“.. The idea of sexual pleasure as a harmful addiction parallels the most perverse aspects of Western religious history.
American befuddlement over matters of sex is on the increase, in spite of the fact that one can hardly imagine the subject becoming more befuddling to the people of this country than it already is.
Sex addiction is the latest star in America’s sexual burlesque.
Sex addiction has of course been a malaprop from its first usage.
Addiction was originally and properly defined as a physiological dependence on a substance to which the body had grown accustomed, such as alcohol, nicotine, heroin and various other drugs.
The cure was to end the dependency and abstain from further use of the substance in order to avoid a recurrence of the physiological dependency.
These treatments do work .. and many people have been cured of their addictions .. and never returned to the addictive substance.
Applying such a metaphor to sexual pleasure creates a misleading and ominous innuendo.
Sex is not an addictive substance.
It’s a human interaction on which the survival of the species is dependent.
It is also possibly the most pleasurable and sought after activity known to humankind ..
.. and arguably an experience no one should be deprived of.
Most normal people consider more rather than less sexual pleasure to be a major objective in life.
Following the substance abuse mode implies that the only cure for an addiction to sexual pleasure would be a celibate or monastic life ..
.. a complete renunciation of the alleged addictive sexual pleasure.
The very idea of sexual pleasure as a harmful addiction plays precisely into the hands of one of the most perverse aspects of Western religious history..
.. namely the teaching that sex is a work of the devil .. redeemed only by the act of procreation itself.
Reliance on the notion of sex addiction in counseling and psychiatric treatment is ominous.
Christianity as a world religion has much to commend it on balance.
Nevertheless, its posture toward sexual pleasure has been abysmal.
In that respect it should be noted that Christianity, of all the major world religions ..
.. is the only one to cast sexual pleasure in such a negative light..”
go to source/story>>Too Much Sex? No Such Thing — Why Sex Addiction Is Total B.S. | | AlterNet
