Society’s view of sex addiction can be summed up in the title of Steve McQueen’s most recent film on the subject, Shame. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Sex addicts should be helped, not shamed.
Addiction has always been a taboo subject, sex addiction even more so. People often see addiction as a weakness. But often, they can sympathize with drug addicts because they understand that the chemicals directly affect people’s mind and body.
However, with sex it has been less clear. Sex addiction has only recently been recognized as a medical condition. What people fail to see is that sex addiction isn’t about sex at all; it’s a mental condition. The sex addict portrayed in Shame has to have sex. He doesn’t enjoy it but it’s built into his system because of issues from his childhood.
Instead of shaming sex addicts on the big screen — or in reality — we should be working to rehabilitate them.
In some respects, recovering from sex addiction is a much bigger feat than recovering from drug addiction. Sex addicts can’t be expected to completely cut themselves off from the thing they’re addicted to. They should be looked at in the same way as people with eating disorders, whose rehabilitation involves building food into their lives in a healthy way.
Sex addiction is no longer confined to the ‘sexcapades’ depicted in Shame. The condition includes masturbation, porn and cyber sex. Fueled by the Internet, sex addiction is taking on different and more pervasive forms.
If society wants to help the growing number of addicts, we need to leave the stigma behind.
