As the author of "Love and Addiction," I am a frequent go-to person for media to ask, "Is Anthony Weiner addicted to sex?"
My answer? No, he's not.
Women contact me because their husbands spend all night -- night after night -- accessing Internet porn or engaged in online sex. Their own marriage is in tatters; certainly, they have no sex. The men may be further endangering their jobs, their other family relationships (including with children) and even their health.
The definition of addiction (or dependence), according to the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual (on which I was an adviser), focuses on the extremity of the negative consequences of a substance involvement. Despite health, family, legal and professional consequences, the addict is still not able to desist. And they try.
Recognizing that their behavior is hurting them, they attempt to quit or to cut back but repeatedly fail at such efforts. Think of people who haunt anonymous sexual meeting places, risking life-endangering infections and public embarrassment. Still, they continue in their addictive pursuit, even as they regret it and may hate themselves for it.
Does this sound like Anthony Weiner? He does not seem to fulfill either the degree of compulsivity or the depth of negative consequences that define addiction. Weiner seems to have been a happy Internet philanderer. (I need to acknowledge here that all of my information is secondhand, and that as a clinician, I cannot diagnose Anthony Weiner.) He didn't seem to let his sexting interfere with his job, his media appearances, even his relationship with his wife -- who was, according to reports, unaware that anything was amiss.
Now let's consider the case of Bill Clinton -- you know, the former president who was alleged to have carried on a many-years-long affair while governor of Arkansas; to have exposed himself to a completely unwitting, and unwilling, sex "partner"; and to have had sex with a 22-year-old intern in the White House! Those are remarkable behaviors.
Do you think Clinton is a sex addict? At a minimum, that discussion has completely faded from public interest; to use addiction terminology, Clinton has seemingly fully recovered.
This is not to say that their behavior didn't have serious negative consequences for each man -- Bill Clinton was impeached, only the second president for which this had happened. And Weiner lost his job and may have endangered his marriage.
But neither man seems to have been entrapped in an all-encompassing, life-altering -- what may even be life-threatening -- compulsion. Weiner was engaged in all-too-risky behavior, it turns out. But it wasn't insanely so. He was managing it, sans mistakes, and I bet there are other congresspeople doing similar things right this moment. (OK, they may let up just a bit in the aftermath of Weiner.)
In fact, the cases of Weiner and Clinton make clear that having crucial purposes in life is an antidote to addiction. Such countervailing life forces first prevent people from sacrificing all to an addiction, and then enable people to escape whatever addictive tendrils have reached out to ensnare them.
In Weiner's case, he would never have allowed his dalliances to endanger his appearances on cable news shows representing progressive positions to the country -- while displaying his sexy, masculine, brilliant, crusading image to Americans across the national airwaves.
And did you notice that no one asked whether Clinton would be able to continue to conduct the presidency after he was acquitted of committing high crimes and misdemeanors with Monica Lewinsky?
Weiner may certainly benefit from therapy and from considering his behavior and what it says about him. But it would be misleading for him, those treating him and those of us considering these questions to label what he did as an addiction.
To do so trivializes addiction, including sex addiction.
And to do so in therapy would miss that what Anthony Weiner needs most now to preserve his emotional well-being going forward is a life purpose.
Follow Stanton Peele on Twitter: www.twitter.com/speele5
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As an addict in recovery, looking back at my life, I can tell when I was an addict even when I had no desire of stopping. The desire of stopping came when I realized that I was completely out of control.
Also I believe that Weiner behavior was getting progresivly worse, and the fact that he tried tto manage and cover it up only indicates that he is an addict, not other way around.
The truth is that his addiction continued to progress, until he did lose control and made a mistake that ruined his career.
As a member of Sex Addicts Anonymous I would say this is how at least 50% of men realize that they are addicted, most of us need a strong wake up call to break through years of denial.
I have seen those men, who did not think sex addiction was real to make amazing transformations and become completely different people. So I think it would be not fair to disregard Weiner as simply a scambag and not an addict. I believe everybody deserves a second chance.
Compulsive repetition of a mood-altering behavior -- including but not limited to ingesting intoxicating substances -- despite negative life consequences is the very definition of an addiction. Anthony Weiner's behavior patterns mark him more as a romance/fantasy addict than a straight-up sex addict. But you can't argue with the negative life consequences.
If he couldn't or wouldn't do that, I'd label his behavior an addiction, for sure. Your philosophical take that the term "addiction" is overused would mean nothing to me.
As far as Anthony Weiner goes, the only thing that none of us knows is what he would have done in the face of such an intervention. Unfortunately for him, just like for a lot of sex addicts, his behavior remained totally hidden until it was publicly exposed, and his life came crashing down around him.
***Compulsivity? Maybe not ... but I don't know how much deeper the negative consequences would have to be ... unless you're talking about illness and death. He's lost a powerful job that he loved and excelled in. He's lost the respect and trust of his colleagues and constituants; he has endured public humiliation, and dealt a serious blow to the integrity of his marriage bond.
"He didn't seem to let his sexting interfere with his job, his media appearances, even his relationship with his wife -- who was, according to reports, unaware that anything was amiss."
***Yes he did! He sent nude photos of himself, with the congressional gym and his own office clearly seen in the background. He told the women he was sexting with, that he is a congressman! His wife obviously became aware that something was "amiss" - in a very public way. Talk about "high risk" behavior.
"he would never have allowed his dalliances to endanger his appearances on cable news shows representing progressive positions to the country"
***He DID allow the "dalliances" to do just that. We will not be seeing any media appearances by this man anytime soon.
Mr. Peele, I have admired your work and writings for many years, but I think you sort of missed the boat on this one. Perhaps you didn't have all the information about how it all unfolded.
1. There is no such thing as addiction. Although most people find this claim incredible, in fact, hardly any individuals follow the full addiction paradigm -- i.e., even among the worst addicts are capable of controlling their addictions in the right circumstances. I disagree with this position because some people come close enough -- and some die as a result -- to make the concept applicable and useful.
2. Addiction can only be applied to drugs and alcohol. This has been the standby position, and still is -- even as mainstream psychiatry has now rejected it by designating gambling as addictive in DSM 5. I take the current comment to reflect this position. This position reifies drugs and alcohol beyond evidence and reason. It is impossible to distinguish addictive habits whether or not they involve substances, my position since I wrote "Love and Addiction."
3. We apply the label "addiction" too promiscuously. We overuse the term, most often in re drugs, but generally for behaviors we dislike or find immoral or unethical, that we wouldn't engage in, and that we find puzzling in others who seem rational but who are not as scrupulous as we are. This uncritical use of the term debones and trivializes the concept. This is the position I take in my post.