurity. I wanted power, but I never got it. Now I get up after sex, get dressed, and say See ya, without feeling lonely. If I want more, Ill crash. So Im existential: I stay single.
Jackie has been in SAA for seven years. Sex is like drugs: the first time is great, so you want more. Addicts just want to feel better. Sometimes I fuck somebody because the silence between us is making me uncomfortable and I have no idea what else to do. Other times I need to lighten up. Sometimes sex leaves me empty, lost. When all I do is get laid, its a bad high. But, unlike drugs, good sex still works-I feel happy, strong, one with God. Im such a slave to sex, Ill put it before anything. I want is to feel alive. Sex is the only thing that engages all of me. Too bad I cant live on it alone. I sleep with a different person every day for a week as my reward if Ive achieved a goal. I have a celebration, guys scale my walls. Then I stop, set another goal, and keep celibate. It motivates me.
I asked why most sex addicts are men. Guys could fuck a headless woman, she said. Men dont mind faking it. Misogyny is at the root of sex addiction. Im a nympho but men are playboys. But, unlike men, Im picky. Im attracted to energy, not looks. Most men think theyre blowing your mind, but theyve no idea how good sex can be; theyre into the idea of fucking. I like boys who fuck like machine guns, like sex athletes.
Cant love ensure great sex? I asked. Thats old wives tales. Good sex is impersonal, she described. It makes me feel warm, released from the bondage of myself. Addiction is bad sex. When you fuck and wish you were doing the dishes, when you have forgettable sex, its addict. Good sex is when you go so far into annihilation theres no world, no mind, when you die on some level. Her sense of self-annihilation-or transcendence-is a big part of what society fears about sex. It doesnt contradict her previous interpretation of sex as the feeling of being alive. Because, at its best, sex is a death of logic.
How does one distinguish authentic desire from addict desire? I was in a circle of friends one evening, when we started comparing the number of our lovers. Some people had had around twenty, a couple fiftywhich seemed to the men who had twenty to be more than is good for you, to which the people who had fifty meekly agreed. When one of us said shed had about three hundred partners, silence ensued. What had been a light-hearted, vaguely therapeutic bullshit session became intense. Everybody went home. The woman, who not only had never felt shame for her sex habits but had felt empowered by them, now felt shunned. She lost our respect, even though she was smart, beautiful, decent. But if fifty lovers are acceptable, why not three hundred? Do we assume that one cant lead a full, productive life and still have time for so much recreational sex? If some people are hornier, are they insecure or are we? Can we map the contours of desire? Can we create a detailed blueprint for everyones sexual behavior? Why is repetitive, accelerating sex condemnable and not an evolutionary perk? Cant one be monogamous and be a wife-beater? Cant one have had three hundred lovers and be kind and loving? Does having a large number of partners mean one is incapable of having just one, of enjoying lasting, stable love affairs at other periods of their lives? Is being young and wanting to fuck anything-with-a-pulse a pathology? Is having numerical sex at fifty a sign that a person hasnt grown up and needs help? If we had no conscience, would we be fucking all the time? And which is morally preferable: to have no boundaries and perform any sexual act with one partnersay, bloodletting, electroshockor to have boring sex with three hundred people? The central question is, where does our repression end and our addiction begins?
I have many promiscuous friends. One woman I knew had given unpaid blowjobs to 100 men before she was 19, then she developed TMJ, married an older man, became a mother and made sex irrelevant in her life. Another woman had several hundred one-night stands which involved giving rimjobs; she could only orgasm by putting her tongue in a mans ass. This made it impossible for her to sustain monogamous relationships despite years of shrinks and understanding boyfriends; then she became anorexic, literally unable to keep food down, and gave up her fetish. Another woman had fucked over 750 men, none of whom she could have identified; she stopped when she quit her successful job. Life rebalances our excesses. I also know a woman who, in 20 years of marriage, had 1,000 extramarital lovers, and stunned her husband when she confessed to him not only all her infidelities but that shed never had an orgasm with anyone but him; her quickies had taken place during her lunch hour or after work in a car; her emotional distance from those men was the reason her husband never suspected it. She is physically conservative, shy. If she was addicted to anything, it wasnt sex but dangerthe risk of discovery. She pursued sex in public places-cars, doorways, alleys, backyards, elevators-which could lead to exposure and arrest. Whereas most lovers want to enjoy each other undistracted so they end up prefering their privacy, addicts crave the fear and desperation most of us once associated with masturbation. Addict sex is sex in place of masturbation; where others whack off, addicts fuck.
At SAA I thought of the President. During the scandal, we all asked: Why would someone smart risk everything for some half-baked oral sex with an unremarkable bimbette? Clinton had probably assumed no one would investigate at whose mouth he ejaculated. But the media replied with diagnostic comparisons to the textbook-addict, from his childhood to reckless philandering, denial, eventual confession, and spiritual search. Jerome Levin, a New York addiction specialist, rushed into print with The Clinton Syndrome, one of five such books, in which he wrote that Clinton had about as much chance of leaving her alone as a cocaine addict of passing up a line. But how do a few extramarital blowjobs in a high-stress job translate to losing everything one has achieved in life?
Theres no such thing as a rogue anymore: lotharios and sociopaths alike are now biochemically disabled addicts. Sex-offenders attorneys can argue that sentencing their clients would be like sentencing an alcoholic for each drink he takes. Controlling sex addiction with will power is like trying to think away a broken leg, advises SAAs Twelve Step Recovery. I think sex becomes a symptom when its joyless. We are genetically wired to be sexually active. If our natural impulse is hindered, if pleasure stays elusive, the search for it becomes a tyrannical compulsion. SAAs cure by abstinence seems self-defeating. As William Blake wrote, He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
SAA encourages one-partner-per-lifemeaning, if my lover and I have time-consuming, wild sex three times a day every day for ten years, we arent addicts; we just have great chemistry. The difference isnt in the numbers but in the quality. If you legally and consensually fuck every woman you can, power to you. Sex becomes an addiction when guilt and self-hatred come into play. The problem is that it is not the individual but the prevailing social opinion that decides the difference.
What all the counselors, priests, and medical experts have in common is that, instead of trying to get us to enjoy sex, they try to get us to understand sexproducing an increasingly complicated set of ethical requirements. The needs of our bodies have emerged as the last frontier to tame. We misuse our sexuality-as a means of defining ourselves, as the motive force of our beings. We make sex central to our self-image. Its a self-defeating enterprise. Pleasure is not a philosophical issue: we know pleasure when we feel it but what does it mean? Were told it is supposed to mean something. Its not.
