How do you overcome an addiction to sex?

[Rudynate]

2 hours ago, Peter Eater said:

Believe what you wish. (Some believe the Earth is flat, or that a sky god is watching everything you do.) All addictions are compulsive behaviors. Sex addiction also involves physical dependency, namely on endorphins, released in the brain during and immediately after sexual release. Endorphin release alters mood. 

Yes, they alter mood. That’s what they are supposed to do. In fact, everyone is “addicted” to endorphin-it is a neurotransmitter without which a person’s nervous system cannot function properly. 
 

Nowhere near the same as an externally supplied substance such as alcohol or Vicodin 

[Peter Eater]

5 hours ago, Rudynate said:

Yes, they alter mood. That’s what they are supposed to do

Indeed. And no, not everyone is addicted to endorphins. That’s just silly.

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, Peter Eater said:

Indeed. And no, not everyone is addicted to endorphins. That’s just silly.

No, but almost everyone (certainly males) has a strong natural drive to have sex. Not having a sex drive is pathological--and certainly outside the norm. This is different from substance addiction. The drive to seek sexual activity is like the drive to seek out water and food. It's natural and biological. Again, while obsession, addiction, and dependence are related, they are not synonymous terms. 

[Peter Eater]

On 3/16/2023 at 4:43 PM, Unicorn said:

No, but almost everyone (certainly males) has a strong natural drive to have sex. Not having a sex drive is pathological--and certainly outside the norm. This is different from substance addiction. The drive to seek sexual activity is like the drive to seek out water and food. It's natural and biological. Again, while obsession, addiction, and dependence are related, they are not synonymous terms. 

Sorry, but this makes no sense. A sexual pathology is like the drive to seek out water and food? A pathology is an illness, and last time I looked having lunch did not present as disease.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Peter Eater said:

Sorry, but this makes no sense. A sexual pathology is like the drive to seek out water and food? A pathology is an illness, and last time I looked having lunch did not present as disease.

I think you missed the point. A strong interest in sex isn't pathological. It's normal (for men). 

[Monarchy79]

On 3/16/2023 at 7:43 PM, Unicorn said:

 The drive to seek sexual activity is like the drive to seek out water and food.

Fleece Johnson would agree….

 

[caramelsub]

I know that having an appetite for sex is healthy. But I think the question is if porn and hiring escorts is different from having casual sex with a partner. I feel like I need porn as a visual and aural stimulation to be able to masturbate. It may be considered an addiction. Only one therapist I had talked to told me I should just masturbate in bed without watching porn. She said watching porn is an addiction. She also told me I should stop hiring escorts as well. She didn’t say sex was an addiction. She encouraged me to go to gay bars and date, but not pay for sexual encounters. I may be addicted to hiring, because all my extra money goes to having sexual encounters, which could be used for other things. 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, caramelsub said:

I know that having an appetite for sex is healthy. But I think the question is if porn and hiring escorts is different from having casual sex with a partner. I feel like I need porn as a visual and aural stimulation to be able to masturbate. It may be considered an addiction. Only one therapist I had talked to told me I should just masturbate in bed without watching porn. She said watching porn is an addiction. She also told me I should stop hiring escorts as well. She didn’t say sex was an addiction. She encouraged me to go to gay bars and date, but not pay for sexual encounters. I may be addicted to hiring, because all my extra money goes to having sexual encounters, which could be used for other things. 

What that therapist said was stupid, judgmental, and unhelpful. That being said, if hiring escorts is putting a financial strain on you, it does represent an addiction.

https://www.mentalhelp.net/addiction/

"Definition of addiction: Addiction is repeated involvement with a substance or activity, despite the substantial harm it now causes, because that involvement was (and may continue to be) pleasurable and/or valuable."

Watching porn, however, is essentially free and harmless. It could serve as a good substitute for hiring, which seems to be resulting in a financial burden for you. 

[Peter Eater]

19 hours ago, Unicorn said:

I think you missed the point. A strong interest in sex isn't pathological. It's normal (for men). 

Naw. The topic is sex addiction, not "a strong interest in sex." Being a drunk is not the same as "a strong interest in cocktails." 

Edited March 20, 2023 by Peter Eater

[Marc in Calif]

22 hours ago, Peter Eater said:

Sorry, but this makes no sense. A sexual pathology is like the drive to seek out water and food? A pathology is an illness, and last time I looked having lunch did not present as disease.

I think you need to read more carefully. What Unicorn wrote is that the lack of a sex drive is pathological. Why? It's considered to be a disorder and dysfunction by medical professionals.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20434725/

[Peter Eater]

4 minutes ago, Marc in Calif said:

I think you need to read more carefully. What Unicorn wrote is that the lack of a sex drive is pathological. Why? It's considered to be a disorder and dysfunction by medical professionals.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20434725/

You might want to go back and read the whole thread.

Sex addiction is a pathological response to a mood altering experience, I insist. That's what Unicorn disagrees with, although none too convincingly. 

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Peter Eater said:

Naw. The topic is sex addiction, not "a strong interest in sex." Being a drunk is not the same as "a strong interest in cocktails." 

Pretty silly comparison. Obviously, drinking too much puts one in an altered (and dangerous) state. This does not happen from watching (or even jacking off to) a lot of porn. And that's only short-term. Drinking more than 3 drinks a day (especially more than 5) also results in serious adverse health consequences. This does not happen with watching porn a lot (or even jacking off a lot). Does this happen to you after you watch a lot of porn?

[Marc in Calif]

6 hours ago, Peter Eater said:

You might want to go back and read the whole thread.

Read the entire thread. I was responding to a very specific sentence you wrote that wasn't about sex addiction at all:

"Sorry, but this makes no sense. A sexual pathology is like the drive to seek out water and food? A pathology is an illness, and last time I looked having lunch did not present as disease."

You were responding to — and misinterpreting — Unicorn, who had written:

"Not having a sex drive is pathological--and certainly outside the norm. This is different from substance addiction. The drive to seek sexual activity is like the drive to seek out water and food. It's natural and biological. Again, while obsession, addiction, and dependence are related, they are not synonymous terms." 

Edited March 21, 2023 by Marc in Calif

[SirBillybob]

On 3/5/2023 at 1:04 AM, Luvmassage said:

How do you overcome a sex addiction?  I cannot seem to get enough sex and massage.

When I am not having sex, I find myself going online and looking for gay sex porn.

It is really creating issues for my life since it is such a distraction.

If others have experienced the same issue, how did you overcome it?

Like many others expressing this for want of a better word affliction, you may think there are no occasions where you can or do refuse because enough was enough. There may be potential for you to enact the antithesis of succumbing to activity that you may wish you could regulate better, but your experience is inadvertently stacked to underline a sense of being out of control. In fact, the reality is that you may be pursuing sexualized activity when you want and declining it when it’s inconvenient. That may be a bit of a departure relative to other appetitive phenomena; each has its own distinctive course and features within each distinctive individual. 

There may be some similarities and differences between external entities that are put into your body and physically metabolized, on the one hand, and pleasure-seeking behaviours, on the other hand, that operate solely on an internal biopsychological feedback loop. Orgasmic refractory period may be similar but different from a substance fix. Craving may express in similar yet different ways. The place of abstinence is viewed similarly by some, yet objectionable to others because of critique of early reductionist models applying substance dependency concepts to desire and response cycle behaviour essentially undergirded by evolutionary imperative. 

One approach to entertain, given that any change introduced cannot but spur the potential for a different outcome than now exists, that outcome not necessarily guaranteeing a benefit apart from figuratively warming up a rigidified system and subtly or overtly altering a system and its dynamics, is to prescribe an invariant daily appointment  time for sexualized behaviour.

Don’t choose it according to your known routines. Pick it randomly like a lottery ball, 24 on the hour or from 48 on the hour/half-hour possibilities, for example, requiring you to sex for half an hour same time every day, nothing else, yet your prerogative to do whatever you want outside of that appointment with yourself. You must stick to the time daily for a month. Track and record your relation to the appointment with which you have a fiduciary responsibility to uphold in the interests of expanding your understanding of your capacity for elective control, happiness, resentment, what have you, about engaging in behaviour that you feel is inevitable most of the time anyway. The point is not to push the agenda of altering sexual behaviour that might actually occur or not outside of the appointments, according to the long-standing patterns you seem to describe. 

If you refuse the exercise it’s likely because you don’t want the anticipated aggravation of engaging in behaviour that you may not want at a particular arbitrary time, the desire for which you otherwise describe as regularly overpowering. If you refuse to sexualize within any one of 30 appointment commitments then you have related to your apparently unyielding desire in a different fashion. Sexualize or not, there will some be degree of change, for better or worse (though it’s not as if it’s fentanyl or a box of KrispyKremes q24h) from what appears to be the current habituation.

“Yeah but yeah but yeah buts …” are included in what might manifest. 

The outcome of the exercise may have some salutary benefit in terms of the nature of the pattern and your perception of it.

My own compulsions have been fairly tame and usually fizzle out quickly. Many of us have experienced intense mental intrusion associated with unrequited love, seemingly excessive and profound erotic limerence. I have found it hard to follow the above prescription but I think it helped at times. Paradoxically, it can be a challenge to do something when required and generated from planful intent yet already doing it seemingly non-volitionally, as if there were no choice. 

Edited March 21, 2023 by SirBillybob

[Peter Eater]

12 hours ago, Unicorn said:

Pretty silly comparison. Obviously, drinking too much puts one in an altered (and dangerous) state. This does not happen from watching (or even jacking off to) a lot of porn. And that's only short-term. Drinking more than 3 drinks a day (especially more than 5) also results in serious adverse health consequences. This does not happen with watching porn a lot (or even jacking off a lot). Does this happen to you after you watch a lot of porn?

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