This morning, Alix at The Second Road forwarded me a link to an article about sex addiction by psychologist Michael Bader.  When I saw the title ("Sex Addiction: A B.S. Excuse for Not Thinking"), I almost didn't click through (the whole "excuse" thing is so tiresome) but I couldn't resist some good blog fodder, so I did anyway.  To my surprise, Mr. Bader wasn't talking about sex addiction being an excuse for acting badly in addiction.  However, not to my surprise, the article did focus on the same old semantic argument: "Sexual compulsions are real and they harm the person in their grip as well as others. But they shouldn’t be called addictions."

Why not?  The best point Bader makes is that it (in his opinion) makes for less effective treatment.  For today, I'll stick with one of his two worst points, one that comes up in every critique of the concept of sex addiction: sexual behavior is just too complex — we all have too many different reasons for engaging in it and too many moral beliefs and hangups around it — for the label "addiction" to fit the way it does with drugs or alcohol.

Bader writes, "Current attempts at diagnosis focus on the extent to which sexual compulsions interfere with a person’s good judgment or are pursued despite obvious risks to health, job and family."  And continues:

"But how much risk does there have to be? If my lifestyle easily allows me to spend five hours a day surfing Internet porn or cruising for hookers, I may experience little risk but a high level of compulsion. If I feel too guilty to leave a terrible marriage and instead have a series of affairs, am I being compulsive or simply escaping a lonely existence? What about a priest who feels compelled to have sex, thereby risking his entire identity and belief-system; is he a sex addict or did he choose a ridiculously unhealthy lifestyle? Subjective experiences are clearly unreliable: Some people with very strict consciences and conservative backgrounds experience almost any sexual impulse as 'out of control,' while for others, living in a Fellini film would barely make the forbidden list."

This conveniently ignores the fact that current attempts at defining alcoholism or drug addiction also focus on the extent to which these compulsions interfere with good judgment and are pursued in spite of other risks.  In fact, every point Bader makes about sexually compulsive behavior could also be made of alcohol use: If my lifestyle easily allows me to spend five hours a day drinking, I may experience little risk but a high level of compulsion. If I feel too guilty to leave a terrible marriage and instead get drunk every night, am I being compulsive or simply escaping a lonely existence? What about a Mormon who feels compelled to have drink, thereby risking his entire identity and belief-system; is he an alcoholic or part of a "ridiculously" restrictive belief set?

Whether we are talking about an alcoholic whose difficult marriage "drives her to drink" or a sex addict whose difficult marriage "drives him to affairs," the motivation and the degree to which the problem is situational is always going to be a little muddy, because human behavior, boundaries and tolerances are complex. That's why, in the official DSM-IV definition of addiction (as I've mentioned before), much of the onus for determining whether or not behavior constitutes an addiction lies with the addict herself. Is the alcoholic drinking more than she wants to? Does she feel she's unable to stop?  That is: is she not happy herself?

Subjective experiences may be unreliable, but the fact is, there are no strictly objective measures for most mental health issues. Neurology is in its infancy and the brain's inner workings are too poorly understood. There is no simple blood test or brain scan that can determine if someone is an addict or bipolar or obsessive compulsive or clinically depressed or anxious. Most diagnostic criteria are frustratingly vague and diagnoses are a combination of several different subjective impressions of the severity of the behavior, whether from a therapist or the patient him or herself.

The label "addiction" may or may not be a good fit, but if there's anything I've learned from living with a self-proclaimed sex addict in recovery and working through my issues around that, it's that sexual behavior — and our reasons for engaging in it — are no more or less complex than any of our other behaviors.  And that the bottom line is not "Is this behavior a disease?" but "Is this behavior part of how I want to live my life and be the person I want to be, or not?"

I'm completely ashamed of this — what I now recognize as an attempt to control his addiction — but when I shared this with a friend, she said she thought it was brilliant. In her opinion, my control freakishness inspired me to an innovative approach to the problem. I was a codependent Thomas Edison. Of course, there was the little matter of it, you know, not working. I hadn't so much invented the codependent lightbulb as set up a sluttly cardboard cutout to sit beside me and try to harness lightning directly through our bodies.

But as I was flipping through a catalog recently, I found I'm not the only codependent with fabulous ideas. Someone has decided to create a product that will help prevent their alcoholic or drug addicted partners from driving under the influence: a picture frame that clips onto a car visor and sends the following message (I'm paraphrasing of course): "If you really loved your family, you'd drive sober." Sure, that's not the literal message and it has a wider appeal than just addicts — theoretically, it's for any unsafe driver — but partners of alcoholics and other addicts are veritable gold mine for the manufacturers of this frame.  (Come on, you Al-Anoners and Nar-Anoners know you would have wanted one!)

Like my alter-ego, this little frame brilliant in its own way, but it's also doomed to failure (at least on addicts).  What addicts do or don't do isn't about those of us who love them; it's about the addiction.  And a picture of someone's family isn't going to prevent what the family themselves can't control even when they're present.

The interesting thing about the show from a recovery perspective is that Mark Benford is a recovering alcoholic, sober for seven years and active in AA.  And the show actually gives a better perspective on what 12 Step recovery is like than most.  Mark has a sponsor, goes to meetings regularly and makes phone calls (well, to his sponsor at least).  And he isn't fixed.  He hasn't had a drink in seven years, but he's still working his recovery and still sees, quite literally, the possibility of a slip: he sees himself drinking in his flash forward.

However, his wife, Olivia, is not working an Al-Anon program.  She doesn't go to meetings or have a sponsor, but she does keep tabs on Mark's sobriety, including anxiously questioning his sponsor for details.  In one of my favorite scenes so far, Mark's sponsor, Aaron, is at the Benford's home helping with a repair while Mark is out of town.  Olivia overhears part of the conversation and then stays to listen in as Aaron encourages Mark to make time to find and attend a meeting during his trip.  Mark is stressed out about his work and he's away from home (both triggers for drinking), so a healthy check-in with his sponsor and a reminder to go to a meeting are just perfect; it's one of the most realistic moments in TV recovery I've seen.  But Olivia, like a lot of people outside of 12 Step recovery, sees meeting attendance as something that happens to fix what has already happened, not as positive preventative maintenance, and is scared that this means Mark is drinking again.

For the most part, it seems that she's counting on him not to drink, and as long as he doesn't, everything is fine.  She has sworn she will leave him if he ever drinks again, and the twist is that, while he's drinking in his flash forward, in hers, she's living with another man.  (I suppose we can assume she held to her boundaries.)

What's missing from the show, and is not something I'd expect to see on TV because it's not charged with drama, are the changes that come to all areas of our lives in recovery.  The people I know who have worked a 12 Step program for as long as Mark and his sponsor have become steeped in program language and ideas.  The longer recovery goes on, the more (for the most part, for most people) there seems to be talk of things like God, gratitude and faith, and the less there seems to be of blame and anger.  But serenity is not nearly as much fun to watch as addict drama like throwing chairs or storming out of rooms (which the show has aplenty).  So while Flash Forward may show an accurate picture of some parts of recovery, it still fails to show its heart and soul.

Based on the eponymous biography by William G Borchert, the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie "When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story" is slated to star Winona Ryder as Lois Wilson and scheduled to air on CBS sometime this season.  I have to admit, given how melodramatic and cheesy these made—for—TV movies tend to be, I'm not expecting an accurate portrayal of what addiction and recovery look like, let alone any great insights, but every now and then it can be nice to grab a bowl of popcorn, put personalities before principles, operate on promotion instead of attraction and celebrate the story that formed the foundation of so many of our recoveries.  I've got my DVR all set.

"The level of sexual imagery in modern life is astounding. I knew intuitively this was true, but when you tune into it, you just can't believe it. I click on the Yahoo! finance page, and there's this blond model in a low-cut dress looking at a computer screen and nibbling alluringly on the temple of her glasses, apparently very aroused by the latest S&P 500 report."
~ A.J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically

Years ago, when my husband Mark and I were first married, we went away for the weekend, leaving the little city (or big town) we called home to drive to a bed and breakfast on a ranch in the middle of big rolling fields of nowhere.  At night, we could look up and see a sky, not just dotted with a few twinkling stars against a vast blackness, but absolutely littered with more light than darkness.  But even more than the presence of stars, I remember the silence.

There were no cars rumbling past outside, no neighbors talking or banging doors shut, no fire sirens or televisions, no computer network humming and no cell phone coverage.  It was so quiet, I actually had trouble sleeping; the absence of sound rang audibly in my ears.  I didn't realize I was surrounded by a constant whir of background noise until it wasn't there, but when I went back home I was suddenly both very much aware of it and increasingly bothered by it.  Was it good for me to have so much noise in my life that I heard actual ringing in my ears when it was quiet, the same way I have on leaving a rock concert?  At the same time, that level of background noise was clearly normal in the place and culture in which I was living; could I get away from it?

In a way, moving from addiction to recovery felt the same way, as I began to tune in to the ambient noise of our culture.  Suddenly, that billboard or that song or that TV ad wasn't just part of a constant, and largely ignored, backdrop; it was the trigger that could bring the trauma of addiction rushing to engulf me again.  Being married to a recovering sex addict meant suddenly being faced with the need to avoid gratuitous sexual content in order to protect my own sanity.  And that meant becoming acutely aware of just how soaked in sexuality American culture is: everything from hamburgers to web hosting are sold on overtones of porn.  (And seriously, I can think of few things less inherently erotic than ground beef and Internet domain name registration.)

Recovery has also meant looking at patterns of alcoholism and addiction among our extended friends and family, and becoming similarly aware of the pervasiveness of alcohol, which is an integral, accepted, even expected part of everything from weddings to sporting events to birthday parties.

And once I did begin to tune in, I wondered, much as I did when I came home from those nights on that secluded ranch: had all that cultural noise (unnoticed, but loud enough to leave my ears ringing in its absence) been good for me?  I didn't think so.  So, from ad blocking software to a DVR to changes in my own routines, I've worked to beat back the noise our culture throws off and journey toward the quiet that I now crave.

While I was away on my mini vacation a few weeks ago, I relaxed with some cheesy movie watching. Among the brainless, feel-good flicks I watched was Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, which stars Matthew McConaughey as Connor Mead, an alcoholic sex addict trying to turn his life around at his brother's wedding. Well, I don't think the movie actually refers to him as an alcoholic or a sex addict, but given the fact that, in an effort to numb his feelings, he trashes the wedding cake looking for a drink and tries to get the bride's mother into bed, it's probably safe to imply both.

Following the formula of A Christmas Carol, Connor Mead is visited by the ghost of his (sex addicted, alcoholic) Uncle Wayne who informs him he will be visited by three ghosts that night. Mead is then haunted by the ghosts of girlfriends past, present and future, who show him the girl he loved (who is conveniently a bridesmaid in his brother's wedding), the meaningless sex he's had trying to fill the emptiness and his lonely funeral. Predictably (not just for anyone who has ever read A Christmas Carol, but for anyone who has ever watched a good old Hollywood romantic comedy), the ghostly intervention does its trick; seeing what he once had, what he does have and what he will have if he doesn't change are enough to scare him into a new way of life (or at least the promise of a new way of life). He makes his amends, changes his thinking on love and relationships, saves his brother's wedding (after having ruined it in the first place) and gets the girl. (Ordinarily, I'd put a "spoiler alert" in there, but really, you can't be under any illusions that the movie is going to turn out any other way.)

The movie leaves them sitting on an old swing set together and pans away to let us imagine their happily ever after. He's got the girl and now he's a changed man. No more binge drinking or anonymous sex. She was the answer. The emptiness is filled. Of course, those of us in recovery know that no one person can be the answer and that there's no "ah-ha" moment that leads to instantaneous, sweeping change without any work. In real life, the movie's end is the beginning of the story. The intervention is over and now the work begins. But if it were real life, they'd find out soon enough, and sometimes it's just nice to smile and leave them sitting on the swings, in imagined peace.

Years ago, before I knew about my husband's sex addiction, one of the things that drew me to him, that I really liked and respected about him, was how he seemed to have broken away from the pattern of addiction and dysfunction in his family. His dad was an alcoholic, his siblings had done time for a variety of drug related crimes, and here he was: the one sane and functional member of his family. He didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't do drugs and was (as far as I knew then) scrupulously honest. He drove the speed limit, signaled when he turned and came to a full stop at every stop sign. I met him while he was taking some of the most challenging classes at a prestigious university, having worked hard and graduated near the top of his high school class.

After his addiction came to light and I saw just how deep and how far back his compulsive behavior extended, and as my eyes slowly cleared from the fantasy and denial that clouded my own thinking, I began to realize just how hard it is to overcome the scars that a dysfunctional childhood leaves. When I met him, the solution to dysfunction was easy; follow the codependent mantra: work harder, do better. So, I assumed Mark was better, stronger and more determined than others, allowing him to come through his childhood unscathed, when weaker and lazier men (or weaker, lazier children) would have succumbed.

The truth was, my husband hadn't come through his childhood unscathed. (Does anyone?) He knew he did not want what he had grown up with, so he tried to imitate the trappings of a sane and fulfilling life — getting good grades, going to college, getting a job, staying away from the alcohol and drugs that wreaked havoc in his family — without really knowing what lay beneath, unable to recognize the ways in which he was repeating the same compulsive patterns in a new way. And I (as much as I thought I was oh so healthy and sane and better than he in my not-addictness) wasn't truly healthy enough myself to realize that the popular indicators of success (a college degree, a job, the lack of a criminal record, abstention from drugs, alcohol and cigarettes) are not necessarily indicative of mental, emotional and spiritual health.

Neither of us realized it was possible to, as we both had, work extremely hard at entirely the wrong things. Neither of us realized it was possible to remove some of the symptoms, and take on some of the trappings of health and well-being, without touching underlying distortions of thinking so deeply ingrained they weren't even noticeable anymore. Until those trappings fell away, until we'd nearly lost our marriage and torn apart the family and the new life we'd built, neither of us could see that we were living a fantasy of health and not the real thing at all.

That's right, Jack told everyone on the island where they could stick the Hippocratic Oath, because apparently, when we're talking about Ben, "do no harm" means the greater harm would actually be letting him live. What's more, Jack held firm in the face of several different people begging and bullying him to change. My husband and I speculated that Jack must have attended some of those fast acting TV 12 Step meetings around the time he shaved off the alcoholic-Jack beard and went back to clean shaven control-freak-Jack. Yeah, TV isn't always so realistic. But what was realistic was the way other people reacted to his sudden ability to say no (and mean it): they were pissed. And they pushed back.

"For crying out loud, Kate," I mock-yelled at the TV, "It's hard to say no! Respect Jack's boundaries!" Because that part is still the part that trips me up. I'm getting better at the saying no part, at the "this is as far as I'm willing to go and as much as I'm willing to do" part. I'm just not so good at holding to that path as others get angrier and push harder and harder for me to change, to go back to the old me, the one with the friendly and free flowing boundaries. So I was inwardly gleeful that this character on TV (having gone to the imaginary 12 Step meetings my husband and I invented for him) held his ground in the face of angry attempts to get him to change. And I loved what happened after he did. People took care of themselves and figured out other solutions without him. What a beautiful thing!

I understand, very well, the fear and misunderstanding that surrounds addiction, and sex addiction in particular (why do you think I blog under a pseudonym?), but this kind of sensationalist coverage of recovery meetings is the worst way I can think of to address those fears and concerns. It would be like busting into a closed AA meeting to try to talk about drunk driving. After all, there really are (insert ominous drum roll) cars outside those meetings and (insert slow motion negative image) some folks convicted of drunk driving inside them, some of whom (insert scary music) slip in their recovery and show up drunk. Yep, folks. It's true.

As my husband and I always say, it's fine to worry about the sex addicts in the meetings. They're addicts. They've screwed up and done hurtful things to themselves and others. Sometimes (but not always) they've done illegal things, and in some small minority of those cases the things they did posed a danger to others. Their behavior is compulsive, and there's no cure, so they may well act out again. Of course, it's wise and healthy to maintain one's safety by exercising good boundaries. It's wise to ask questions and learn (although certainly not by busting into a 12 Step meeting and outing everyone). But if viewers really wanted something scary to worry about, they'd worry about the folks who aren't in those meetings and who aren't in recovery. Because active addiction, with no glimmer of recovery, is what's really scary.