Sex addiction: who should be blamed for lack of self-control?

• Author: Hyatt, Ralph

Psychiatrists, the media, and the Internet all are helping to feed Americans' obsession with sex.

Philadelphia suburbanites were shocked and abuzz with disbelief when the strangling of a neighbor hit the newspapers. She was a beautiful, vibrant lawyer in her late 20s, and the prime suspect was her husband. Family and friends maintained his long-term devotion to her and his nurturance of their "utopian" marriage and their one-year-old child. For him to be the strangler was impossible--until his secret life started to unfold.

It turned out that he was a frequenter of a popular gentlemen's club, obsessively and compulsively involved with one of the attractive dancers to the tune of $1-3,000 a week. Yet, his personal bank account at the time was under $100. Within 20 hours after the strangling, the husband allegedly pawned some of his wife's expensive jewelry and a valuable family heirloom. The prosecutors uncovered relationships with prostitutes before and after his marriage, as well as the fact that he had inveigled some friends to invest $200,000 in a business that never existed. Moreover, the couple recently had purchased an insurance policy on each other's life worth $1,500,000.

(Before proceeding with this article, consider the following questions: Do you believe there's such a disorder as "sexual addiction"? If he is found guilty, should the husband's punishment be reduced because of his sexual addiction? We shall return to this case at the end of the article.)

We all have been made aware of the large personal and social toll taken by compulsive behaviors and the vast number of drugs--legal and illegal--Americans consume: gambling, shopping, the Internet, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, narcotics, and prescriptive drugs. Still, the warnings fall on deaf ears. Our consumption is increasing, and behavioral problems continue to multiply.

Alcohol abusers cost the economy more than $116,00O,000,000 each year. Denial typically blinds them from recognizing the alterations in their personalities and the emerging panoply of co-dependencies.

Gambling is the fastest-growing industry in America. The total of annual legal wagering exceeds $500,000,000,000 and is increasing rapidly. Twenty-four states have legalized casinos and 37 have instituted lotteries. Racetracks, keno games, slot machines, riverboats, scratch this, instant that, and a plethora of other "pastimes" stimulate the millionaire fantasy. One hundred eighty-four Native American tribes are prospering from gambling. According to the General Accounting Office, the largest Indian gaming facilities generate higher operating income as a percentage of total revenues than the largest Nevada and Atlantic City casinos.

This all is in the name of supporting the elderly and keeping the states (or tribes) solvent. What is supposed to be the salvation of cash-strapped towns all across the country turns out to be a destroyer of gamblers and their families, businesses, and economic stability. The Center for Addiction Studies at Harvard University has shown that approximately five percent of adults exposed to such temptations can be expected to develop into pathological gamblers.

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