Hypersexual disorders
PEOPLE with low sex drives usually opt for drugs that will increase their libido, but when it’s the reverse and your sex drive is high to the point where it interferes with your daily functions, you may need to seek help.
You may believe that you’re addicted to sex, but experts say there is no such thing, rather, you are losing the ability to control your impulses.
“Sex addiction really doesn’t exist. There was a proposal to add it to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), but it was refused and rejected. Hypersexuality is usually a symptom of some other pathological problem. If the person has lost impulse control such as in bipolar disorders or the person has deviant behavioural patterns like in personality disorders, then there is the need to increase sexual behaviour and so-called hypersexuality,” psychiatrist Dr Geoffrey Walcott said.
Added clinical sexologist Dr Karen Carpenter: “In sex therapy there is no such thing as sex addiction. Addiction counsellors are the ones who talk about that. Sex is not a drug. For you to be addicted you must have withdrawal symptoms when the drug is removed and there must be a chemical response in the body. There is no chemical response in the body with the withdrawal of sex. The withdrawal of sex doesn’t cause a chemical response in the body.”
She said while orgasm causes a temporary release of chemicals, it is not something that is predictable or prolonged, nor is it something that you can adequately boost yourself with.
“A drug which is injected into the system or put into the system will last for a number of hours. Sex doesn’t. So to believe that sex is an addictive property is really not how sex therapists see it. It is more of an impulse control disorder.”
Dr Carpenter said for it to be considered in the category of impulse control disorders, sex must be interfering with other aspects of your life.
“It must be interfering with your social and work life and must also be putting you in trouble with the law. If you’re voyeuristic (a peeping tom), or you’re in people’s bedroom watching, that will put you in trouble with the law. If you are watching porn most of the day, it means you’re not going to work and then we’re concerned. We’re concerned with any behaviour that interferes with your daily functioning. If a person in their spare time watches porn, it is not an excessive behaviour unless it is interfering with something,” she said, while adding that sex isn’t the highest form of impulse control issue, rather gambling is.
Dr Walcott explained that to get to a hypersexual state in our culture means that there are underlying issues — like bipolar disorder and personality disorder which cause the hypersexual and sexual impulsivity conditions.
With regards to treatment, the psychiatrist said the main thing would be to treat the underlying illness by means of medication and psychotherapy.
“Bipolar disorder is a chronic, long-standing debilitating disorder, but it can be managed. Personality disorder can be managed once we get the patient into treatment and get them to stay there,” he said.
He added that these behaviours can be risky as they expose people to diseases such as HIV.
