Dell's Original Uncoverage Logo by Antonio F. Branco, Comically Incorrect

Sunday, January 15, 2012

“Sex Addiction Among Women Real and Growing”


Sex Addiction Among Women Real and Growing



By Dell Hill

Hat Tip - Insty


“Now that I have your attention, I’d like to say that I don’t believe that headline, which recently appeared online.  At least I don’t believe that sex addiction among any group is “growing.”  I do believe, however, that some women — and some men – are genuinely addicted to sex.

First, let’s address sexual addiction and then, I’ll end by saying why I don’t think the incidence of this addiction is “growing.”  The latter is a somewhat less intriguing topic and if I wrote it about it first, you might stop reading now.

According to one description:

“Insatiable sexual hunger is not really a desire — an act of will — but rather a desperate need, a compulsion that is experienced as a craving.  The need is pursued like a drug.  Although sex addicts are enslaved to sex, it is far from their goal.  Rather, the pursuit of sex is in service of a different goal — to dispel feelings of inadequacy, depression, anxiety, rage or other feelings that the sex addict experiences as unbearable.

“Like a drug addict or alcoholic, the sex addict relentlessly seeks satisfaction from an external source to palliate an internal pain. Modern technology, such as the internet, provides a new external source that sex addicts use in their quest for sex partners.”

Drugs, alcohol, food, and sexual activity all stimulate the dopamine receptors in the brain — the sites of memory and, more to the point, pleasure.  The problem is that these receptors are insatiable little tykes.  The more pleasure they get, the more they want.  Leave them alone for a while and they’ll calm down, but stimulate the heck out of them and their response is, “I want more, much more, and I want it now.”

This poses an obvious problem for the possessor of these dopamine receptors.

To cope with depression and anxiety, we humans have our techniques: those that we consider wholesome or relatively harmless such as tennis, hiking, playing Chopin on the piano for 12 consecutive hours, or reading a multitude of books aren’t deemed addictions.  They’re called, neutrally, “coping mechanisms,” or, more positively, “hobbies,” or, even admiringly, “passions.”

There is considerably more to this post and you can read it all by clicking right here.  (Editor’s Note:  No photos, diagrams or course language - DRH)

Dell’s Bottom Line:

Did you honestly think I would write anything here?

1 comment:

  1. I couldn't agree more with your thoughts on this. Let me also add that there is a clinical definition that should be met to define that sex addiction is truly is an addiction. For example, people who are addicted to sex did not have intercourse to get the same effect, as that with drug addiction. Sex addiction is different with gambling addiction or drug addiction where sufferer does not have a biological urge, such as eating, sleeping, or having sex.

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