Sex Addictions
Jewish Survivors of Incest and Childhood Sexual Abuse
Networking
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We offers several different email groups,which include our general mailing
list, press-releases, Jewish survivors of childhood sexual abuse, Jewish
Survivors of Clergy Abuse (by Rabbis and Cantors), Parents of children who
were molested, Family members of sex offenders, etc.
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Jewish Resources
Also see:
Case of Irwin Silverman - Chief Counsel to U.S. secretary of interior 1933-53
Recidivism of Sex Offenders (U.S. Department of Justice: Center for Sex Offender Management)
Some say behavior is not an
addiction
BY SUSAN KUSHNER RESNICK
Journal Health & Fitness Writer
Most professionals agree that being unable to control your sexual desires is a problem. But some stop short of calling it an addiction.
''The term addiction is very useful when talking with a patient, so they can understand what they're going through,'' says psychologist John P. Wincze, a Brown University professor. ''But among professionals, it's not an accurate term.''
He calls the problem a paraphilia. Paraphilia is basically recurrent, sexually deviant behavior that is harmful to oneself or others, such as exhibitionism, voyeurism, pedophilia, masochism, sadism and fetishism.
''It is certainly like an addiction in many ways,'' Wincze says. ''You can definitely have a psychological craving [for sex].''
Peter Loss, director of the sex-offender treatment program at the Adult Correctional Institutions, has qualms about the label, too.
''My problem with using the word addiction is that it can serve as an excuse for sexual crimes, for which there is no excuse,'' he says.
Wincze points out that the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders doesn't include sex addiction. The DSM is the bible of the psychiatric profession, and unlisted diseases are considered invalid by many professionals and almost all insurance companies.
Researchers at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tenn., are attempting to give sexual addiction ''diagnostic legs,'' which would help it find a place in the next version of the DSM, according to Robin Cato, executive director of the National Council on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity. The researchers are conducting magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs) on the brains of sex addicts while they watch neutral and sexually stimulating images.
''The hypothesis is that there will be some differences in brain physiology of the addicts, particularly with the sexually-stimulating material,'' says Dr. Reid Finlayson, a psychiatrist in Vanderbilt's addiction-medicine division.
But even Finlayson, who treats sex addicts as well as studying them, isn't sure ''if addiction is the right word or not.''
Cato acknowledges that there are ''different schools of thought'' on the disease, but notes that the various experts aren't that far apart.
''Sometimes it just comes down to semantics,'' she says.
Ask yourself the following questions to assess whether you may have a problem:
* Do you keep secrets about your sexual or romantic activities from those important to you? Do you lead a double life?
* Have your needs driven you to have sex in places or situations or with people you would not normally choose?
* Do you find yourself looking for sexually arousing articles or scenes in newspapers, magazines, or other media?
* Do you find that romantic or sexual fantasies interfere with your relationships or are preventing you from facing problems?
* Do you frequently want to get away from a sex partner after having sex? Do you frequently feel remorse, shame, or guilt after a sexual encounter?
* Do you feel shame about your body or your sexuality, such that you avoid touching your body or engaging in sexual relationships? Do you fear that you have no sexual feelings, that you are asexual?
* Does each new relationship continue to have the same destructive patterns that prompted you to leave the last relationship?
* Is it taking more variety and frequency of sexual and romantic activities than previously to bring the same levels of excitement and relief?
* Have you ever been arrested or are you in danger of being arrested because of practices of voyeurism, exhibitionism, prostitution, sex with minors, indecent phone calls, etc.?
* Does your pursuit of sex or romantic relationships interfere with your spiritual beliefs or development?
* Do your sexual activities include the risk, threat, or reality of disease, pregnancy, coercion, or violence?
* Has your sexual or romantic behavior ever left you feeling hopeless, alienated from others, or suicidal?
If you answered yes to more than one of these questions, Sex Addicts Anonymous encourages you to seek out additional literature as a resource or to attend a support group meeting to further assess your needs.
Source: Sex Addicts Anonymous Web site, www.sexaa.org
A daily progression - Author
shares her fight against sexual addiction in new book
By Kathleen Lavey
Lansing State Journal May 23, 2001 Wednesday
SECTION: LIVING; Pg. 1D
Sue William Silverman has a keepsake, a decades-old photo of herself, taken in Atlantic City, N.J.
Wearing leather, she stands next to graffiti scrawled on a concrete column: "Love is here every day."
But back then, "love'' meant "sex'' - sex with married men, sex with strangers. It meant thinking, scheming and dreaming about sex to the exclusion of other things.
Silverman details that period of her life in her new memoir "Love Sick: One Woman's Journey Through Sexual Addiction'' (Norton, $24.95). Her previous memoir, "Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You,'' (University of Georgia Press) deals with the incest she endured as a child and teenager. Silverman will read from her new book and answer questions at 7:30 p.m. today at Schuler Books in Okemos.
"I would use sex like a drug to numb pain,'' said Silverman, who now lives in the Lake Michigan community of Grand Haven. "I was using sex to numb out, or cutting myself with a razor blade or starving myself. By obsessing about these other things, that was a numbing out of the real pain, which was the pain of my childhood."
Research shows that sexual addiction affects an estimated 6 to 10 percent of people, said Elizabeth Griffin, chief operating officer of the American Foundation for Addiction Research in Minneapolis. The vast majority of those suffered emotional, sexual and/or physical abuse as children.
Sexual addiction is characterized by a compulsion to have sex, continuing the behavior despite its consequences and obsessively thinking about or planning for sex.
So far, it is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a widely used psychology reference for professionals. Griffin's organization is paying for a five-year, 75,000-participant study to document the disorder in hopes that it will be included in the next version of that book, which comes out in 2008.
Silverman spent a month in an in-patient program to deal with her addiction in the late 1980s. She details her experiences, thoughts and feelings during those days in treatment in "Love Sick."
"Once I'd kind of gotten the incest and my family written about, I was ready to move on to this more adult issue,'' she said. "I feel much more shame about being a sex addict in a way. I had to overcome a lot of fear to write the second book."
One of Silverman's top concerns in sharing her story was that it be more than mere confession. The book's point of view shifts from Silverman's thoughts and feelings during the treatment to her sober perspective.
"I had to have the very sober voice as a guide for the reader, helping the reader understand why these behaviors aren't healthy and what these behaviors mean,'' she said. "It took me a while to discover that sober voice."
Silverman succeeded at that in her first memoir, which won the prestigious Associated Writing Programs award for creative nonfiction.
"To craft a good book is different than just telling your story,'' said Michael Steinberg, an MSU professor emeritus and editor of The Fourth Genre literary journal.
"She's trying to treat a real difficult subject,'' he said. "It's not a confessional book in the sense that that's all it is. There are so many deeper levels and layers of humanity to it."
After leaving treatment, Silverman attended 12-step meetings and avoided turning on the TV or going to movies.
'It's really hard to be sober in a world that uses sex to sell everything,'' she said. "We use sex to sell love, movies, cars, children's clothing, art."
Griffin said it often takes more than one approach to overcome a sexual addiction.
"For most people, it also takes some therapy to deal with underlying issues, support from a 12-step group. It often takes using a psychiatrist, because depression and anxiety are earmarks of this disorder as well."
"Love Sick'' is getting attention from national magazines such as Oprah Winfrey's O and Elle.
Writing in Elle, reviewer Francine Prose said: " 'Love Sick' provides an honest and deeply chilling account of what it's like to suffer from a compulsion to look for love in what are most definitely all the wrong places."
Since "I Remember Terror'' came out, Silverman has done more than 100 speaking engagements to help people understand and cope with incest.
"It has been very empowering for me and hopefully helpful to other people too,'' she said. "What's important is to be able to speak about it in the open as we might talk about anything else, to take some of that shame away."
These days, Silverman is involved in a stable relationship and working successfully to stay in touch with her real feelings.
"I honestly feel blessed, because when I think of where I could have been and the things that have happened to other incest survivors who kill themselves or turn their rage outward . . .
"As bad as that is, I would rather hurt myself than somebody else. The good news is that I've learned not to hurt anybody."
Contact Kathleen Lavey at 377-1251 or e-mail klavey@lsj.com.
Sue William Silverman writes: "So who am I really in the photo? Am I young, shy, as the smile suggests? Or am I ... seductive ... like the pose and jacket suggest? Both. The photograph is of me and of my addict, competing for space in one body."
Sex Addiction - Real and
Ruinous
By Susan Kushner Resnick, Journal Health & Fitness Writer
Providence Journal-Bulletin (Rhode Island) - February 23, 2003, Sunday All Editions
SECTION: Health & Fitness; Pg. M-01
It's easy to be a sex addict in Rhode Island.
People who can't stop having sex, even when they want to, have countless businesses to cater to their needs. In fact, Providence has so many palaces of prurience that the city even lures out-of-staters with sex addictions looking for a fix.
"Rhode Island gets a lot of transient people from Massachusetts and New York coming to sex clubs," says William Hochstrasser-Walsh, a Cranston therapist who treats people with sexual addictions.
A person with a sex addiction is commonly defined as someone who anesthetizes his psychological pain with sex or can't control his or her compulsive sexual activities. Most people with addictions live double lives full of shame.
Robert, a recovering addict from Massachusetts who will not give his real name because of the stigma attached to the disease, regularly drove to Rhode Island to feed his addiction at massage parlors and with prostitutes.
What's not easy in Rhode Island is getting help for sex addiction.
Hundreds of sex-addiction support groups meet weekly in the United States, but only between one and three gather in Rhode Island, depending on who's counting.
An extensive search turned up only one local therapist, Hochstrasser-Walsh, who specializes in treating sex addictions.
John P. Wincze, a psychologist and professor at Brown University, also treats the problem, but bristles at calling it an addiction, preferring instead the more technical term paraphilia. Paraphilia, which he defines as "behavior that is repetitive and essential to sexual arousal and harmful," is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Sexual addiction is not.
When sex equals love Sue William Silverman thought she was simply looking for love when she slept with strangers.
"I never would have thought it was an addiction," says Silverman, the author of Love Sick: One Woman's Journey Through Sexual Addiction.
Silverman says she learned to equate sex with love at age 4 when her father started creeping into her bedroom and molesting her. He didn't stop until she went to college.
"I was given the message that he loved me," she says, "and he was showing his love through sex. The message I got was the only way a man could love me is if I had sex with him."
As a college student, she once walked up to a car that was often parked outside her dorm, got inside and had sex with the driver. She met and bedded an obscene caller. As a young adult, she spent days living the life of a proper married lady and nights picking up men in bars. Before entering a treatment program for sex addicts, she says, she "lived in a fantasy world24/7" as she prepared for her weekly rendezvous with another addict in a motel room.
"The anticipation and fantasy of it is always more powerful than the act," she said in a phone interview. "When it's in your head, you can make it perfect."
And when it's perfect, it will cure what ails you, or so she thought. But every time she "acted out," she felt worse about herself. To mask that remorse, she'd find another man until it became a never-ending cycle.
"Regardless of the drug of choice, addicts act out to numb their pain and feelings," she says. Or, as she writes in her book, the managed pain of promiscuity relieved her larger, unmanaged pain.
Robert, the addict from Massachusetts, turned to Penthouse magazine at age 14 instead of facing the fear, shame and frustration that ruled his life. He had been a teased, overweight child who withdrew from people to avoid ridicule. When he lost the weight, he replaced excessive food with excessive sex.
"I began to perceive pornography and masturbation as a way to escape and get my power back," he says. "I can only imagine [that I turned to sex] because it was forbidden and it involves human touch and warmth and intimacy, which I was really starving for."
Steven, a research assistant for a Boston hospital, was a lonely child with an overly critical father. Like Robert, Steven, a member of a support group, also turned to magazines.
"Men and women in magazines and movies don't talk back," he says. "You can act out as much as you want and no one criticizes you."
E-porn at work
Pornography and promiscuity are certainly not the only ways the disease manifests itself. Robert moved on to sexual massage and prostitutes after magazines and cyber porn lost their power to soothe his pain. Steven became a peeping Tom. Other addicts often cruise in public places. Some addicts turn to rape or pedophilia if they are not treated, some experts say.
"I currently work with some women who are into hard sex, and I've also worked with a number of men who really like the romance and sensuality," says Jeff Seat, a psychologist and certified addiction specialist in Nashville, Tenn., who is on the board of the National Council on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity.
The Internet, called the "crack cocaine of sex addiction" by insiders, eats up hours of work time each day for many addicts. Seventy percent of e-porn traffic occurs between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.
"People say they're working late, but they're really online 10 hours a day and arranging to meet people to have sex with," Steven says.
According to Seat, 3 percent to 6 percent of Americans have sexual addictions. Many are hooked on something else as well. Seat says that he's seen studies estimating that 80 percent of cocaine addicts are also sex addicts.
"We know that 48 percent of sex addicts who come to inpatient treatment centers are recovering alcoholics and drug addicts," he says.
Compulsive eating is another common cross-addiction.
"One of the ways people control sexual addiction is to morph their body so it's unattractive to other people," says Hochstrasser-Walsh, the Cranston therapist. "They think it will stop the sexual addiction. But it's a vicious cycle. The more they feel bad about themselves, the more they need to act out."
Feeling awful after a sexual act is one of the hallmarks of the disease. "I was always filled with disgust after," says Steven. "I pledged I was never going to do it again."
Of course, he couldn't stop without help, which he maintains is one of the ways to identify a person with an addiction.
"You can't automatically assume that someone doing these things is an addict," he says. "The test is: try to stop. See if you can."
'A highly functioning person'
As with other addictions, sex addicts come from all walks of life. The stereotype of the creepy guy in the dirty raincoat is woefully inaccurate.
Robert, a business consultant with a master's degree, would never have been suspected.
"I've been a pretty morally-upstanding guy in every other area of my life," he says, adding that the women he dated probably would have called him "a nice guy" because he was respectful to them. They never asked what he did with his free time.
"I was a highly functioning person, and I've always shown up for life," he says.
Silverman worked on Capitol Hill for a senator. Seat, also a recovering sex addict, was a minister. In Robert's support group, he's seen artists and construction workers tell their stories.
"There are good, smart, worthy, people in the rooms," he says.
The support groups, which are run by nonprofessionals, let criminals in the door, too.
"I've seen people confess to pedophilia," Steven says.
"We could choose not to let someone attend meetings if they're engaging in flagrant behavior," he says. "But it has to be their own conscience guiding them to go to the authorities. No one can boss anyone around."
Looking for a cause
Even when they understand it, professionals can't agree on what causes the problem or how to treat it. Marty Kafka is a psychiatrist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., a Harvard professor and a member of a Vanderbilt University team that's debating how to diagnose and define unhealthy sexual behavior.
He disagrees with the argument that many sex addicts were sexually abused as children.
However, Patrick Carnes, clinical director of sexual disorder services at the Meadows in Arizona who is one of the pioneers of sex-addiction treatment and the author of several books on the topic, surveyed 1,000 sex addicts and found that 80 percent had experienced sexual trauma as children. Not all were victims of child rape; the trauma can be as seemingly innocuous as a preschooler being shamed for playing doctor or a child having to hear about her parent's sexual exploits.
Kafka calls this link "a bunch of baloney." He says people with sex addictions may use sex to medicate their bad feelings, but most are suffering from mood disorders, such as depression, bipolar illness or attention deficit disorder (or ADD). Only a small percentage of his patients were sexually abused.
"If you treat the depression, you treat the whole thing," he says, claiming that he has successfully treated 800 patients with antidepressants and psychotherapy.
He encourages his patients to join 12-step programs, such as Sexaholics Anonymous, for support, but he doesn't think those groups can work unless people also take medication. Others agree that medication is helpful, especially when people stop acting out and must face a lifetime of buried pain. But they don't think sex addicts can recover without 12-step programs.
"It takes a community to hold a person through this process," says Belinda Berman, a Cambridge psychologist who treats sexual addiction. "This disease has a tremendous amount of secrecy and anonymity and isolation, and a group cuts through that."
"These groups teach people how to live day to day," says Hochstrasser-Walsh, adding that this is something a weekly therapy appointment cannot accomplish. Group members have sponsors and friends they can call whenever the urge to act out strikes.
And there are some experts who believe recovery can only come from finding the root cause of the problem. Dr. Lance Dodes, a psychiatrist at Harvard University's division of addictions, wrote The Heart of Addiction to explain his position.
"All addictions are psychologically the same," he says, "which is particularly important for sex addicts because there's so much shame. It's not about sex, just like compulsive gambling is not about money and alcoholism is not about alcohol. Addicts are always responding to an overwhelming sense of being helpless."
Find what causes the helplessness, he posits, and you can stop the behavior.
Seat, the Nashville psychologist, agrees that resolving past traumas is necessary for recovery from sex addiction, as is learning to be intimate in a healthy way. It can take three to five years to achieve complete recovery. Relapse is common, especially during the first year.
'A shame-based addiction'
Silverman, the author, fell off the wagon within a month of being released from an inpatient treatment program. But she's been sexually sober for 10 years. She defines sobriety as "no sex outside a loving, emotionally committed relationship."
Robert has been sober for a little more than a year, meaning in his case that he has not masturbated or had sex with another person in that time.
Each 12-step group defines sobriety differently, with some standards being particularly puritanical. Robert went to his first group after a visit to a prostitute left him feeling as if he were "coming apart on the inside."
"I could not stop and it's devastating to realize that this disease is moving you around at will," he says. "I can remember walking around my office and just feeling like I was about to cry."
The constant lying about his activities got to him, too. And he suspects he may have gotten arrested or committed suicide if he hadn't sought help.
"Your sense of integrity starts to break down," he says. "Your fear of being caught makes you a wreck. It's no way to live your life."
Steven got help eight years ago after a clergyman handed him the card of a sex-addiction therapist. Often sufferers aren't that lucky.
"Many therapists out there don't recognize sexually compulsive behavior as a problem," he says. "We were told it was understandable behavior. Many people enter recovery because they couldn't deal with a therapist continuing to tell them it was OK."
This is especially dangerous because left untreated, most sex addicts' behavior will escalate. That's why Hochstrasser-Walsh is so frustrated with the dearth of treatment options in Rhode Island. He'd like to see enough 12-step groups to allow patients to attend several meetings a week, more training for therapists on sex addiction and more awareness of the problem.But first, locals need to be able to discuss the problem without smirking.
"Particularly here in the Northeast, and specifically in Rhode Island, people just don't want to talk about sex," he says. "We're a very parochial state and it's a shame-based addiction."
Letters to the Editor - Speaking
Out
Baltimore Jewish Times - May 25, 2003
http://www.jewishtimes.com/scripts/edition.pl?now=5/25/1999&SubSectionID=36&ID=1723
I wanted to thank "Tom" and the Baltimore Jewish Times for having the courage to speak out and educating our community about sex addictions in the April 25 article "Addicted To Sex."
There are many common symptoms that victims/survivors of childhood sexual abuse exhibit, along with various coping mechanisms. The more we talk about them in an open venue, the more likely individuals who are suffering in silence will feel comfortable disclosing their past histories, seek support and begin to heal.
For more information about sex addictions, sexual abuse or other related topics, visit The Awareness Center's Web page: http://www.theawarenesscenter.org .
Executive Director, The Awareness Center - Baltimore
Web Can Ensnare Victims
Quickly
by Julie Gruenbaum Fax
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles - March 7, 2003
http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=10183
In his 35-year career, Rabbi Juda Mintz established a Jewish youth group in Montreal, founded a traditional congregation and a campus Hillel in Atlanta and led more than 50 missions to Israel — all without the aid of a computer.
But when he was hired at a Mount Freedom, N.J., synagogue at the age of 56, his board felt the rabbi should have a computer.
It didn't take long before Mintz stumbled upon Internet pornography. For 18 months, he spent several hours a day numbing out in front of the computer.
Now in recovery for two and a half years, he continues to uncover underlying reasons for his addiction: parents who were distant, his own dysfunctional marriage of 36 years.
But it is also true that without Internet pornography, Mintz may never have acted on his emotional disturbances.
Like a growing number of people, Mintz became addicted on a medium that can snare its victims within a matter of weeks.
Robert Weiss, who co-authored "Cybersex Exposed: Simple Fantasy or Obsession" (Hazleden, 2001) with Jennifer Schneider, said he is seeing a significant increase in the number of people addicted to cybersex, even among people with no history of addictive behaviors.
"Something about the intensity and the accessibility and the affordability of the Internet made it more arousing and a more immediately compulsive medium than any of the other outlets for sex, and therefore more addictive," said Weiss, clinical director of the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles.
Weiss said that about 60 percent of all Internet traffic involves a sexual purpose. An estimated 2 million users are addicted — meaning they are ashamed of what they are doing, it is impacting their life, yet they are unable to stop.
In a small number of cases, the behavior moves out of virtual reality and into real life.
Just last week in New Jersey, Rabbi Israel Kestenbaum, who founded and directed the Jewish Center for Spiritual Care for the New York Board of Rabbis and was named the board's Chaplain of the Year for his work at Ground Zero, pleaded not guilty to charges that he was having sexually explicit e-mail conversations with a 13-year-old girl, who turned out to be an undercover police officer, according to The New York Times.
While it is hard to cull out how many cyberaddicts are Jews, mental health professionals agree that there is no reason to believe the proportion is any different among the Jewish population than the general population.
"The Web site has become the opiate of the 21st century. It's a wonderful way to stay in your secret world, your fantasy world," said Donna Burstyn, a psychotherapist who has many Orthodox clients.
In the last two months before he was caught, Mintz's addiction spiraled down to child pornography, for which he could face up to three years in federal prison. For now, he is living at Beit T'Shuvah, running a weekly 12-step minyan at Kehillat Israel in Beverlywood and working to alert community leaders — and especially educators — to the allure of Internet pornography.
"I don't think any rosh yeshiva or teacher or rebbe for boys or girls is in denial that this is a humongous plague facing these kids," Mintz said.
Natural adolescent curiosity now has an outlet that is more convenient, prolific — and addictive — than magazines hidden under the mattress.
Many Jewish families, especially in more observant circles, use heavy filters, none of which are foolproof firewalls. Others use commonly encouraged approaches, such as keeping the computer in a common area and monitoring when and for how long kids are on computer.
But the most effective tool, said Scott Perloff, assistant director for education technology at Milken Community High School, is keeping a culture of openness around the Internet.
"You should really be engaged with the kids when they are on the Internet," he said. "Use it as an opportunity for helping kids develop judgment about what is appropriate and inappropriate material."
If kids do happen upon explicit material, don't overreact, Perloff said. Teach kids to close the image, or just turn off the monitor, and alert a parent or teacher to what they have seen.
"When parents are faced with a 9-year-old boy who mistakenly ended up on a porn site, that is a teaching opportunity the parent dare not avoid," said Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector of the University of Judaism and an expert on ethics. "Because if they do avoid it, children may deduce that this is perfectly fine, or they may deduce that the parents are so uncomfortable with it that is a taboo subject which they are not to talk about with parents."
The Agonizing Toll of Sexual
Addiction
by Julie Gruenbaum Fax, Religion Editor
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles - March 7, 2003
http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/print.php?id=10182
"I stopped making promises and decided to live a double life. My goal was to make a lot of money and to make sure that my two worlds don't mix."
One Friday night 33 years ago, when Yisroel Richtberg was 12 years old, an older boy sneaked into his dorm room at his Chasidic yeshiva in Israel, pulled off Richtberg's pajama pants and raped him. The same thing happened the next Shabbat.
The boy told Richtberg (not his real name) that if he ever told anyone, the two would be blacklisted at all the yeshivas, and the attacker said he would kill himself.
Richtberg didn't tell.
Instead, he sank into a cycle of depression, shame and isolation, one that would lead to a 20-year addiction to prostitutes, pornography and drugs, fronted by a double-life as an upstanding Chasidic rabbi, businessman and father of 12.
Today, Richtberg is alive to tell his story because he got help from therapists and 12-step programs. He has made it his life's mission to help others conquer an addiction so coated with shame that it resides at the very bottom of the hierarchies of addiction.
Identified in the 1970s by Patrick Carnes, author of "Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction" (Hazelden, 2001), sex addiction has the same psychological and physiological underpinnings as alcoholism, drug abuse and other addictions, but cultural proscriptions against openly addressing sexual behavior problems have made it one of the least understood of the addictive disorders. Addicts are either feared as offenders, which only a small percentage are, or mockingly revered with a that-sounds-like-fun wink.
But addicts say there is no pleasure in being a slave to a compulsion so strong that it affects the body and mind as acutely as a drug.
"There is still this judgment of `what a sleazy guy,' but what they don't understand is that the addict has a psycho-biological disorder in which he is seeking a drug that he himself produces," said Robert Weiss, clinical director of the Sexual Recovery Institute, on Olympic Boulevard, just outside Beverly Hills. "He is literally dosing himself with his own neurochemistry, like a drug addict with a needle in his arm."
Whether acting out by compulsively masturbating to pornography, having serial affairs, frequenting prostitutes or habitually seeking homosexual or heterosexual one-night stands, sex addicts sink into a pit of shame and self-loathing, often threatening their families and livelihood.
It is difficult to determine whether the incidence of addiction is higher or lower in the Jewish community than in the general population, where Carnes estimates that about 5 percent to 8 percent of adults have a sexual compulsivity disorder. Conversations with several mental health professionals who work with the Jewish community, from ultra-Orthodox to unaffiliated, revealed that all had a significant number of patients dealing with sex addiction, including several rabbis. Several pulpit rabbis revealed that congregants had sought counseling from them about sex addiction.
Weiss believes the vast majority of sex addicts are men, and pointed out that female sex addicts might be too embarrassed to seek help, or might be getting paid to act out as prostitutes or exotic dancers.
Weiss estimates that about 20 percent of addicts are sexual offenders, usually engaging in exhibitionism or voyeurism. Occasionally addicts are guilty of molestation or rape, but not all sex offenders are addicts.
In a world where clothing styles, entertainment and marketing have stripped away sexual inhibitions, triggers are everywhere for an addict. Free-flowing pornography on the Internet has added to the mix a population of addicts who never showed such tendencies before (see Web, p. 11).
The changing reality of cybersex has forced Jewish community leaders, educators and rabbis to begin battling a seemingly inbred denial and acknowledge that the community must aid its addicts.
In Los Angeles there are indications that awareness is growing. A Jewish Federation conference on addictions in the fall of 2001 attracted 250 people.
This year, 880 people attended the annual dinner of Beit T'Shuvah, a residential rehabilitation organization in Los Angeles that uses Judaism at the core of its treatment — the only such facility in the country.
With the help of Rabbi Juda Mintz, himself a recovering addict to Internet pornography, Beit T'Shuvah and the Board of Rabbis of Southern California recently co-sponsored a series on addictions. It was at the session on sex addiction, and in private conversations with The Jewish Journal, that Richtberg told his story.
Addiction or Just Bad Behavior?
Richtberg is a Chasid with a scraggly beard, wide-brimmed hat, long coat and knickers tucked into his thin black socks. Thick glasses cover his tired blue eyes, and his Yiddish accent belies his American birth and Israeli upbringing.
Two years after Richtberg was raped, his parents transferred him to a new yeshiva in Jerusalem, hoping to reverse his baffling transformation into a depressed and isolated C student.
A rabbi at the new yeshiva, an ad hoc counselor for boys who have sexual problems, was the first person Richtberg told about the rape and his subsequent behaviors: compulsive masturbating, viewing pornographic materials and a sexual relationship with another boy. (Years later, Richtberg found out that the boy, after he married and had a family, committed suicide.)
While the rabbi was more compassionate than others in the yeshiva system who scolded and blamed Richtberg, he was not a mental health professional and was more interested in getting Richtberg to stop his behaviors than in healing him. Richtberg said he would promise the rabbi that he would stop, but then would come back crying in shame when he didn't.
"Today I know I was an addict from the start because I had so much pain, and I didn't have a person to talk to about my pain, and I tried to do something to cope," Richtberg said.
Experts say his symptoms — compulsive, self-destructive behavior, followed by shame and heartfelt-but-futile promises to stop — were classic signs of addiction, whether caused by an acute trauma or more subtle emotional trouble.
"All addiction is caused by a hole in one's soul, and a need to fill it with something," said Rabbi Mark Borovitz, spiritual leader of Beit T'Shuvah. "It's about loneliness and emptiness. We turn to addictive behaviors and substances as a solution to this experience of not fitting in, of not being good enough."
Despite an understanding that the addiction is destroying his life, the addict's attempts to stop will fail until he gets outside help, experts say.
"An addiction becomes the center of your life," said Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector of the University of Judaism and an expert in Jewish medical ethics. "It becomes like an idol, theologically speaking, and everything in your life is centered around it, and most other things that are really important get lost."
While society has come to accept an individual's powerlessness in relation to drugs and alcohol, because of the brain's chemical dependency on these substances, the terminology of addiction seems harder to justify in reference to gambling, overeating or sex, which most people can control.
However, experts report that sex addicts have the same genetic predisposition toward addictive behavior as other addicts. And once an addict gets hooked on a behavior, his body treats it — and the pursuit of it — as a drug.
"Neuropsychological research shows that the exhilaration that people feel when in pursuit of the object of their addiction can approximate the high in and of itself, so that not only are they seeking the thrill through the drug or illicit behavior, but even the pursuit is generating an exhilarating high," said David Fox, a clinical psychologist and rabbi.
Just how to classify sex addiction is still a matter of debate in the medical community. Sex addiction made its way into the DSM III, the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual, in 1980, but was pulled with the release of the DSM IV in 1994. Weiss is confident that current research has quieted most debate and that the diagnosis will be reinstated in the next edition.
All of this makes it difficult to use sex addiction as a legal defense, and Weiss notes, it is hardly a defense that conjures much empathy among jurors.
The Double Life
Mark Altman (not his real name), a 40-something married professional, who was a sex addict for more than 20 years and has been in recovery for five, was raised by two alcoholics and suffered a childhood trauma that set off his addiction.
He began sexually acting out as a teenager, "numbing out" by compulsively masturbating, he said. Starting in college, he sought sexual liaisons with men at sex clubs, bathhouses and park restrooms, while in his public life he dated women. He continued his double life through 15 years of marriage, raising three children and belonging to a Reform temple.
"Every New Year's, every birthday, every Rosh Hashana, every time there was some sort of event when I could make a resolution, I would swear to myself I would stop, because it was killing me," Altman said.
"I was leading a good family life, I was there for my kids, I was there for my wife," he continued. "I just carried on this charade, and I was dying inside. And I couldn't stop, no matter how hard I tried."
At one point, he planned suicide. He sought therapy, but it didn't give him the tools to stop. At the height of his addiction, he was acting out almost daily — adult bookstores, cybersex, phone sex and cruising for sexual encounters.
Altman knows now that what he was searching for was validation — the comfort of believing, however fleetingly, that someone else thought he was worthy of love and attention. It was never about the sex, he said.
"The thing I was really looking for was somebody to hold me and rub my back and tell me I'm an OK guy, not such a bad person," he said. "You feel so bad about yourself, and as an addict, you look to the exterior to find something to fix you."
But the fix never lasted long.
"I would act out," Altman recalled, "then feel really crappy about it afterward, saying, `I can't believe I did this,' then go home to my wife and kids, and feel awful and shameful and guilty and horrible, and the only way I knew to make it stop was to act out again."
Experts say the cycle Altman described is characteristic of all addictions and is usually augmented by what is referred to as boundary crossing, where increasing levels of the substance or behavior are needed to achieve the same high.
Richtberg can mark each of the milestones in his life with another boundary crossing. When he was 19, on the advice of the rabbi who was counseling him, he married. His first introduction to the female body quashed his desire for men, but enhanced his addiction.
He stayed clean for three weeks after he married. But the first night his wife cooked dinner, he took a bus into Manhattan's redlight district instead of going home.
"I cruised the streets and went to some peep shows," Richtberg recalled, "and came home about 3 a.m."
It was his first time at a live show. "Today, I know it was too hard for me to deal with my life, and I had to run."
He celebrated the birth of his first daughter by seeing a prostitute for the first time. As his habit grew more expensive, he left kollel, where he was studying full time to earn rabbinic ordination, and started a business.
At around that time in 1983, his third child was born, a son with a serious genetic disease. "I knew for sure that Hashem is punishing me, and that's why he gave me such a sick child," Richtberg said. "And I kept promising myself that I'm going to stop."
Two years later, another child was born with the same disorder, and two years after that another child was born with a different chronic illness. Another child died in infancy.
With each trauma, Richtberg crossed another boundary. He began to use drugs — first marijuana, then cocaine, then crack.
"At a certain time, it's hard to say exactly when, I gave up," Richtberg said. "I stopped making promises and decided to live a double life. My goal was to make a lot of money and to make sure that my two worlds don't mix."
Getting Help
Getting into drugs killed Richtberg's illusion of control. Within a year and half, he lost his business and started bouncing checks within his own community. In 1990, he pleaded guilty to business fraud for which he later served a 20-month sentence. His double life was falling apart.
It took a well-timed external kick to finally induce Richtberg to get help. The nurses who lived at Richtberg's home to care for his disabled children told his wife that they thought he was on drugs. His brother-in-law brought him to a clinic.
Richtberg yo-yoed through the first few months of therapy, which focused only on his drug problem, until his therapist insisted that he go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and intense outpatient rehabilitation. Richtberg went on his last cocaine binge in October 1991.
Richtberg said he stayed away from prostitutes for a full year. But then one day, he found himself in Manhattan, in tears and with a prostitute. The next day, he and his therapist came up with one last hope: Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA).
Richtberg went to a meeting that day and has been clean since.
"Treatment for any addiction is directly related to motivation, so if someone is really motivated to change, it is possible, but it is an active process," Weiss said.
Unlike gambling, drugs or alcohol, sex cannot simply be sworn off. Rather, sex addicts construct parameters in which they can have sex — with a loving partner, for instance — and still stay on the path toward their life goals.
Altman went to his first SAA meeting after he was arrested at a park where men hung out to pick up sex partners.
"I never really thought that I could ever find a group of people talking about the kind of things that I was sure nobody else did," Altman said. "Twelve-step gives you tools you can work with to stop these behaviors, to really live your life. It's not just about stopping the sexual activity. It's about living your life with integrity and honesty and being accountable for your actions."
Spiritual Treatment for a Spiritual Malady
Borovitz of Beit T'Shuvah, himself a recovering alcoholic, believes that spiritual counseling, prayer and Torah study are essential to integrating all the elements of a Jewish addict's soul.
"One of the things that most people speak about in recovery is finding their authentic soul and how important it is that they can take a breath and be who they are, rather than who everyone else expects them to be," Borovitz said.
He said addicts need to harness God's power to make their recovery successful.
"Turning my life and will over to God's care is a statement by me that the creative energy of the world is available to me to learn and to follow the derech [the right path]," Borovitz said.
While some might mistake admitting powerlessness for relinquishing responsibility, Borovitz said the admission brings a renewed sense of moral culpability.
"Once I have a connection with God, I have to accept the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven," he said. "I can't lie to myself anymore."
Both Altman and Richtberg had to re-envision their relationship to Judaism and God to succeed in SAA's 12-step program.
"When I was first forced to go to AA meetings, I felt that it's goyish, it's not for me," Richtberg recalled. Meetings are often in churches, God is invoked as the higher power and sessions end in "The Lord's Prayer."
Richtberg wove together the 12-step process with the Jewish path of teshuvah (repentance), growing closer to God and stronger in his Judaism as he made amends with himself and others.
"This is like a cancer, my addiction, and based on the prognosis, I can't stay sober," Richtberg said. "But there is a God who can help keep me sober if I turn to him every day," he said. "Every day, I get up in the morning, and I say, `Tati [Daddy], I'm powerless, I can't stay sober and I'm asking you for a toivah [favor]. Please keep me sober for today. I'm not asking more, just for today.' That has been working for 10 years."
Altman, a self-described atheist who grew up in a "spiritually empty" family that belonged to a Reform temple, said he had "to get away from a lot of initial religious baggage before I could develop my own concept of a higher power."
Altman now has a "constellation of ideas" that constitute his higher power. One of those ideas incorporates the ongoing conversation in his own head between what he calls "my addict" and the person he was born to be — the one who can discern right from wrong, the one who can learn to love himself for who he is.
"The program consists of people helping each other," he said. "Two people are always stronger than one person alone, so I cannot deny that that is a power greater than me."
With Help, Hope
Altman is honing his new conception of God with Rabbi Paul Kipnes of Congregation Or Ami in Agoura Hills, who has worked with addiction for years.
"Every rabbi should have the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as some of the Jewish recovery books, on their shelf just over their shoulder, so everyone knows that we're here, and that we're open," Kipnes said.
Harriet Rossetto, CEO of Beit T'Shuvah, said that opening Jewish opportunities for recovery is especially vital for rabbis, who often have no one to talk to about the conflicting realities of their public image and what goes on inside them.
"It's time to address rabbis as human beings and acknowledge that they have these issues and provide treatment, rather than putting them up on this pedestal and knocking them off and stepping on them," Rossetto said.
Beit T'Shuvah, with Mintz's help, is putting together an anonymous 12-step group for rabbis.
Mintz said that working to raise awareness of addiction in the Jewish community has become his tikkun — a mission of healing that is his life's purpose.
Richtberg, who hides his secret from his Chasidic community and the small congregation he runs, believes his ordeal also has a divine purpose. He makes himself available to rabbis, doctors and mental health professionals. He started an SAA group in Israel and he often runs the minyan at international SAA conventions.
And if in his past life his milestones were marked with sinking deeper into his addiction, he said they are now marked with saving more lives.
On the very day last year that his son, disabled from birth, died as a teenager, Richtberg got a call from an Israeli friend who was in the United States and needed the support of a fellow recovering addict. With Hatzolah paramedics still in his home, Richtberg at first explained that he just couldn't. Then he called back and told the man to come right over.
"My son left in the spirit of somebody who was reborn," he said. "I helped somebody recreate a new life and another one left."
In the 10 years that he's been clean, Richtberg and his wife have had three healthy children. On their anniversary this year, his wife, who considered leaving him when he revealed his secret, told him she now treasures each minute she is married to him.
"If you ask me what is the basic change that has happened to me in the last 10 years, it's that 10 years ago, I did not believe I had anything to give, that there would ever come a time in my life that I would have something to give," Richtberg said.
"Now people feel that I'm something," he said. "People value me. Sometimes I still have a hard time believing it."
Children/Family Members of those with Sex Addictions
Co-Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous (CO-SLAA) For partners of sex & love addicted people seeking support & recovery from their own addictive patterns with their sex & love addicted partners. (617) 332-1845, P.O. Box 650010, West Newton, MA 02165-0010.
CyberAA Online support group for people who have become addicted to sex chat & realize the harm this addiction has caused in their lives.
Cyber Addiction Helpline Egroup at Yahoo. Anyone interested in discussing online cyber addiction, you have come to the right place. We all need some help coping, whether you are the victim or the addict yourself. We are here to discuss and help. Many of us are confused by this addiction, and wonder why it is so wide spread. It is a reality, we need to explore and try and cope with
Females and Sex Addiction: Myths and Diagnostic Implications Six myths concerning women and sexual addiction are offered as an explanation of why female sexual addiction does not receive as much attention as male addiction. Each myth is challenged and diagnostic implications are discussed. Offers suggestions for a diagnostic instrument that identifies sexual addiction in women as well as men. [PDF Format].
The National Council on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity A non-profit organization dedicated to education and referral services. Offers membership for lay public and professionals specializing in the treatment of addiction, offending behaviors, and trauma. Includes a nationwide listing of affiliated counselors
Sex, Love, Pornography Addictions Links to various organizations, and information on Sex Addictions.
Sex Addicts Anonymous Sex Addicts Anonymous, S.A.A., is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other so they may overcome their sexual addiction and help others recover from sexual addiction or dependency.
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Updated Last: 06/08/2003
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