Tiger Woods. Ex-NY Governor Elliott Spitzer. ESPN sportscaster Steve Phillips. Actor David Duchovny. These are but a few of the male species who have raised the awareness of what is currently being termed Sexual Addiction, rendering it a virtual 'mandemic'. The question is: where do you draw the line between this so-called dependency and plain, old super horny?


What these guys did was unquestionably wrong, because they're married. However, if Tiger were single and had sex with a dozen women in a year -- especially "hot" women - would that make him a sex addict? To most men, that makes him a hero. If the bachelor Derek Jeter slept with 10 beauties over the course of a year, some guys might even say, "Step it up, dude. Coulda' been 20." 


Steve Phillips had affairs. He had sex in parking lots after games. If that is the grounds for his term in rehab, I'm getting into the rehab business. Elliot Spitzer had a thing with a hooker. Is he a sex addict? Or just another self-righteous, philandering politician with a penchant for professional sex and the budget to swing it?


We Americans have a tendency to blow things out of proportion. We jump to conclusions. We rush to judgment. We're guilty of premature evaluation. Then we prescribe a quick, pain-free solution. That helps to explain our real addiction in this country, which is to drugs. You just have to watch nightly TV to witness the unending parade of pharmaceutical commercials serving the seemingly infinite introduction of newly discovered diseases.


Is sexual addiction just another one of these newfangled diseases manufactured by drug companies to propel their priapic profits? Or should we really be on the lookout for our male friends who suffer from restless sperm syndrome? And how about the guys who watch Internet porn? Is their predilection for pornography a precursor to an impending addiction or a cry for help from the ever-present allure of masturbatory material?


Ladies and brothers, let us be frank: men are pig dogs. We like sex. We think about sex. We crave sex. A man knows within a millisecond of seeing a woman whether he finds her sexually attractive. It's not something we can help. We don't do it on purpose. We're hardwired this way by Mother Nature. Fortunately, evolved men may also feel sexual attraction based on intelligence, humor, empathy, and many other qualities. It's just that our first natural instinct--not conscious thought, but instinct--is purely physical.


If men could have sex with all the women they found attractive - without consequence - they would. Females have figured this out; ergo the outrage. This sexual addiction movement is a conspiracy orchestrated by women who recognize that if men are put away for their sexual appetite, there won't be any of us left. 


There is only one solution, I'm afraid. We need a new drug for sexual addiction, like a Viagra antidote on demand. They could call it Soft On.


Song of the Day: I Want A New Drug by Huey Lewis and the News
One that won't make me nervous
Wondering what to do
One that makes me feel like I feel when I'm with you
When I'm alone with you
Follow Robert Rosenthal on Twitter: www.twitter.com/shortorderdad
New Harbinger: The Movie Shame and the Myth of Sexually Compulsive Gratification
You seem to be missing the point: addiction is continuing behaviors that damage one's relationships, one's job, one's life, despite the desire and attempts to stop. Sex addiction is not "guys wanting a lot of sex." Sex addiction isn't about a high sex drive. Men looking at porn is not the problem: men who cannot stop looking at porn at the expense of job and family is a problem. Sex addiction is about the chemical highs produced by our own neurochemicals.
You don't seem to actually know anything about sex addiction. Ask the men and women who have lost careers, reputations, families, and their freedom if it's just about liking sex a lot. I've heard sex addicts say they WISH they could be addicted to drugs or alcohol instead: the humiliation of having uncontrollable sexual impulses and the tremendous pain it can cause to one's significant other are no laughing matter, and people like you who marginalize the experience doesn't help.
Whether or not Tiger Woods is a sex addict is one thing, but please - this is a difficult enough problem for addicts and their families to deal with without it being dismissed and marginalized. You might as well say alcoholics just like alcohol a lot, or compulsive gamblers just think gaming is fun.
It's almost funny when I see "fluffers" introduced as "girlfriends" and "mistresses". Or these consensual sexual transactions described as "relationships" and "affairs".
"He said that he was gonna leave his wife for me" (tears).
Okay.
"I felt like I was in a serious relationship...the way he made me feel and all".
Again, okay.
They're not that smart but again, they don't have to be.
"Sexual addiction" isn't even a medically recognized term. But I think it's when your sex habits put a man's health, marriage and business contracts at risk that people may think he has a bit of a problem.
So calling it an addiction may technically correct, but it does a disservice to people with drug addiction, alcoholism, kleptomania, etc. Other diseases that all of us don’t suffer from. Sex is not an addiction; it is human/animal nature.
At the cortex, our male and female brain programs us to self protect and reproduce…end of story.
Staying alive and reproducing is how human beings have survived all these years and developed into the dominant animal on the planet. When we get up in the morning, we need food. When we are cold, we need heat. When we see a potential sexual partner, well you get the idea.
Of course, we’ve evolved, but sex is always on our mind. Sex drives how we dress, what we drive, how we interact with each other and it has been doing so since we lived in caves. Some statistics show, we can’t help but think about it all the time, as much as a dozen times a hour, men more than women. They say that men are less discriminating then women, because men have unlimited sperms, while women have limited number of eggs.
These urges lead to infidelities. Always have and always will. Why are we surprised when we hear of Tiger Woods having affairs, or Bill Clinton. Powerful people having affairs dates back to way before Cleopatra, Henry VIII, Catherine the great or JFK. Their power and the limelight create the scandals, but they are just human beings, trying to deal with their urges and the behavior it causes.
And b) Yup, big pharma has a lot to do with it. But the scales are weighted even more unfairly against women, as per this article from the New York Times today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/theater/19sex.html?_r=1&ref=arts
This is a much worse, far wider-ranging and further reaching conspiracy orchestrated by men.
Let's join forces and do a Search And Destroy on both! :)
I made no mention, inference or implication whatsoever as to women's sex drive or desire. Like you, I celebrate it.