LOL You ordered them! Sweet! Your entry into the secret society is nearly complete! Mwuahahaha!

Now, Andy... Better put the Star Wars DVDs away for a while I think... yes... LOL. Crossing over to the dark side you are ... yes.

Yeah, addiction has to be real. I've got thoughts bouncing around in my head that I just can't stop. Sometimes they are easy to push away, and sometimes I feel like it's an all out invasion and I can do nothing to stop it. Then there are times I can't stop myself from MB along with those thoughts. It's like my body takes control while I'm trying to fight against myself. Flat out sucks. Guess it's addiction? It's usually somehow related to being used and what not. Sucks. Hate it. Haven't figured out how to send it packing yet.

So whoever it was that said it's just a conspiracy or anything along those lines just hasn't got a foggy clue.

Thank you!

This person also told me there's no such thing as illegal sex. LOL OK thennnn...

But to his credit, I heard he's 16, so I'll give him some leeway. I had no idea he was that age until after -- or I would've never even kept talking about that subject.

We need IDs here...argh. I told some of my addictive history...but never would've had I known.

Sigh...

I wish this were some sort of pseudosyndrom or something. I know that some mental health professionals don't really like the phrase "sexual addiction" and there are camps of disagreement in the profession, unfortunately. I am not going to argue with these folks. I know what my experience is and how I have gotten sober from sex addiction and how I am helping others recover from sex addiction.

I have been in recovery from sex addiction for over ten years. My journey to healing, took me to inpatient rehab in the desert of Arizona for 5 weeks, many hours of outpatient psychotherapy and thousands of 12-step meetings. All of this was following a near suicide attempt because I could not stop acting out sexually. What I learned through this process, and what ultimately led me to seek support from resources like this website is the fact that my sexual addiction was tangled up with early childhood sexual abuse, which set the stage for years of sexual acting out.

Read Patrick Carnes book Don't Call It Love... and a few of his other books. Check out http://www.sexhelp.com

There is now a Certification for therapists CSAT (Certified Sex Addition Therapist) that offers specific evidence-based training for the treatment of sexual addiction. IITAP.com can help you find a certified professional and tell you a little more about it.

Some things are very hard to understand without direct experience. If I were the sort who could pick up a drink at dinner and drink half of it and then go home, I might never be able to understand that some people who are alcoholic would walk by the table after I'd left, see the half empty drink, be shocked at the waste, drink it down and wake up two weeks later a thousand miles away with one shoe and no idea of what had happened. That alcohol doesn't affect some people that way doesn't mean alcoholism doesn't exist.

Now, my drinking never got that bad, but I get it. Same with sexual addiction. The person who sees everyone around them looking at pornography occasionally may never get it that some people look at porn and then come to 12 hours later wondering where the day went... again. I really get that.

I heard a story on the radio years ago that I've always remembered. The speaker was talking about fiscal responsibility and a caller asked "why doesn't everyone practice fiscal responsibility?" The answer was "for the same reason that people don't jog every morning until after their first heart attack."

Same deal with addictions - try to tell someone who's young and invincible that what they are doing now may someday turn and kill them and they just don't get it. It is human nature to keep doing what ever we are doing until the consequences are bad enough to change. If the consequences aren't bad, why change? That is why part of the step one of the 12 steps involves the idea of "raising the bottom." I behaved in just plain crazy insane ways and was convinced there was no problem - "I'd know if there was a problem with my mind."

The books "Out of the Shadows" and "Don't Call It Love" are excellent. I've also found it very helpful to read "Alcoholics Anonymous" (the Big Book), which is not specifically about sexual addiction, but deals with sex a lot.

Mike