“Knowledge speaks but wisdom listens”             Jimi Hendrix

Recovering addicts often resist participating 12-step programs for addiction because they seem to rely so heavily on the notion of “God.”  Even though the programs often use the terms “higher power” or “God of your understanding” some people feel overwhelmed with what they feel as oppressive religiosity.  Other people who are already religious can come to resent the 12-step idea of a higher power or a spiritual awakening because they feel they already have a perfectly good religious framework for their lives and they don’t need to learn a new one.

No matter what the objection the person has to the concept of a higher power, they can often accept the notion of intuition as a way to conceive of the concept of higher power. (See the new Psych Central blog about intuition!)  I support this idea because of the many strands of thinking that have come together around the idea of intuition in recent years.

Porn Addiction can be notoriously hard to quit.  Relapse is the norm, at least in the initial months of recovery.  Many recovering porn addicts quit for a long period, sometimes by giving up their computers entirely, sometimes with the use of blocking software, only to relapse again.

The harm reduction approach to addiction treatment is conceived as an alternative to total abstinence from the substance or behavior and involves techniques to reduce the risks that go along with addiction.  The early harm reduction techniques originated in 1972 in the Netherlands as an approach to drug addiction.  Early harm reduction, later called “normalization”  involved things like needle exchanges and methadone maintenance for drug addicts.  Recently the term has been used to describe system of care services that are interdisciplinary, empowering, and involving the family and community.

For many of us in recovery it is a challenge to go out into the world in an authentic and confident way.  Addicts tend to be shame based and intimacy avoidant.  In other words they are in hiding.

The common history of childhood trauma or attachment issues leaves most addicts with the core beliefs that they are unworthy, that no one will want to be there for them and that no one will ever like the real them.

If you are a clinician working with sex addicts you may be struck by how often the addict is desperate to save their marriage or relationship.  Sometimes to the point of being so obsessed with holding onto their relationship that it interferes with their focusing on treatment.

It may not be immediately obvious why this is so.  Addicts appear to be focused mainly on themselves. Typically they:

A week ago the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) published its intention to work towards and devote research funding to a new system for mental health diagnoses as an alternative to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association.  The various incarnations of the DSM have been dubbed the “gold standard” of diagnostic criteria for mental disorders and have provided a common framework for practitioners, researchers and insurers to relate to. 

The trouble is that the DSM has never been any good as a basis for understanding and treating mental disorders because it is built, as the NIMH announcement says, out of collections of symptoms rather than identifiable or understandable disorders.

Many people, both men and women, cheat on the person they are in a relationship with; at least 20-30% admit it depending on which data you are looking at and how the research questions are phrased.  Some people cheat very rarely and others cheat a lot.

Some people cheat repeatedly but do not meet the criteria for sex addiction.  Others who cheat repeatedly use cheating as a sexually addictive behavior and can definitely benefit from being given appropriate treatment. 

So how do you tell the two apart? 

No matter where you get your data it is clear that online pornography is very big business.  Whether you look at attempts to measure page views for the top porn sites (over 5 billion per month), porn web sites (4%), porn search engine searches (10-15%) or numbers of sites blocked by filtering software programs (2.5 million in CYBERsitter) internet porn is huge.

The number of Hollywood porn films produced have exceeded that of mainstream movies, with the 2006 porn industry revenue of $13.3 billion making porn bigger than the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball combined.

“Really listening is like dying for a minute” Michael L. Alvarez, MFT

You can make the art of listening work for you in your recovery.  Practicing real listening gives us a chance to practice basic recovery skills.

Addicts and people with intimacy issues are not particularly good at listening to other people.  Really listening to someone demands a level of awareness and a kind of attending that every addict needs to acquire.

Why listening is like love

In my April 6 2013 post “New Anti Porn Laws on the Way” I described recent attempts by three countries to make and/or enforce laws that would effectively prohibit adult pornography on the internet, specifically in the UK, Iceland and Egypt.

I said that such laws were a long way off in the US.  I received a correction from my acquaintance Dawn Hawkins at Morality in Media’s Pornharms.com.

The manic hypersexuality often characteristic of bipolar disorder and the possibility of bipolar disorder in those diagnosed with sex addiction are sometimes difficult to untangle.

According to a handful of studies reported in the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) article “Opening the Door on Hypersexuality,” the prevalence of hypersexuality among people with bipolar disorder is anywhere from 25 to 80% with an average estimate of 57%.  NAMI states: