WHAT comes to mind when you think of sex addicts in recovery?

Sleazy men in trench coats trying to have sex with nymphomaniac Girls Gone Wild? Platoons of strippers who love their jobs more than is healthy? Or perhaps it’s the image of yet another celebrity caught in a cheating scandal, vowing to “get help”?
In reality, says sex and love addict Zoe*, “recovery meetings are the least sexually charged environment you could ever imagine! Less sexy than church. Everyone is there because of the consequences and their addiction, and they’re there for a solution.”“In any recovery you’ll get people who are putting it out there,” says former model Libby*.
“When I first came into treatment, I was so sick I enjoyed being in meetings where I knew I could get men’s attention. I dressed in a push-up bra; massive heels. I even had a vibrator in my bag. Back then I had no boundaries around what was appropriate, but a lot of my recovery came from listening to men and hearing the other side.

“When you see people’s remorse and genuinely wanting to change, you see them as people, not a means to make yourself feel better.”
Tom entered treatment two years ago when his marriage crumbled and he found himself acting out with drugs and prostitutes.But he believes the “addiction” started earlier. “I can remember as a kid, my parents were quite emotionally withdrawn, and so every time I experienced anxiety and fear, I’d alleviate it through some kind of distraction,” he says. “Eventually I discovered sex and masturbation as a primary coping mechanism.

“At school I’d hide magazines and obsess over when I could look at them. The adrenaline of acquiring and hiding pornography was a potent aspect of the addiction because of the possibility of discovery and humiliation.”

As an adult, Tom continued to use sex and porn as a way to alleviate anxiety and depression. “Even though I had an active sex life with my wife, I used prostitutes and erectile dysfunction medication as a kind of ‘peak experience’. I slept with people I was attracted to at the expense of anything else.”

“Once I get into the state of anticipation around a reward, the consequential thinking part of me just switches off. It’s exactly the same sequence of a drug addict or alcoholic who has two beers and goes on to drink for three days. You introduce the substance or trigger for arousal, it switches off your control.”

ADDICTED TO LOVE?
Sex and love addiction manifests in a variety of compulsive behaviour patterns. For some it’s sex and pornography, for others it could play out as emotional anorexia, or an addiction to co-dependent relationships, romantic or fantasy obsession.

“It’s different to a crush or being in love,” explains Zoe, a management consultant in her early 30s. “That obsession with someone is destructive to every area of my life. It affected my friendships, health, and work.”

Libby came into treatment because she found herself obsessing over relationships that had little basis in reality. “I’d get crumbs of affection from someone and then feed that addiction by listening to romantic music, and project a whole fantasy of the relationship,” she says.

“I based my self-worth on the way strangers looked at me. If they fancied me, I felt OK. If not, I was devastated. But positive attention didn’t help — I just wanted more of it.”