The Secret Life of a Sex Addict

He says he's just horny, a real man. But could his `harmless' sexual behavior be putting both of you in jeopardy? Recovering sex addicts help you sift through the clues.

I'm addicted to phone sex. For years, I saw it as no big deal. When the others in my office bragged about their sexual exploits, I stayed silent. Compared with them, I was a saint. My thing was solitary. Phone sex was just an exciting form of masturbation. I wasn't cheating on my wife of ten years. She and I still had sex on a regular basis. As a 38-year-old sports promoter, I made good money and, at least in the beginning, could afford the phone calls. My wife didn't have to know. No one had to know. No one could know because the experience, while getting me off, was bringing me shame--and pulling me deeper into a pattern of behavior I couldn't stop.

Later I would learn that sex addiction--commonly defined as repetitive and compulsive sexual behavior that over time negatively affects a person's life--is a progressive disease. What begins as an occasional thrill builds into an uncontrollable obsession. I went from spending $10 a week to $100--and then $1,000. I went from phone sex with women to phone sex with men. The verbal stimulation became more bizarre--cruder, crueler, enticing me into areas that, only months before, I could never have imagined entering. I felt imprisoned. The minute my wife left the house, I rushed to the phone and stayed there for hours. I grew so alarmed that I called a psychotherapist and made an appointment.

The therapist helped me see the roots of my addictive personality. When I was a child, my parents discussed sex inappropriately. They used words and expressions that were shockingly explicit. Their language turned me on in ways I didn't understand. But even with this new insight, even after an illuminating session with the therapist, I still ran to the phone. I still sought the heat of phone sex.

When my wife spotted a $4,000 phone bill and demanded an explanation, I confessed. The next day was Christmas. She went off to church where she sought God's guidance about whether to leave me or not. Meantime, I spent the morning binging on phone sex. That afternoon, disgusted with myself, I finally did what I knew I had to do. I went to a 12-step group devoted to my disease and said the four words I never wanted to pronounce publicly to a group of strangers: I'm a sex addict.

Public confession gave me something that private counseling, for all its benefits, never did--accountability. I felt accountable to a group of fellow sex addicts. Some of their stories were more dramatic than mine, some less. The common bond, though, was our admission that sex was our drug. We were powerless over this drug and, only with the help of a higher power--call it God, or call it the mysterious healing feeling of the group--could we do without our destructive behavior. We called each other when we felt the urge coming on; we listened to one another without judgment. The wreckage of our past cost some of us our wives, husbands and families. It cost me my marriage. But my own life, for the past four years, has been free of phone sex. That, in itself, is a miracle.

Here three men and one woman--all of them currently in 12-step recovery programs--share their struggles with sex addiction in the hope that we might better understand a disease that's quietly devastating millions of lives. (To preserve the anonymity that is the hallmark of 12-step programs, and to protect subjects' privacy, names and identifying details have been changed.)

BEN: 'I Stayed Drunk on Web Porn

Computers made my career and computers ruined my life. Computers fed my addiction to hard work, creative planning and hard-core pornography.

My story began as the classic African-American success story. My parents are government workers who saved up for my college education. My wife is a schoolteacher. My affinity for computers landed me an excellent job. I invented a software program that saved my company millions, and I became a senior vice-president with a big office and private bathroom. I moved my wife and three children to the suburbs and took them on Hawaiian vacations. A division of 50 people reported to me.

In my off-hours, I started dabbling with some of the milder sex sites. No big deal. But as the years passed, these sites became more explicit. That excited me. So did the changing technology-chat lines, Web cameras, E-mail photos. The world of Web porn became endlessly fascinating, but I still wasn't worried. I restricted my sex surfing to my lunch hour.

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Then an hour in the afternoon. Then an hour at home after my wife had gone to bed. Soon I was ordering secret credit cards as a way to hide the expense. I was suddenly visiting sites--and staying for hours--where Web cams were showing things that had me dazed. I didn't realize my behavior was so extreme until a colleague, who had inadvertently seen me on-line, told my boss. Because of my value to the firm, I was given a warning. I was told that if I were caught again, I'd be fired. Rather than seek help, I bought a handheld computer that I could operate in my private bathroom. I spent at least half my time at work in that bathroom. This time it was my secretary who reported my secret behavior. That was it: I was terminated, and my wife was told why. Infuriated and frightened, she took the kids and left.

I can analyze my situation with clarity. As a child, I discovered an uncle's stash of porn magazines. The images confused and excited me. They were more than any child could handle. As a result, I was still seeking the thrill of that early discovery. Then came the computer.

The computer is addictive in and of itself. Combine it with porn and you have two mighty addictions operating in tandem. No wonder I capitulated. No wonder porn is a multibillion-dollar on-line business. But all the clarity in the world does not get me my family or my job back. And the worst part is, I'm still deep in the addiction, even after a weeklong stay at a rehab facility.

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Last updated: 10/05

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