Sex addicts anonymous meetings mississippi

But compulsive sexual behavior, also called hypersexual disorder, can systematically destroy a person's life much as addictions to alcohol or drugs can. 'Sex addiction' remains a controversial designation-often dismissed as a myth or providing talk-show punchlines thanks to high-profile lotharios such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Tiger Woods. I ended up homeless and on food stamps,' says Valerie, who, like most sex addicts interviewed for this story, declined to provide her real name. 'Through sexually acting out, I lost two marriages and a job. Awakening in the ICU, she at last understood what she had become: a sex addict. Facing her second divorce as well as the end of an affair, she grew despondent and attempted to take her life by overdosing on prescription medication. 'In order to soothe the loneliness and the fear of being unwanted, I was looking for love in all the wrong places,' she recalls.ДЄfter a decade of carrying on this way, Valerie hit rock bottom.

She craved public exhibitionism, too, particularly at strip clubs, and even accepted money in exchange for sex-not out of financial necessity but for the illicit rush such acts gave her.ДЇor Valerie, sex was a form of self-medication: to obliterate the anxiety, despair, and crippling fear of emotional intimacy that had haunted her since being abandoned as a child. Valerie called phone-sex chat lines and pored over online pornography, masturbating so compulsively that it wasn't uncommon for her to choose her vibrator over going to work. Not even after one man's wife aimed a shotgun at her head while catching them in flagrante delicto. At 30, and employed as a human-resources administrator in Phoenix, she had serially cheated on both her husbands-often with their subordinates and co-workers-logging anonymous hookups in fast-food-restaurant bathrooms, affairs with married men, and one-night stands too numerous to count. Valerie realized that sex was wrecking her life right around the time her second marriage disintegrated.

Sex addicts anonymous meetings mississippi