No Such Thing As Sex Addiction

Sex is one of the most prominent themes of human life. Even before we even have sex hormones our lives are dominated by sex, unknowingly born into a world in which the adults are preoccupied and obsessed with sex and and sexual relationships, often abused or traumatized in their own childhoods by yet other adults who themselves were also abused, taught to deplore our bodies, distrust other people, and be ashamed and shame others for sex and sex behavior.

One of the largest consequences of the kind of shaming, blaming, and self-righteous sexual moralizing which is practiced by conservative and liberal thinkers alike is not any reduction in problems surrounding sex but instead an increase in self-hatred and stress experienced by those who do struggle with their sexual lives and sexual behavior. Lacking compassion for others because sex is used as a tool to shame, control, and reject other humans, many of us actively engage in the same kinds of destructive, judgmental and compassionless behavior which causes the problems in the first place, even to ourselves who might be struggling with such experiences.

When I was a child I was taught by people who had no control of their sex lives to abstain from sex. Parents and religious leaders all proclaimed sexual purity even as they consumed pornography, committed adultery, the sexual abuse of children, and engaged in tumultuous interpersonal conflict surrounding sex with their partners and family members, using sex as a tool to coerce and control relationships and other people while causing extreme amounts of emotional destruction and inflicting trauma on those who were vulnerable. So-called sex addiction is regarded as an addiction because of our self-hating and shame-based social dynamics which lacks compassion for personal experience and is ignorant to the realities of human biology. Religious leaders and parents who have seemingly uncontrollable sex drives in turn opine to those they lead and care for that it is an addiction, imploring others to do what they themselves are not capable of (that’s called hypocrisy). I recently moved back to Utah, where I grew up, and the government here regards pornography use as a public health hazard, going so far as to officially declare pornography to be a public health emergency even though there is absolutely no scientific or medical evidence to support such claims by a government which is dominated and gerrymandered to become as close to a Theocracy as is allowable in the United States, and requires pornography websites to post a bogus warning about the public health of pornography use and threaten minors with actual legal prosecution if they view such material (which is arguably unconstitutional), but did nearly nothing to protect the public against COVID-19 and simply allowed several thousand people to just, literally, die from it.

Utah is also the leader in teenage suicide in our country, and unlike pornography, childhood abuse and trauma such as is overly common in moralizing communities is shown to be a public health emergency. Suicide and depression is rampant in Utah, and other places, and has a direct correlation with attitudes about sex because those who experience problems with sex are taught by such communities that it is bad and wrong and thus hide their problems and struggle in secret, never getting help and, feeling isolated and alone, descend into the kind of despair which separates them from friends, family, and loved ones, having no access to the resources or information which would assist them and actually resolve such problems.

Proponents of sex addiction are also often those who are themselves burdened with poor estimation of self worth and engage in manipulation as a tool to manage their own relationships. It is convenient to use sex as a tool of control within personal relationships, and when we can characterize our partners as sex addicts it in turn empowers us to dominate and control their behavior and thus feel powerful within relationships. In reality such behavior undermines intimacy and inflicts emotional damage onto others, even though we believe them to be in the wrong, we ourselves actually being abusers and withholding compassion and assistance and actively causing harm to others, are the true abusers. I used to be in a relationship with someone who attended sex and love addiction recovery programs, and having been taught that sex addiction was an amoral problem, viewed myself to be better than them, or at least just not as lacking in self control, even though I was frequently emotionally unstable and insecure and instead found it a way to control someone who repeatedly demonstrated disloyal behavior and made our relationship extremely insecure, none of which solved either of our problems and in the end only made our situations more painful and destructive, not less.

So-called sex addiction is not even remotely similar to an addiction. In reality, what appears to be sex addiction is actually a biological mechanism humans possess which is meant to increase the frequency of mating in response to severe environmental stress, to increase the chance of the production of offspring. Conditions in a human being vulnerable to such triggers alarms the body to believe it in danger of impending expiry, and as such is concerned with motivating mating behavior before the animal might pass away. As a human animal, the kinds of stresses which trigger this behavior were more commonly associated with expiration of the animal before the advent of our advanced and relatively safer societies, due to poor availability of food resources, predation from other animals, or competition and conflict with other human beings. In order to promote mating and increase the production of offspring before the expiry of the adult, the brain is then triggered to compel sex behavior in order to increase the chances of passing on DNA before, as the body fears, they might die.

Since we now live in a world where death is much less common, because of technological and social innovations, a human who would have easily passed from this life due to such stresses can instead live with them for years, even decades, suffering the metabolic illnesses brought about by environmental, dietary, and social insufficiencies which trigger these conditions, and living in a calloused and compassionless society believe all the while it is a deficit of moral character and personal worth which is the source of our problems rather than simply that of excess nitric oxide—which by inhibiting the ability of mitochondria to respirate is the mechanism of action which promotes both sexual compulsion and changes the nature of sex from one which is satisfying and fulfilling to one which is simply utilitarian and, being associated with stress, also results in feelings of despair and dissatisfaction, further entrenching negative ideas of self worth, sex, and sexual relationships. Then, having no recourse for the resolution of such burdens since we live in a society of morons and moralizing abusers, a person becomes condemned to a cycle of self hatred, isolation, and frustration, and even interpersonal conflict as they try to live to the best of their ability, never recognizing their own bravery and persistence in spite of such overwhelming challenges from both nature and human society.

The resolution of sexual compulsion is rather simple, though the information can be a little complex, which is to remove the stresses which promote the excessive activity of nitric oxide and its inhibition of mitochondrial respiration. Sunlight knocks nitric oxide off mitochondria, and in fact excessive sequestration indoors is probably the biggest promoter of sexual compulsion and sexual dysfunction, so getting generous exposure to sunlight is one of the best solutions to restoring normal sex function (and discomfort in sunlight is itself a symptom of vitamin C deficiency, which protects our cells against oxidative damage from the stimulating effects of sunshine, so taking vitamin C and getting sun is especially effective). As sex addiction most often, and ironically, is also associated with libido problems such as erectile dysfunction or post orgasm depression, addressing other such issues restores healthy virility as well as the restorative and fulfilling nature of sex, and more information on the underlying conditions and resolution of these problems is discussed at length in my book, Fuck Portion Control. Additionally, trauma therapy such as is discussed in my book The Perfect Child can help resolve feelings of poor self esteem which lead to shame surrounding sexuality and abuse experiences which have taught us to resent our bodies and despair about life.

Highly virulent STDS can make us fat just from kissing, which can be carried for decades. Many of us are not even taught how to properly date and get laid easily if you are sexually active, and many of us mistake personal self-worth and attractiveness for being lean, which is not at all how physical attraction works.