Rudynate

I don't believe that sex "addiction" is an addiction. It is a compulsion. - a repetetive behavior that the person can only resist with a lot of anxiety - a behavior that assumes a life of its own. There is no such thing as sex addiction. What is commonly called "sex addiction" is compulsive sexual behavior. Addiction is also a compulsiion - a compulsive use of a mood- or mind-altering substance complicated by a physical dependency on the substance - a compulsion on steroids.

It is a repetitive behavior that a person can only refrain from with great anxiety. Performing the behavior relieves the anxiety. The classic example is repetitive hand washing

That sounds more like it. I imagine even the most militant have occasionally forgotten a dose

I cannot believe that if someone forgets to take their meds one day that " The HIV infection becomes active and infectious again within a few weeks of forgetting to take their meds." It is certainly not optimal, but they certainly don't go from undetectable to infectious in a matter of weeks becaue they forgot one dose.

The sales staff in the dispensary can help you. You can just tell them what sort of pot you are looking for, what you need it for and they will make suggestions. The last time I visited a dispensary, I got a vaping pen and a cartridge of Grand Daddy Purple extract - one of my favorite strains - we've come a long way from the roll-your-own days.

I agree with all of the above. My father developed end-stage kidney disease at age 70 as a result of years of persistent hypertension, several heart attacks and severe CHF. When his kidneys failed, they put him on machine dialysis. The machine dialysis was problematic from the start. His heart was so weak that it couldn't tolerate the sudden shift in fluid volume that a dialysis session entailed. They tried doing sessions in which they didn't take off so much fluid, which he was able to tolerate. I don't know if anything has changed, but at that time (late '80s) they absolutely wouldn't dialise somebody more than 3 times in a week. When they tried the reduced volume, he was able to tolerate it, but but he couldn't make it through to another dialysis session, but, for whatever reason, they couldn't just slip in another dialysis session. I always suspected it was more of a utilization problem than a medical problem. Eventually, they decided he was going to have to go to peritoneal dialysis. I sat through the training with him, and I know the dialysis nurse had her doubts, because a couple of time she asked me if I was sure he could do it. For a couple of weeks, I supervised as he was doing his fluid exchanges and everything seemed fine, so I left him on his own. This was the start of a succession of hospitalizations to treat him for peritonitis probably as result of breaks in technique, although he insisted he was doing everything perfectly. At one point, they had to replace the catheter, during which time he was back on machine dialysis with all of its problems. Ultimately he died from complications related to the peritoneal dialysis. He had to be hopitalized to treat a severe diarrhea, probably brought on by the antibiotics they had just used to treat his most recent bout of peritonitis and he had a cardiac arrest the day before he was to be discharged. It was a 2-year nightmare. I had a neighbor who was on peritoneal dialysis, and he did fine for probably ten years. Eventually, for some reason, he had to go to machine dialysis. I had an older friend in his mid-80s who had CKD. When he was at the threshhold of stage 5, he decided he wanted nothing to do with dialysis and opted instead for assisted suicide.

I cured a persistent shoulder injury by icing it. I used a shoulder wrap that I got here. It was hard to do, but I completely stopped doing any kind of shoulder exercise. I iced the shoulder about 3 times in a day, for 30-40 minutes at a time. It took several months - I would say 4 months. After that, I had to rehab the shoulder because I had lost so much strength in it. I have told other people about it, but they can't handle the idea of not using their shoulder and icing it every day for several months, but that's what it takes.

That is a great article - it identifies everything that is wrong with the idea of porn addiction and I love that the writer points out the general trivialization of the concept of addiction. Whenever I speak the word "addiction" it is because what I am talking about is substance abuse. Ever since it entered the language, I have hated that expression "positive addiction."

Let me say here, that I don't believe there is such a thing as being addicted to porn. As I pointed out above, when a problem is strictly behavioral, it is a compulsion not an addiction. I have had hookups with guys that I thought might be compulsive about porn. You go over to their place and they can't pull their eyes away from the display on their laptop for longer than a brief look at their partner. Nobody that I know well is compulsive about porn. I enjoy watching porn myself, and it is pure enjoyment for me - no compulsiveness at all. I'm willing to be convinced that porn "addiction" is largely an internet phenomenon, since the internet is where it generally is discussed. If it exists, I don't think that porn is the problem. The problem lies with the people who can't seem to moderate their behavior - but that is the nature of compulsion.

"watching porn cannot constitute an addiction because it cannot cause "substantial harm," unless the harm comes from the partner objecting to it, which is really the partner's problem regarding an activity which does not imply unfaithfulness." your words, not mine

You have a narrow a view of "harm." Many incels started the road to becoming an incel by watching lots of porn. Some guys become so warped that watching porn and beating off is the only way they can orgasm. In a practical sense they are incapable of having sex with a live person. I would say being incapable of having sex with your partner constitutes harm - they could lose the relationship, or seriously damage it. I could imagine a techie working from home who gets so compulsive about porn that he loses his job. That's not harm?

I will say that the rash took a long time to go away, but I made a judgement call and I'm still standing.

Skin problems almost always resolve on their own. Dear Unicorn - no one can confuse an issue the way you can. It is an enviable skill - you should go into politics.

I actually didin't invent mine - it is from the early 20th century. Yours is from MentalHelp.net - it doesn't purport to have a scientific basis, but I would still consider it a persuasive although not a prescriptive source. The DSM - far more persuasive - defines addiction as a "substance use disorder." So you see, I didn't invent anything. My definition of addiction came from the AA Big Book - "a mental obsession coupled with a physical compulsion."

And there are those who can't. They are powerless, to one degree or another, over one of those behaviors you mentioned, and therefore, their lives have become unmanageable, to one degree or another.

I'm persnickety about the use of the term "addiction." I think "addiction" should be reserved for situations involving substances. Situations that are purely behavioral, to me, are compulsions.

So you have an intimacy problem, not a sex problem.

What I got from his post is that he doesn’t experience freedom of choice wrt his sexual behavior. To me, that seems like a big problem.

In AA, it is often said that alcoholism is a self-diagnosed disease-in other words if you think you’re an alcoholic, you probably are. I submit that the same reasoning applies here. He says that his sexual behavior is a problem, so it is.

There’s a 12-step group for sex addicts.

I have an IG buddy from the UK who lives in Germany - he visits Egypt with a group of friends at Christmas every year. They stay at a resort on the Gulf of Aqaba.

Medicare Advantage is a fabulous deal. I was made at Kaiser for awhile and signed up for AARP F plan through United Healthcare. My monthly premium was abount $100 higher and the prescription coverage didn't work at all for me - it only covered generic, didn't cover asthma inhalers, etc. I take several branded drugs and I use 3 asthma inhalers so prescription drugs were going to cost a fortune. Sure, my cheap Kaiser doctor would probably have written a script that I could filled elsewhere, but I thought that Kaiser should be covering that drug. His declining to prescribe becuase it wasnt medically necessary is like a denial of benefits. That's the big drawback of the staff model HMO - physicians are making decicions about coverage that are ordinarily made by an underwriter for an insurance carrier.

I have a story about that. When I first came down with this autoimmune condition, on either side of my butt, I developed a rash that looked like a circular patch of raised red bumps. I also developed similar patches on my shoulders. This was an obvious symptom of the autoimmune disorder. I sent pictures to my PCP and she forwarded the pictures to a dematologist. The dermatologist diagnosed them as folliculitis and prescribed an oral AND a topcial antibiotic. I thought, "So much for telemedicine" and never filled the prescriptions.

For the concierge service, you won't be able to get coverage through Medicare Adavantage. You would have to discontinue your Medicare Advantage with Kaiser. I tried One Medical briefly - it wasn't bad - there were some impressive bells and whistles and they do things FAST. The labs are ready in a few minutes and you sit there and discuss them with your doctor as they come up on a great big touch screen and they move the data all around like the guys on TV do with election returns. I asked her for a letter to be excused from jury duty and they got it done the same day. Except for the bells and whistles, I didn't think the quality of care was any better than Kaiser. The thing that caused me to discontinue with them was a minor thing. I had gotten a drug prescribed by a doctor outside of Kaiser because my PC doc at Kaiser wouldn't prescribe it becasue it wasn't "medically necessary," and I was getting the 'scipt filled by a Canadian pharmacy for less than half of what it cost in the US. I asked the doc at One Medical to write a refill and she said she couldn't do it because she couldn't prescribe drugs in Canada, which is true. I kept telling them that the 'script just needed to be co-signed by a Canadian doc and that the Canadian pharmacy would take care of that, but they insisted that they couldn't do it. That would have doubled my out-of-pocket cost for that drug and I had found that I could go around my PC doc at Kaiser to get another doc at Kaiser to prescribe the drug I wanted. So that was the end of the One Medical experiment. It was fun though - I felt like I was George Jetson going to the doctor. I think telemedicine is a useful adjunct to conventional practice, but it isn't a replacement. I think a doctor has to look at you in the flesh and examine you for some things. Last summer, my PC doc at Kaiser dx'd my autoimmune condition from a phone call and labs. She thought that was fine. I wan't happy with it so I asked for an in-person appointment with a rheumatologist.

gentle rehab exercises on a suspension trainer like a TRX are great for lower back discomfort