Think Sex Addiction Sounds Fun? It Was. But It Still Ruined My Life

When it comes to sex, I have always known that I had a different sort of scene than most people. I am into a lot of things that most people think are weird. I have a myriad of kinks and odd fetishes. I masturbate a lot. Worst of all, or maybe best of all, depending on your perspective, nothing got me off more then having sex with multiple partners.

It isn’t that I just wanted to have sex with a lot of people; although, that might have been OK. I wanted to lie to all of them too.
The High of the LieThat was the high of the whole thing. It would have been no fun at all if I were watching TV with my girlfriend and when finished I said, "Hey babe, I am going over to Caitlin’s house for a bit. I am going to bang her silly and then be right back. Love you." That would have done nothing for me at all. It was the games that I played ... the deceit, being the puppet master, that was the biggest part of the rush.

I used to be married. I started having an affair at work. I told the woman I was having sex with that I loved her and that I was leaving my wife. I never followed through. I met her kids. She thought we were unique; that we were special. Then I started screwing someone else at work. Then, for a brief period, I started having sex with a third woman I worked with. None of them knew about the others.

This wasn’t an odd situation for me. It was normal. I was married, having sex with three women at work and telling two of them I loved them. To you that might seem horrible, or it might seem exciting. I don’t know. To me, it was like walking around electrified, all day, and all night long. I would have sex with at least two women a day, sometimes four. When I found time in between, I would masturbate.
Addicted to SexIt might go without saying, but acting like this caused me to have enormous problems. I had numerous opportunities to stop taking it farther, but I kept pushing it to the bitter end. I pushed until I was in a corner with no way out.

That is where what the professionals call the "addiction" part comes in.

I did things, sexually, over and over again that completely fucked up my life. This isn’t a piece to explain why they call it addiction or why it was hard for me to stop. Acting in the way I did gave me a huge rush, an enormous shot of dopamine. Later I would feel shame, depression, and anxiety over my actions. The only thing that would make me feel OK again was the rush I got from doing crazy sexual shit again.

Which brings me to the term "sex addict." I don’t like calling myself a sex addict. Actually, I hate it. When people hear that term, most of them tend to have one of two reactions.
Some people think sex addiction doesn’t exist. They think that it is just a made-up term to excuse bad behavior. Of course it is the "addict" part of the term that makes people feel this way. I write a lot of pieces on sex addiction. Invariably, some genius says something like "Addicted to sex? That’s like being addicted to air." Like they are the first person to ever think of this.

The next group thinks it sounds fun: "What are you complaining about, man? You get laid all the time and you think it’s a problem?" Well … it was fun. Totally fun. But if you have my type of personality, doing meth or getting black-out drunk is also fun.

This cycle kept up for quite a while until I ended up divorced, jobless and homeless. I moved in with a woman. She was great if I wanted someone to use as a coffee table or to walk on a leash. She was not so great at being my friend.

So I went to rehab. That is a story for another time. For our purposes, let's just say it sucked, but it helped me to start trying to change the way I had been acting. This didn’t take for quite a long time. In fact, a year or so out of rehab I was in a relationship, having sex with my boss at work, having sex with two other female coworkers, but the rush was gone. It became more of a habit ... one that I was committed to breaking.
Breaking the HabitOver the past year or so there has been a lot of difference in the way I act. I don’t hate myself anymore. I keep the darkness off to the side. I am honest with the people in my life, as much as I can be, about who I am. I am still sexually odd. That is fine as long as I am honest about it and as long as I just am who I am with no shame.

Writing pieces like this helps a lot too. I wrote some books all based on the crazy things I have done. Then, I got some deals ghostwriting memoirs for porn stars. My writing on sex has appeared in many popular websites and magazines. My latest book, Raping the Gods, is a bizarre black comedy about power trips, insanity, and the dark side of sex addiction.

All of us have our own personal relationship with sex and what it means. All of us have different views on what is acceptable and what isn’t acceptable. If you do what you do sexually in an honest way, if you are open about who you are, and if you don’t hurt or take advantage of anyone along the way, you will never have to worry about whether or not sex addiction exists.