Help For Sex Addiction

What is sexual addiction?

It will harm your health, your wealth, relationships, work, studies and other aspects of your life. If you or someone you know is struggling, seeking help for sex addiction can make a real difference.

Sometimes it is called compulsive sexual behaviour or problematic sexual behaviour. Clinicians will often refer to it as hypersexuality or hypersexuality disorder.

An addiction to sex involves activities that can be common to normal sexual activity such as watching pornography, pleasuring yourself, group sex or all of these. What makes it an addiction is where these thoughts are so consuming, other aspects of your life suffer as a result.

Is a sex addiction similar to other addictions?

Absolutely!

What makes it an addiction is the feeling you get when you indulge in your desires.

The craving for sex is exactly the same as the cravings you experience for alcohol and drugs.

The compulsion is so strong that you feel you have no option but to engage in sexual activity.

Unless you get into recovery, you will never feel satisfied. You will battle, daily, even hourly, to take control,but won’t be able to. You are on autopilot.

While you know what you are doing is wrong but you can not stop. You are spending money you can’t afford to spend. Relationships are being destroyed and you are missing deadlines at work. None of these negative consequences will make any difference in altering your behaviour.

Recovery is nothing to do with willpower. It has everything to do with science.

How common is sexual addiction?

Research suggests that between 3 to 10% of the population experiences an addiction to sex. It is more commonly found in men than in women. Five times more males experience the problem than women.

While it usually begins at age 18 it can be, on average, 19 years before someone seeks help at the age of 37.

Just under 90% of those with sex addiction also have other problems including:

• Depression
• Anxiety disorders
• Previous suicide attempts
• Personality disorders
• Other addictions
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Is sex addiction a mental health disorder?

The jury is still out on this one!

At this time, it is not considered to be a mental disorder. This is because the American Psychiatric Association feel there is a lack of evidence. They were also concerned that calling it a disorder would dissuade people from getting help.

Whether or not it is a disorder doesn’t detract from the problems it can cause. Calling it a disorder could give people the impression that you can not get treatment for it: You can.

What do people with sex addiction feel about the problem:

When you have sex addiction, you know you have a problem and you want to stop. The problem is: You can’t. The desire to engage in the behaviour is overwhelming and the rush you feel, when you do, is intoxicating.

You may feel, among other things:

• Guilt
• Shame
• Remorse
• Hopeless
• Powerless
• Depressed
• Isloated
• Anxious
• Suicidal

Help for sex addiction: Signs, Symptoms and Causes

What are the signs and symptoms of sex addiction?

There are no hard and fast criteria but there are traits that are commonly seen:

• You are obsessed with sex. Nearly all of your time is spent on your urges and engaging in sexual activities
• Very frequent masturbation Multiple times a day, including at work/college and while out and about.
• Frequently viewing pornography Internet porn, magazines, dark web.
• Excessive time planning sexual activity You spend a lot of time planning out how you will get your next sexual high
• Using prostitutes Money you can ill afford (or borrowed) is used on prostitutes. You might visit strip clubs.
• Reckless sexual activity This might include using drugs to enhance sexual pleasure and/or dangerous sexual activity such as self strangulation to increase sexual pleasure.
• Paraphilia: You might engage in sexual activity that causes someone else distress, sometimes injury or even death. This could be watching others engaged in sexual activity, inflicting pain for sexual pleasure and paedophilia (sexual acts with children).

What problems can sex addiction cause you?

Aside from taking up a lot of your time, there are other issues:

• Sexually transmitted and blood bourne illness: HIV, Hepatitis B+C, syphilis and gonorrhea
• Drug use: Using drugs that are often associated with sex addiction can be very dangerous such as GHB/GBL, ketamine, cocaine, alcohol, etc
• Deteriorating mental health: Sex addiction can lead to anxiety, depression and active thoughts of suicide.
• Emotional costs: Shame, hopelessness and guilt

What Causes Sex Addiction?

At this time, the evidence is not clear and research is ongoing.

There are several factors believed to be involved:

• Chemical imbalance: An excess of naturally occurring feelgood chemicals (dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin) . These chemicals are thought to lead to an increased desire for sexual encounters.

• Illness/brain injury: Neurological conditions such as dementia and epilepsy as well as acquired brain injuries (such as from a car accident) can damage the prefrontal cortex. This can lead to hypersexuality.
• Drug misuse: Amphetamine use and cocaine addiction can lead to very risky sexual behaviours. Alcohol can also be a major contributory factor.
• Side effect of prescription medication: Levodopa, used in Parkinson’s, is well known for causing hypersexuality.

Diagnosis

How is hypersexuality diagnosed?

An experienced clinician will need to ask you questions on a number of areas in order to reach a diagnosis. These will include questions on:

• Current health, medications, family medical history, herbal remedies.
• Alcohol and drug use
• Sexual thoughts, behaviours and urges.
• Your level of control over sexual thoughts

Sometimes, hypersexuality is a symptom of something else.

You may be experiencing a manic episode (bipolar disorder) or have an excess of hormones in your body.

Severe anxiety can be a cause as can Tourette’s syndrome and obsessive compulsive behaviours. You might have an undiagnosed personality disorder.

Getting Help

How is sexual addiction, hypersexuality, treated?

It is possible to get the condition under control.

Medication, psychotherapy and support groups, when combined, can be very powerful interventions.

Medications

While there is no specifically licenced medication to treat sex addiction, those that act on your brains “behaviour and urges” hormones can be used to treat sex addiction.

The following is a list of such medications:

• Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI’s): These are generally considered to be the first line treatment for sex addiction
• Anti-androgens These are prescribed to men as they target on male sex hormones. They work by reducing obsessive ideas. Usually reserved for very extreme cases and where sexual behaviours are affecting others.
• Naltrexone Used to reduce the desire to drink alcohol and take drugs it can also be used to treat sex addiction
• Mood stabilizers When someone has an underlying disorder, such as bipolar disease, mood stabilisers can help to regulate behaviours and dampen sexual urges
• Anti-anxiety medication Where sexual activity is triggered by anxiety, medication to reduce the anxiety can be helpful. Buspirone is a good example of medication that can be very beneficial.
• Antipsychotics Some people experience very severe agitation or intrusive thoughts. Antipsychotic medication can reduce anxiety and help clear up thoughts
• Amphetamines People with untreated attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can experience severe symptoms of sex addiction. Medication , for the underlying condition, can alleviate sexual desires.

Help for sex addiction: Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy isn’t counselling.

It is a course of treatment with a high qualified professional who has years of training and has, themselves, undergone analysis in order to help people.

Through analysis you will be able to identify, then manage, factors that are causing you to fixate on sexual behaviours.

You can see a psychotherapist as an individual, as a couple or as a family.

Psychological therapies

Cognitive behavioural therapy: A shorter treatment plan that psychotherapy. This process focuses on replacing negative thoughts and actions with more positive coping mechanisms.

• Commitment an acceptance therapy: Using a mixture of acceptance and mindfulness, this therapy aims to help people process the distress their urges cause and to change how their deal with their thoughts.
• Motivational interviewing: Everyone has goals. things they want to do in life and everyone has a set of values. This type of therapy helps you to explore your urges in the context of your values and goals.
• Support groups: Mostly modelled on a 12 step process these groups can be of immense value after rehab. You will be among people with shared experience all wanting to stay abstinent from harmful sexual urges.

Help for sex addiction: Four elements of successful recovery from sex addiction

As with any type of addiction, there are four essential elements for recovery.

• Detox
• Therapy
• Relapse prevention
• Aftercare

Detox

While not the same as a detox for heroin or alcohol, being in rehab means you won’t be able to indulge in your urges. No pornography, no strip clubs, no sex enhancing drugs.

There are very strict rules on behaviours in rehab, especially with regards to romantic relationships.

A clinician will discuss medication options with you.

Medication can be useful but is adjunctive to therapy.

Therapy

Every rehab, the world over, uses a group therapy model.

12 STEP/SMART or eclectic. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that you get the help you need.

Everyone in the group is there for the same reason: They want to recover.

How you got to the stage of needing treatment, what it is you are addicted to and what you do for a living are secondary factors: Everyone is welcome. Everyone has the same problem: Addiction.

The therapists are most likely in active recovery themselves and have been sober/abstinent for a number of years.

Individual therapy

All centres offer a session of individual therapy a week.

These sessions can be very intense, so one hour a week is an appropriate amount of time.

Some clients will continue with the same therapist, for individual sessions, when they leave rehab.

Relapse prevention

Help for sex addiction isn’t just about group and individual therapy.

Rehab is a welcoming, warm and safe space. There are staff on hand 24/7.

If you find yourself struggling at 3AM , there will be someone to help you.

Once back at home, you will have to rely on yourself.

Relapse prevention is about learning the skills to deal with urges when you get home.

You might walk past a strip joint you used to use, find some GHB/GBL in a drawer or start to wonder when you use the internet.

Relapse Happens

Relapse happens: FACT.

It is not failure but part of the recovery process.

Addiction is a chronic illness. People with diabetes and asthma relapse. There really is no difference.

Learning how to confront relapse, how to reach out is part of recovery.

Aftercare

The last link in the chain. Remove it and the process fails.

All rehab centres offer a minimum of a years aftercare. This is either a weekly support group and or regular telephone check in.

Should you find yourself struggling, there will be a number to call for support.

Help for sex addiction doesn’t end when you leave rehab.

Speak to an experienced addictions clinician for free , impartial and confidential advice

You can speak to one of our experienced addictions clinicians without charge.

Our advice is free, confidential and impartial.

We work in rehabs but are not tied to any particular centre.

Our focus is only that you get the right, cost effective help.

If you need a treatment referral, we do not charge for this service.

We only signpost to legally registered centres.

Our service is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Help for sex addiction is possible.