photo taken from askmen.com

Do you always think about sex? Has sex become a top priority in your life? Spent countless of hours online for erotic and sexual encounters? Do you always masturbate? Always feel the urge to have sex constantly? Then you must be a sex addict.

Sexual addiction is a phenomenon in which individuals report being unable to manage their sexual behavior. It has also been called “hypersexuality”, “sexual dependency”, and “sexual compulsivity”. The existence of the condition is not universally accepted by sexologists and its etiology, nature, and validity have been debated.

Many teenagers have suffered this type of addiction and have a hard time overcoming it. Is sexual addiction healthy? Has a healthy sexuality lost its place in this generation? How would you know if you are a sex addict? Here are the criterias for you to know whether you’re a sex addict or not; (taken from healthymind.com);

~ Recurrent failure to resist sexual impulses.

~ More extensive/longer sexual acting out than intended.

~ Ongoing but unsuccessful efforts to stop, reduce or control behavior.

~ Inordinate time spent obtaining sex, being sexual, or recovering from sexual experiences.

~ Feeling preoccupied with sexual behavior and/or preparatory activities.

~ Acting out takes significant time away from obligations: occupational, academic, domestic or social.

~ Continuation behavior despite consequences.

~ Tolerance – more frequency or intensity of behavior is needed over time to obtain the desired result.

~ Deliberately limiting social, occupational or recreational activities to keep time open for acting out.

~ Distress, restlessness or irritability if unable to do behavior (withdrawal).

- A minumum of 3 of the above 10 needed are needed for sex addiction to be considered present. Most sex addicts have 5 signs, while over 50% have 7.

People respond to an addictive substance or behavior because it improves their sense of well-being for a short time. However, over time the addiction helps less and less on each occasion of acting out, and ones overall sense of well-being deteriorates. The forecast for well-being for an addict is always bad. Eventually the peak of a person’s “high” is a worse state of being than when they started the addiction, and the high only staves off the negative effects of withdrawal.

Sadly, studies show that many individuals are becoming sex addicts worldwide and recovery from this addiction is not easy. Has a healthy sexuality lost its value in society? Recovery has its ups and downs, and withdrawal is hard.

Can sexual addiction be treated? According to an article from medicine.net, most sex addicts live in denial of their addiction, and treating an addiction is dependent on the person accepting and admitting that he or she has a problem. In many cases, it takes a significant event—such as the loss of a job, the break-up of a marriage, an arrest, or health crisis—to force the addict to admit to his or her problem. Treatment of sexual addiction focuses on controlling the addictive behavior and helping the person develop a healthy sexuality. Treatment includes education about healthy sexuality, individual counseling, and marital and/or family therapy. Support groups and 12 step recovery programs for people with sexual addictions (like Sex Addicts Anonymous) also are available. In some cases, medications used to treat obssessive-compulsive disorder may be used to curb the compulsive nature of the sex addiction. These medications include Prozac and Anafrani. The bottomline is that sexual addiction is not healthy and can be damaging to one’s life. A healthy sexuality is most preferred rather than sex addiction.

To achieve a healthy sexuality after a sex addiction, here are some suggestions to help you get through it. About.com reveals ten tips and these include; sex providings a feeling of well being, there will be feelings of emotional and physical sensations in you, creativity and passion are rediscovered, nurturing yourself in non-genital ways, suffering is tolerated as a part of life, you start becoming emotionally vulnerable, you start to develop and maintain healthy boundaries with others, sexuality is becoming well-balanced and moderate, you begin to become curious and caring about other people’s reactions to you and you learn to trust others. Follow these tips and surely, a healthy sexuality is just within reach!