Do you regard sex addiction as a legitimate illness?

Discuss.

...is this about Tiger?

Serious topic. For the major leaguers.

Serious topic. For the major leaguers.

Yeah I agree.

Just like any other addiction, it's not an illness.

^i agree but an addiction to hard drugs is kind of an exception.. running around wanting to have sex all time is different

Oh dear.

I think it's a psychological illness yes.

^i agree but an addiction to hard drugs is kind of an exception.. running around wanting to have sex all time is different

I was thinking, i want to have sex all the time. And i think most healthy men do too. Is that an addiction?

All men like to eat. Does that mean eating to the point of disrupting your health and life isn't unhealthy ?

Well that's their choice. It's not always an illness. We are not talking about if it is healthy or not. We are discussing if it's an illness.

I figured being healthy was the opposite of being ill. The definition I found for illness is an "unhealthy state of body or mind".

^i agree but an addiction to hard drugs is kind of an exception.. running around wanting to have sex all time is different

I was thinking, i want to have sex all the time. And i think most healthy men do too. Is that an addiction?

No, i think theres a good distinction between natural urges and and exaggerated urges that you choose to act upon

thats why i dont regard most addictions as an illness..because you still have a choice unless its drugs or alchohol to the point were you cant physically go without

The first place I ever heard the phrase 'sex addict' was in a tabloid newspaper years and years ago. Obviously its a good hook for any headline "He's an addict (BOO)...of sex (ZWAH?!)". Almost inevitably the article was about a rather randy over-indulged millionaire (wasn't Tiger, wasn't Michael Douglas) and certainly didn't express any notion of this being something you should be 'treated' for. Just a bit of moral fiber, like wot this country really needs! Whether or not this guy was actually what a respectable medical journal would define a sex addict is a completely different point altogether (though I think we all know). In fact chances are, if you've kissed more than two women in the same evening, a tabloid editor might classify you as some kind of deviant that should be locked away forever.

Anyway, needless to say that in the same newspaper there was a nice shot of a young lady topless on the page inbetween 2 and 4. God bless you, Rupert.

The first place I ever heard the phrase 'sex addict' was in a tabloid newspaper years and years ago. Obviously its a good hook for any headline "He's an addict (BOO)...of sex (ZWAH?!)". Almost inevitably the article was about a rather randy over-indulged millionaire (wasn't Tiger, wasn't Michael Douglas) and certainly didn't express any notion of this being something you should be 'treated' for. Just a bit of moral fiber, like wot this country really needs! Whether or not this guy was actually what a respectable medical journal would define a sex addict is a completely different point altogether (though I think we all know). In fact chances are, if you've kissed more than two women in the same evening, a tabloid editor might classify you as some kind of deviant that should be locked away forever.

Anyway, needless to say that in the same newspaper there was a nice shot of a young lady topless on the page inbetween 2 and 4. God bless you, Rupert.

I think the news media absolutely overuses the term addict now . And obviously any celebrity caught doing something now is said to have an illness of some kind .

No, i think theres a good distinction between natural urges and and exaggerated urges that you choose to act upon

thats why i dont regard most addictions as an illness..because you still have a choice unless its drugs or alchohol to the point were you cant physically go without

But how can we make the distinction for someone else? Different things affect people differently. Some people drink all the time and aren't alcoholics and some people use drugs regularly and you wouldn't know it if you didn't know them personally (some in my own family) whereas some people shop to the point of destryoying their life. Are alcohol and drugs more dangerous than shopping per average? Yes. But if someone's life is destryoyed and they feel trapped by their habbits is addiction defined by the the vehicle or is addiction itself the independent variable? We can only at the end of the day say for the person we seen in the mirror every morning .

Its also the extent to which you go to get your 'fix'. This is always, always poorly examined by the mainstream, particularly in the case of non-famous people, who make up the bulk of, y'know, the world.

When in doubt, ask Aunt Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_addiction

I think that sex addiction might be some kind of a mental illness. Alcoholism is an illness, so why not treat sex addiction like one? Sure, with alcohol - apart from mental addiction - there's also physical addiction, while sex addiction only involves the mind. Of course, there are people who like sex AND people who like it too much. Same goes for alcohol, there are people who drink frequently AND alcoholics.

I was reading this rather shoddily written extract from a new biography on Warren Beatty the other week, where it claimed he'd slept with 12,000 women. A questionable number to say the least, likely plucked out of someone's arse, but still, there's no doubt Beatty had more than his fair share over the years. In fact the author went on to claim that he used to have sex to help him get to sleep, like a sedative. Compulsive behaviour? Irrespective of the text's credibility, its an interesting concept to ponder.

If you are on anti-depressants, you may be offended by this. I appologize in advance but please just ignore this post if you think it may offend you.

From a certain point of view, there are two major schools of thought in modern psychiatry: one that believes depression to be merely a chemical imbalance, the other believes it to be something else that is deeper.

The first of which seems to be the more popular of the two nowadays. It is also what the patients crave. Who wouldn't want a quick fix to all their problems? Pop some fluoxetine and life is all better again, no?

Unfortunately, that doesn't work. Nor is there any hard evidence, despite what some studies (albeit sponsored by certain pharmaceutical companies) may say, that it indeed is cause by a chemical imbalance.

That is not to say that depression is not a legitimate illness. Both schools of thought do consider it as such and as spooky or supersticious as it may sound, the second popular opinion considers it to be an illness of the soul.

Anyone nowadays who questions the validity of eating disorders as a legitimate deisease is usually called out as heinous or something along those lines. Nobody actually knows what causes eating disorders but they are, by all medical professionals, considered legit. What these things all have in common is that there is no definite cause and no biologocal method of detection. It is all stricly based on behaviour and these illnesses are all somehow mysteriously cured when the patient's outlook on life is changed for the better. I'm no psychologist, nor does having a sibling who had suffered from depression or reading a few books by some well known Ph.Ds make me an expert, but I don't find it hard to imagine that any addiction, even sexual addiction, could be considered a legitimate disease.

TooBoku, from one armchair observer of the world to another, what are your thoughts (if any) on cognitive therapy?