Brian is an investment banker in his early forties who, in graduate business school, first began to see prostitutes, put money into phone sex, compulsively masturbate and, finally spend around 5-10 hours each day considering internet porn. When sexually acting out, he'd feel that someone had turned on his brain for the initial time. Online, he'd suddenly feel alive. He'd energy and felt the euphoria that sexual immersion seductively provides. His mind slowed down; he didn't need to keep moving.
Since his teens, he'd masturbated just about any night before going to sleep and sometimes a few times through the day as well. He was shy in school and dated infrequently, partly from his feelings of inadequacy from the persistent inability to concentrate, multiple failures, disapproval from parents, teachers and peers and the consequent demoralization that contributed to low self-esteem.
Undergraduate school have been hard for him. Complex mathematical formulations from his economics courses were tape-recorded while he fantasized about looking beneath the girl's shirt who sat alongside him. He was chronically late at classes, his dorm was messy and his clothes were disheveled. He seemed to call home in another world. Once on the task, he loved the thrill, excitement and danger of being fully a trader, nevertheless when he'd to sit in boardrooms to listen to his bosses speak about strategy, his "eyes glazed over" with boredom and he entered into an "erotic haze ".He would fantasize in regards to the escort he have been with the night time before and anticipated getting home after having a long day to get on the chat rooms and look at pornography on the internet.
His days were the typical business of forgetting assignments and people's names, of losing things and being chastised by bosses, as he have been by parents, for not being able to sit still or follow directions. At home, he felt empty, depressed and lonely. He was unable to target on a guide or a movie. He often felt unique of others. It had been like others were given a chip at birth that allowed them to consider simple things, to process information accurately, to perform tasks in an orderly fashion, to moderate their impulses and calm their bodies and mind if they wanted to. But Brian knew he was "different" from them. His girlfriend complained he interrupted their conversations and he always put his needs first from; He could never finish a task that wasn't engrossing for him. He would lose his temper over trivial things and he didn't know why. On the web, however, considering a montage of erotic images, he finally felt not scattered. Moreover, he felt soothed, whole and unafraid. Like a secret elixir, he'd immediately feel "not different ".He felt alert, focused and alive. However, he soon found himself in job performance due to the long nights and weekends of compulsive sexing. He went to a 12-step "S" program and learned to steer clear of compulsive sex. He married and got a promotion at work. Time passed as he worked his 12-step program and settled directly into marriage. However, the impulse to call an escort or make an erotic telephone call never went away.
One day, after two years of abstinence, he discovered an escort in a hotel who offered him her services and he could not think of a reason to refrain. Also, he'd realized that his fantasies had taken on a definite sadomasochist flavor and he have been interested in acting them out with this woman. He have been associated with a deal at work that went wrong and he felt "significantly less than" and somewhat ashamed. Memories of shaming and humiliation escort remarks about his conduct and learning skills from teachers and parents came flooding back, precipitating his masochistic sexual fantasies. His sense of self was completely destabilized. So he did what had always worked for him when he felt psychologically fragmented: he went to an escort to shore up his fragile self esteem. Once again he'd miraculously feel just like he could deal with himself. The non-stop put downs that had taken up permanent residence in his head were quieted, at the least for a brief period of time. Sex took the edge off like a few martinis do for an alcoholic.
The "quick fix" however, was followed closely by an accident which made him feel worse than he did before he went to the verbal humiliation escort. Knowing he'd yet again lost control of himself, he'd feel extremely remorseful and depressed. His feelings about himself bordered on self-loathing. Following the crash, he no more felt alert, focused, or euphoric. While Brian have been in a position to walk away from cocaine four years ago, the sex addiction had remained entrenched in his psyche: like an athlete's foot of your head -- it called him -- incessantly-- an itch to be scratched but never soothed.
It had been now that Brian decided when he didn't leave your house, he would not frequent escorts, and so he re-discovered the Internet. Very quickly at all, Vincent was spending untold minutes, hours, days totally absorbed in the internet, using chat rooms to setup erotic encounters, and exploring the fetishistic and S&M images and enticements of the cybersex world. Porn surfing became his medium of acting out since the images were flashy, intense, and risky and he could easily go to a different web page once the novelty wore off and he'd begin to be bored.
What happened with Brian's recovery? He seemed to have managed to prevent compulsive sex for a time period and to produce some positive changes in his life. But when faced with the chance, he was easily generated come back to sex addiction.
In Brian's case, he was unable to get yourself a handle on his sex addiction when he had not been diagnosed and treated for Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. A certain constellation of imbalanced neurotransmitters were creating physical and emotional problems for him, including an inability to regulate attention, control impulses, sleeping, and mood and energy levels. His need to self-medicate his impulsivity, restlessness and mental hyperactivity gave way to using sexually compulsive behaviors to attempt to fix his brain chemistry. Poor impulse control combined with a drive for high-risk, intense, novel experiences contributed to Brian's addiction to sex.
Many sexual compulsives with ADD have had experiences like Brian's. They struggled in school since they got bored or had a hard time paying attention. Once bored, they'd stare out the window, often caught up by sexual fantasies. As adults, relationships are hard for them. Impulses carry them from project to project, relationship to relationship, job to job. Their minds come screeching to a halt as they try to consider a friend's name or the precise location of the escort they visited last night. Most have the self-loathing of people who are working under capacity, and feel the pain and grief of living a life of lost opportunities and diminished personal potential.
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