Addiction Is a Physical Thing 0

I have known addicts–addicts to alcohol and other drugs.

If they stop using their drugs of choice, their bodies rebel and they suffer horrible physical torment–nausea, DTs, hallucinations, and more.

If a man stops sending pictures of himself to strangers, I guarantee (as Justin Wilson would have said) that he will not suffer nausea, DTs, and hallucinations.

I can be as lecherous as the next guy, perhaps more lecherous than some, and, because I understand lechery, I have long believed that attempts to create an ailment called “sex addiction” are at best attempts to promote full employment for opportunistic therapists and at worst complete and total garbage.

Really, now, Anthony Weiners of this world, if you don’t press “send” on that SMS, are you going to throw up, have hallucinations, and see pink elephants?

Catherine Bennett reports in the Observer:

Now a new study casts such doubt on previous assumptions about sex addiction that questions are even being asked about Boris Johnson’s alleged satyriasis. Could he be, in fact, normal? Shouldn’t NHS Choices take another look at its claim, on its sex addiction page (with hilarious, addict-face illustration) that: “This addiction is similar to substance abuse because it is caused by the powerful chemical substances released during sex.”

Who wrote that – Tiger Woods?

Because researchers at UCLA tested brain activity in self-diagnosed hypersexual people and found no evidence to separate their participants’ reactions from those of normal people with a high sex drive.

Addiction is a real and horrible thing. I was a smoker. I know.

I’m still an addict, addicted to nicotine, but in gum form, without sucking crap into my lungs. (It’s at least an improvement.)

To use “addiction” as an excuse for being a narcissistic jackass insults every person who has ever struggled with a real physical addiction, from smokers on up.

Being a narcissistic jackass may be a “condition,” but it’s not an addiction.

Addictions are treatable.