What is sex addiction?
Sex addiction is described as a compulsive need to perform sexual acts to achieve the kind of “fix” that a person with alcohol use disorder gets from a drink or one with opiate use disorder gets from using opiates, according to healthline.
Sex addiction should not be confused with other disorders such as pedophilia or bestiality. Sex addiction has the risk to negatively impact a person’s physical and mental health, relationships, quality of life, and safety.
What are the symptoms of sex addiction?
A person with a sex addiction may have chronic, obsessive sexual thoughts and fantasies. They may be preoccupied with having sex, even when it interferes with daily life, productivity, and work performance.
They may have compulsive relations with multiple partners, including strangers. They may feel guilty after sex and resort to lying to cover their behaviors. Here are some celebrities who have battled sex addiction.
Charlie Sheen
Charlie Sheen of 'Two and a Half Men' has slept with (what he guessed) about 5,000 women, he told Maxim. In 1995, he testified that he spent $53,000 on “sexual services” from sex workers. In 2015, the actor publicly announced that he had been HIV-positive for four years.
Jada Pinkett Smith
Jada Pinkett Smith revealed her battle with sex addiction on an episode of Red Table Talk. “When I was younger, I definitely think I had a sex addiction of some kind, yes, that everything could be fixed by sex.”
The actress continued, “I am a binger, and I always have to watch myself and I can just get obsessed with things. It’s not what you’re doing but how you’re with it. Why you’re doing it. It’s the behavior that’s attached to it because if you want to have a lot of sex, that’s great, but why are you having all that sex? That’s what you’ve got to look at.”
Russell Brand
In his memoir, “My Booky Wook,” Russell Brand writes waking up in rehab for sex addiction that threatened to ruin his career. He wrote, “At one point, about five years ago, I had a harem of about 10 women, whom I would rotate in addition to one-night stands and random casual encounters.”
Kanye West
Kanye West revealed during a 2019 interview with Apple Music, “My dad had a Playboy left out [when I was] five and it’s affected almost every choice I made for the rest of my life. From age five til now, having to kick the habit and it just presents itself in the open like it’s ok and I stand up and say, ‘No, it’s not ok.'”
He admitted that when his mother died, “I drowned myself in my addiction… Sex.”
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