Why We Believe It Is An Addiction

Rich M., an original member of S.L.A.A., defines an addiction as:

“… the use of a substance or activity, for the purpose of lessening pain or augmenting pleasure, by a person who has lost control over the rate, frequency or duration of its use, and whose life has become progressively unmanageable as a result.”

We believe that this is an addiction not just because we need or use sex and ‘romance’ more than others, but because of the motive. Unlike normal persons, who seek love and sex to fill normal needs, addicts use them to lessen the pain that comes from problems in other areas of life.

As we seek someone or something to take us away from all this: we are really seeking to avoid reality altogether. We come to use the intensity of sex and romance, however fleeting, to substitute for other satisfactions, to comfort ourselves for a real or imagined lack of love, or to avoid or try to make unnecessary attending to a life that seems to give us too much pain.

Of course normal people may seek escape or transcendence over life’s problems in romance or sexual adventure-sometimes! The difference for us is that we lose control of this, and cannot stop. We sacrifice closeness and emotional consistency with others, and our loneliness and anxiety grow as our loss of control continues to result in ever more serious consequences.

 

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