Sex addicts anonymous

Morning cheaters and slags, here’s yesterday’s Sunday Times Column. xoxo Paige.

A MILLION MILES FROM NORMAL – By Paige Nick

I’M ADDICTED TO LOVE

So, sex addiction. Is it a real sickness, or just a great excuse to behave badly?

Famous politicians, golfers, footballers, George Michaels, and actors have been using it as an excuse to get out of hot water for years. Oops, paparazzi caught me drunk with my pants around my ankles and three grams of cocaine, shagging two he-she hookers in a dodgy motel room, again. But it’s not my fault, I have a sexual addiction.

We can draw one or two small parallels with sex addiction and ADD. When I was growing up, we didn’t have an official name for those kids who struggled to pay attention in school, were hyperactive, and a little naughty, we just called them kids. Same goes for sex addiction, I guess. Before doctors defined it in the 1970s, giving it real mental health illness status, men with sexual addictions were just called cheaters, and the women, slags.

Although, maybe I’m being too harsh and simplifying matters. A broad definition of any addiction is a habit or practice that negatively affects your life. And of course there are people who have real clinical problems (before you write me angry letters, same goes for ADD, of course it’s a medically diagnosed, debilitating physical problem for many children and adults). I’m not saying ADD or sex addiction don’t exist, I’m saying that men misusing sexual addiction as an alibi over the years is a little ‘the dog ate my homework’ and may have eroded its credibility.

Perhaps a line needs to be drawn between people who have real clinical problems, and those who simply see it as a get out of jail free card. The question is, does having lots of illicit sex make you a sex addict, or does getting caught having lots of illicit sex make you a sex addict?

 

Of course people who have real sexual addictions don’t just crave sex, they have underlying problems like stress, anxiety, depression and shame too, which drives what can often be dangerous sexual behaviour. They solicit hookers, seek affairs and are obsessed with Internet porn. And despite the risks, they physically can’t stop themselves from going back again and again. They ruin marriages, lose their jobs and alienate friends and family.

A guy I know used to work with The Mad Fapper. He would do the rounds of the corporate bathrooms six or seven times a day to alleviate the pressure in his trousers. My friend heard him in there a couple of times, he said the fap of urgent skin against skin is unmistakable (I immediately regretted asking). He varied his bathroom usage around the building to remain inconspicuous, but ultimately he was so rarely at his desk that his work suffered, and they had to fire him.

One of the techniques used to treat sexual addiction applies the old Alcoholics Anonymous formula. Helping people who suffer from serial infidelity and other unmanageable compulsive sexual behaviours by creating a 12-step programme, and urging sufferers to gather in support groups to talk through their addiction with like-minded individuals.

Am I the only one who sees the flaw in this thinking? The medical profession hasn’t done themselves any favours when it comes to getting sexual addiction taken seriously as a disease. Let’s take a bunch of people who are addicted to sex and introduce them to each other. That should work. It’s like holding a Weight Watcher’s convention in a donut factory. Let’s see, if I were a sex addict, where would a great place be to meet others who also like to have sex? Also, while it must be nice to know that you’re not alone, surely talking about how you like to have deviant sex in explicit detail simply adds more fuel to other members’ wank banks?

I read recently that Zuma is gunning for a seventh marriage before December. Surely he’s missed a trick and is doing it the hard way by marrying all these women? If he wanted to shag widely he should just do it and plead a sex addiction. I’m sure he’d get away with it like everyone else does. After all, why buy the cows and pay for lobola, when you can get the milk for free?