What Is Sex Addiction?
Sex addiction is a mental health condition and addictive behavior involving sexual compulsion. It's one of the behavioral addictions that show increased sexual activity with sex partners than usual. Just like other addictions, this hypersexual disorder may have negative consequences such as emotional pain for family members, strained personal relationships, and lower quality of daily life.
While having a high libido, multiple sexual partners, and varied sexual experience or sexual activities does not necessarily equate to sex addiction, individuals suffering from sex addiction tend to have a hard time managing their behavior thereby leading to abnormal sexual acts, such as excessive masturbation, and obscene sexual gratification.
It may even be amplified if they have a co-occurring disorder, such as substance abuse/drug abuse and other mental health issues. To fully ascertain their condition, individuals usually seek treatment by finding mental health professionals specializing in trauma therapy or one-on-one therapy and undergo careful and thorough examination or one-on-one sessions to avoid an erroneous or controversial diagnosis.
Some individuals resort to the first step of recovery by attending support groups like sex addicts anonymous (similar to Alcoholics Anonymous) or seeking recovery resources certified by the American Psychiatric Association, to provide medical advice regarding their overall physical health and mental well-being.
There is still much to be known in addiction research, as a treatment team of specialists uncovers the manual of mental disorders and even the statistical manual of mental illnesses in fully understanding sex addiction at its core.
