People generally don't view activities like sex, eating or gambling as a dependency. But they definitely can have potential for habitual problems.
Do you remember when Halle Berry's ex-husband came out as a sex addict? Everyone thought, "how the hell can he cheat on her?!" Most probably thought that it was a total cop-out.
It turns out these behavioral addictions aren't just moral or conscious issues that someone can make a decision to change.
What are the differences between people who like sex and people who are sexually dependent?
This may be surprising, but you can't define addiction by how often a person performs an act. You don't define addiction in quantitative terms, but rather by how it affects someone's life.
When your sexual behavior is causing major problems in your life, and you don't recognize the damage it is causing to your life, that is a red flag.
Founding Director of The Sexual Recovery Institute (SRI), Los Angeles and Senior Vice President of Clinical Development for Elements Behavioral Health, Rob Weiss, LCSW, CSAT-S, explains what sexual addiction really is and how it can best be treated. Rob presents this material in straightforward language that any listener can understand.
Robert Weiss LCSW, CSAT-S, Founding Director of The Sexual Recovery Institute (SRI), Los Angeles and Senior Vice President of Clinical Development for Elements Behavioral Health is an UCLA MSW graduate and early trainee of Dr. Patrick Carnes. Mr. Weiss is author of Cruise Control, Sex Addiction 101 and co-author of both Closer Together Further Apart and the upcoming Always Turned On (Summer 2014) with Dr. Jennifer Schneider. A media expert to CNN, The Oprah Winfrey Network, and the Today Show among many others, Mr. Weiss also has provided clinical training and program development for the N.I.H., the U.S. Marines, Navy as well as multi-addiction, behavioral health treatment centers across the globe.