Ripped from Teh Hedlynes:
A man in his 90s with an excessive sex drive was among eight patients aged over 70 treated by the NHS for their addiction to sex.
Over the last seven years 170 people have been referred to the NHS with sex addiction. Eight of these patients were aged over 70.
Leaving aside for the moment whether a taxpayer-funded medical service should be treating stuff like this (Cliff Notes: NO), I have to wonder what the hell is going on in the world.
I want to know what constitutes an “excessive sex drive” in the first place. I remember a woman talking about her late father, who “had sex all the time, every day, with everything: women, men, animals, raw meat, whatever happened to be there at the moment.” He also raped his wife, both daughters and several members of his extended family. This being back in the 1940s when people didn’t talk about this kind of thing because of shame, he was never even charged with a crime, let alone imprisoned.
I would suggest that this constitutes a sex addiction — and today, of course, he probably wouldn’t face much of a sentence either because, you see, sex addiction is a disease and he is a sufferer. [eyecross]
I’m curious to see how the “sex addiction” of our 90-year-old goat compares. I doubt it measures up.
And frankly, with the exception of extreme cases such as the one I described above, I’m calling bullshit on the whole concept. In a nation with a population the size of the U.K., 170 such cases over seven years doesn’t even register as a rounding error. More people are probably prone to whistling uncontrollably whenever they see a brick, but you won’t see them sprinting over to the nearest hospital for treatment.
Anyway, as long as these “addicts” are not endangering the wellbeing of others — pestering their wives, ignoring their their families in favor of prostitutes and wanking twenty times a day don’t count — my suggestion is to leave them alone.
If, however, they start committing actual crimes by going all rapey and molesting children, for instance, then castrate them and lock them up forever.
Regarding the example you provided of the jackass who raped his own daughters and other family members, that’s not a sex addiction, that’s someone who’s psychologically fucked up and who needs to be either locked in a room until the end of his natural life, or hung from a tree branch until same.
If you’ve got enough lead in your pencil to get it on ten times a day, and can find enough willing partners to do so, that’s no one’s business. “But it’s interfering with OTHER things!” Of course it is, anything you do interferes with something else. I work at least eight hours a day, five days a week, so that means I don’t get to fish, read or sleep as much as I’d like, that’s not a “work addiction”, it’s a trade-off. If you’re boinking instead of doing something else, that’s a trade-off. Compared to other “addictions” nookie has few health ill-effects and is even GOOD for you. Shag away Gramps!
” wanking twenty times a day” How did you get ahold of the journals I kept from ages 16-25?
I have, I’m afraid, too much experience with addiction in my family. A counselor once told me his definition of addiction is when the substance or activity has a direct, accountable negative effect on your health, your work, or your relationships.
Notice that quantities are not mentioned in that definition. If your Saturday-nights-only bender affects no one, there’s no problem. If your single glass of wine causes you to crash your car, big problem.
In that vein, I can visualize “sex addiction” as a problem, but not being an addict myself, I just can’t see it as anything but a judgment problem. But then, I can say the same about my alcoholic son’s issues with beer, pot, and ‘shrooms.
So your man in his 90’s MAY have a sex addiction problem. But I don’t see how it’s an issue unless he’s forcing himself on others.
Just to make sure I cover all the bases, I belong to a forum that has another slightly different definition of sex addiction: It’s an intimacy deficit.
It’s using sex as a replacement for actual emotional connection.
Retirement homes and communities like The Villages in Florida are experiencing an explosion in STDs. Sex with too many partners can be extremely dangerous.
Sex addiction is a disorder nowadays invented by feminists. Men have it if they want sex more often than the woman who tolerates his presence. An even greater misunderstanding of the other sex than back in the days of “The Frigid Wife.” I am reminded of the definition of a gas guzzling car back in the Carter (spit) Administration; “A car with worse gas mileage than your own.”