In response to my last post, Brad asked, ”How does one determine and then define themselves as a sex addict?”
Here’s how I did it.
According to Dictionary.com:
Addiction: The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or involved in something.
Check.
More relevant to me specifically, my SAA sponsor “qualified” me as a sex addict using three criteria, 1) powerlessness, 2) unmanageability, and 3) having a progressive condition potentially leading to death.
In this post, I will not bore you with sordid details other than to say that I qualified myself using these general examples:
- Powerlessness: My repeated promises to myself to cease my behavior, followed often almost immediately by breaking those promises.
- Unmanageability: The lengths I was going to in hiding and engaging in my behavior to the detriment (and endangerment in some cases) of my job, family and good sense.
- Having a progressive and potentially fatal condition. Progressive: The increasingly unsafe situations in which I placed myself (and indirectly, others). Potentially Fatal: The abject hopelessness I increasingly felt about the whole situation led me to believe that at some point I might gather enough courage and insanity to kill myself, plus the increasing risk of contracting a fatal disease which could ultimately do the job for me.
Knowing Brad as I do, I think there might be more behind his question. We’ll see.
Cheers.
F
1 comment:
My point is this: (from Webster's)
addiction: compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal; broadly : persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful
Sex, in and of itself is not a substance.
Therefore, to me, sex cannnot be harmful. It can only be practiced in a way that makes it detrimental to one's self or others. I think you know that I am not trying to get into an issue of semantics with you, but I'm just not sure if sex fits into the definition of an addiction.
Maybe it has more to do with your perception of sex and what it means to you and your family.
Just to go to meetings to deny that you are bisexual or homosexual to assure yourself that it is something that can be treated as an addiction seems like a bit of a cop out to me.
Of course, I'm just thinking out loud here. I hope you know that I am not being ugly with you, I am challenging you to think a bit more about this. And, as always, there is still a lot of love from me. :)
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