What is Sex Addiction

Sexual addiction, also known as sex addiction, is a state characterized by compulsive participation or engagement in sexual activity, particularly sexual intercourse, despite negative consequences. Proponents of a diagnostic model for sexual addiction, as defined here, consider it to be one of several sex-related disorders within an umbrella concept known as hypersexual disorder. The term sexual dependence is also used to refer to people who report being unable to control their sexual urges, behaviors, or thoughts. Related models of pathological sexual behavior include hypersexuality (nymphomania and satyriasis), erotomania, Don Juanism (or Don Juanitaism), and paraphilia-related disorders.

The concept of sexual addiction is contentious. There is considerable debate amongst psychiatrists, psychologists, sexologists, and other specialists over the whether compulsive sexual behavior consitutes an addiction, and therefore its classification and possible diagnosis. As of 2017, sexual addiction is not a clinical diagnosis in either the DSM or ICD medical classifications of diseases and medical disorders. Some argue that applying such concepts to normal behaviors such as sex, can be problematic, and suggest that applying medical models such as addiction to human sexuality can serve to pathologise normal behavior and cause harm.

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Signs of Sex Addiction

Like people who abuse drugs and alcohol, sex addicts can experience a “high” through compulsive sexual behaviors, develop a dependence on this feeling, and suffer withdrawal symptoms without sex. Sexual addiction is like most other compulsive behaviors: a potentially destructive twist on a normal life-enhancing activity. Similar to drugs and alcohol, sexual activities produce chemical changes in the brain. When a sexual behavior is engaged in compulsively over time, the brain adapts to the flood of neurotransmitters and craves more intense or more frequent stimuli to feel the initial rush.

Like other addictions, sex addiction is characterized by the repeated, compulsive seeking or use of an activity despite adverse social, psychological and/or physical consequences. Addiction is often accompanied by physical dependence, withdrawal and tolerance. Physical dependence is defined as a physiologic state of adaptation to a substance or chemical change in the brain, the absence of which produces symptoms of withdrawal.

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