Gays, Sexual Addiction, and Foot in Mouth Disease

Great Debates
21

Something I’ve observed…

Imagine, if you will, a deeply closeted teenager. Most teens who are gay are deeply closeted- although people are coming out earlier and earlier (I was out at 14), there are many more who do not acknowledge/act upon their feelings until late teens/early twenties.

Take closeted gay teen (oh, let’s call him George) and place him in a standard college. All of the sudden, George is in a place where his parents cannot keep tabs on him. Depending on location, he might not be near anyone he knows from home, so his actions at college will not get back to mom and dad. George starts going to the school’s gay straight alliance.

All at once, George meets lots of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans people who are in the various stages of coming out, who know what he has gone through, who sympathize with his problems.

George becomes overwhealmed by his sudden immersion in gay culture.

George sees a cute boy at the GSA meeting. For the first time, he has someone who is gay and shows interest. They date, one thing leads to another, and they have sex very quickly. Soon afterwards, they realize that they’re not compatible at all and break up.

Now, it’s been my observation that gay teens, when faced with this situation, will repeat the same mistake over and over- start dating/sleeping with someone because they too are gay and… well, honestly, the first few times someone of the same gender shows interest, it’s… scary. Overwhealming. Lots of things that I can’t really describe.

It’s very easy to date someone just because they’re gay. It’s very easy to sleep with them, too. It’s also very easy to get an STD from this, and I can’t begin to describe my bitterness at having to take so many of my friends to get tested because they got caught up in the moment. For some people, unfortunately, it takes a long while before they learn that you have to go on something more than common sexual orientation.

Did I do this? Yes. Before I got into a real relationship, I swapped spit with a few girls who showed interest. Invariably, though, they were scared off by the prospect of a lesbian relationship, so it never went past kissing. (Thank God… I’m glad I waited.) I don’t know if I would have gone so far as to have sex with a girl who showed enough interest, but I do know a lot of gay kids who have. I’d like to think I wouldn’t have, but… it was such an affirmation to have that first girl kiss me back and tell me I was pretty. I was 15 and I thought that no girl would ever want to be with me, and at that moment in time I would have moved the earth for her.

Same sex dating is fundamentally different from heterosexual dating in a lot of ways. I hope that it makes sense when I say that in a lot of cases, promiscuity in gay people (at least among teens, which is the culture I know best) oftentimes springs from that overwhealming culture shock that happens after you come out or start dating.

I do think that gay culture- especially some aspects of it (the bar/club scene) are hypersexualized. More so with gay men than with lesbians, I think. And I would agree that being homosexual/bisexual/trans does make one think about sexuality far more than heterosexuals might. The heterosexual construct of our society lends itself to that.

Polycarp, I hope you find my answer helpful.

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**PolyCarp wrote:

Regarding the reality of “sexual addiction” – you, Freyr, would I think be the first to admit that psychological classifications can be slippery things to work with. But by the term I meant “an inordinate preoccupation with matters sexual in nature, to the extent that they interfere with other aspects of a person’s life that are important to him/her, and have characteristics of obsessiveness or compulsion with reduced will to resist the opportunity to indulge the preoccupation.”**

Basically, PolyC, I agree with you. I was trying to say the same thing, pinning down a definition is hard and merely observing behavior isn’t always reliable.

When a person is having lots of sex, especially to the detriment of other parts of their life, then yes, that’s addiction. But is it because they’re addicted to THE ACT (the feeling an orgasm gives them) or are they trying to use sex to substitute for something in their life they feel is missing; ie LOVE or APPROVAL. That’s the point I was trying to make.

An interesting side note; can one become addicted to the physical act of orgasm, the rush you experience (ahem) cum?

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More the latter and less the former. Like any other addiction. Cyclical.

Empty feeling.
Reach for a habit to get your ‘good feeling fix’.
Let down after high.
Depressed that you ‘did it again’.
Goto first step, repeat…

24

Andy and Freyr, thanks (again) for the astute observations.

With response to your final question, Freyr, I think to a certain extent (almost) everyone is – the sense of pressure/release that constitutes one’s sex drive could easily be interpreted in such terms. Most people develop a “need to come” in early adolescence (or sometimes earlier – I once knew a 2-year-old who masturbated on a regular basis – it felt good, and he saw no problem with it). (This is failing to take into account that for most people, it’s a normal, integrated part of their daily life that does not conflict with the remainder of it, and hence is not an “addiction” in the need-to-treat-for-mental-health sense. However, I am addicted to breathing, eating, and drinking – I could probably stop if I tried, but I formed these habits shortly after birth…) :slight_smile: And that is not quite as funny as I’ve made it out to be. The line is, as we agree, slippery. What one person might consider a healthy sex life, another might consider overdoing it and focusing too much on it. (Marriage counselor, anyone?)

The viewpoint of someone who is voluntarily celibate might help to analyze this further. So far as I know, though, the only regular poster who has chosen a celibate lifestyle is Tris.

One comment might be that almost every “addiction” is the obsession with some single aspect of a normal, healthy life. Even drugs are an attempt to stimulate endorphin production, or the brain chemicals that bring surcease from constant pain, or whatever the drug in question’s function is. And on this, I don’t draw a line between physical and psychological addictions.

Your thoughts?

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Fair enough.

Having said that, though, my own opinion on the matter is that psychological and physiological addiction are two different problems, and they should probably each have their own word, so as not to confuse the issue. My reasoning is that substances which a person can become physiologically addicted to are inherently addictive; cocaine is addictive, tobacco is addictive and so forth. And while the reasons people begin to take drugs are not always clear, a big reason as to why they keep taking them once they realize they’re damaging their life is clear: the physiological consequences of not taking the drug they’re addicted to.

Gambling or sex, on the other hand, are not addictive. And talking of “gambling addiction” or “sexual addiction” unfairly gives those activities a bad name, as if there is something about them that draws people to them in an addictive way. Which I don’t believe to be the case.

Without getting too personal, I’ve had some experience with psychological addiction. It was (and is) relatively minor, such that I’ve been able to lead a halfway normal life, but if you replace “matters sexual in nature” in Polycarp’s definition above with a few other things, I believe I would qualify (either currently or at one time, depending on what you replace it with). Certainly my own “addiction” to a few things has caused me problems in my life that I would have perferred not to experience. And at times I did wonder if I was addicted to whatever was occupying my interest to the point of obsession at that time. What I realized, and what I believe is true, at least for me, is that I was not neglecting areas of my life that were important due to an obsession with something, but rather I was neglecting areas of my life that were important due to my desire (for whatever reason) not to deal with those areas, and that I dove into something else to occupy my time and divert my thoughts from what I didn’t want to think about. And indeed the things I have been “addicted” to have changed over time, one obession replacing another, confirming to me that the issue is not an inordinate desire to do something, but rather to ignore the things I “should” be doing.

While it’s easy for me to take my experience and extrapolate from it to a universal reason for pyshcological addiction, I’m certainly not so arrogant as to believe that is the reason everyone might have these problems. However, I’m also egotistical enough to believe that I am correct in diagnosing my problem, and that I’m not so different from others that there aren’t some people who experience these problems for the same reason I do.

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I think you’re right that for some people it’s the specific thing they are addicted to, and for others it is that they are using the obsession to compensate for something, and pretty much any obsession would do. In fact, it’s a problem with helping some people, since you get them off one addiction and they just latch on to another since the underlying psychological needs haven’t been fixed. People can be both physically and psychologically addicted to physically addicting substances; you may get over a physical cocaine addiciton, but if you still psychologically need some sort of “high” to avoid other issues in your life, you may grab onto another addiction like sex or gambling. And then when you feel guilty about gambling, you decide your life is so miserable that you may as well start with coke again…

I think most physical addictions also have an element of psychological addiction; no one’s forcing you to take cocaine, you could just take it in small enough doses that you never suffer withdrawal symptoms, like people who can drink a beer or three and then stop. There are people who take addictive drugs recreationally only, although with highly addictive substances the potential to become physically addicted after just a few uses is much higher. But if you really need that high, you’ll take the coke in bigger and bigger doses and you won’t be able to stop even before you’re physically addicted, even if you know you’re going to become physically addicted if you keep it up. A while ago there was some talk about “addictive personalities”; people predisposed to addiction, regardless of the substance that they actually become addicted to.

I don’t have a problem with referring to “gambling addiction” or “sexual addiction” because although I think the underlying psychological need could often probably be shifted over to a suitable substitute, that’s the particular manifestation we actually see. With some people, that specific addiction may have features that they cannot get from any other substance, so they’re unlikely to shift to another substance–for example, a person who was sexually abused may only be susceptable to sexual addiction (although people who were sexually abused are overrepresented amoung addicted persons of all substances, IIRC)–with others, their needs are broad-based enough that they may latch onto anything available.