Tampa Adult Entertainment: Sex addiction no laughing matter, therapists say
January 31, 2010… Before the Internet, people would go out to bars,” she said, “and pick up women or prostitutes.”
With sex addicts, the sex isn’t the driving force, she said. It’s more complicated than that.
“It’s not so much to have sex as it is a challenge to get partners to say OK,” she said. “Sex addicts get a sense of, ‘Job well done.’ It’s the very same dynamic with each patient.
“People want to feel something other than what they’re feeling,” she said. “It’s the same as with alcohol, nicotine, drugs; they want to be something other than what they are.”
One problem seen by therapists is self diagnosis. People see a celebrity caught in a cheating scandal and then seeking sex addiction treatment and think they have the same thing, said Jo-Ann Bird, a sex therapist in Brandon.
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Gone untreated, sex addicts can have lives that spiral downward, leading to obsessions with pornography, prostitution, exhibitionism, voyeurism, child molesting, incest and rape, he wrote.