Sexomania conquers the world

Doctors from the U.S. and Europe had to admit that sexomania - the word that until recently was used only in a humorous context - is indeed a serious illness similar to drug addiction and alcoholism.

Contemporary life challenges us with its daily stresses and some cannot stand this test.

Discordant ranks of those with mental illnesses are daily replenished by those who only yesterday were perfectly normal. There are numerous types of depression, let alone various sexual disorders. Especially numerous among us are the so-called sexomaniacs.

This was the official statement made in 2007 by the group of influential scientists of the University of Minnesota (USA) after much experimentation and research. After the official recognition of the existence of such mental disorder, open and anonymous societies of those suffering from sexomania spread around the world. Valery Zaleski, Ph.D., a psychologist-sexologist spoke about the details of the latest sex addiction with MedPulse.

According to the studies conducted by the University of Minnesota, no more than 3-5% of the population is sexomaniacs, people driven by a spontaneous desire to perform sexual acts, which creates a big problem for them. Most often these are the people with traditional sexual orientation, or gay men with compulsive craving and unreasonable desire to have sex at all costs. These people can give up food, water and other joys of life for the sake of carnal pleasures.

"The main symptom of this mental disorder is inexplicable desire to have sex," commented Zaleski. "It is an inexplicable desire, and, at times, these people cannot describe what happens to them at that moment.

Sexomaniacs will do anything for carnal satisfaction. The annual report on the studies undertaken by the Canadian Institute of neuropsychiatric deviations says: "The ingenuity of sexomaniacs borders with pathology. In order to satisfy their need, sexomaniacs are ready for everything, and can use even inanimate objects. One of the most common manifestations of sexomania in Canada is documented among heterosexual men getting into gynecological offices under the guise of doctors and trying to inspect female genitalia."

"In my medical practice there were no such manifestations," says W. Zaleski. "However, very common is the use of different types of sex toys in public places, at work, in movie theatres, restaurants. In most cases, people suffering from sexomania have creative professions who "blame" their unbridled desire to exercise their carnal needs on energy blasts, emotional discharge, and search for creative ideas."

Sometimes it seems that with the advent of a new mass disease or a mental disorder, Belarus, being somewhere on the outskirts of the universe, always remains intact. Bird and swine flu, malaria of all degrees of complexity and pervasive manic-depressive psychosis have nothing to do with Belarus. What about sexual disorders that are not contagious?

Valery Zaleski explained that unlike countries such as USA, Canada, Australia and some European countries, in Belarus sexomania as well as a number of other sexual deviations is not officially recognized by physicians. Most people with symptoms of sexomania are classified as patients with other psychosexual disorders, for example, sexual arousal disorder.

Today one of the most commonly used drugs in treatment of sexomania is a drug from a group of antidepressants that suppress the sex drive in humans and reduce their sensitivity to an orgasm. This method of treatment of psychosexual disorders today is used by a number of specialists in the U.S. and Canada. However, according to V. Zaleski, Belarusian doctors will not prescribe these drugs. If you really feel an inexplicable desire of a sexual nature, it is best to start seeing a psychologist to help you develop an individual program of intensive therapy.

V. Zaleski, disguised as a sexomaniac, had been looking long and hard on the Internet and social networks for a society of sexomaniacs that supposedly exists in the CIS countries. Of course, they exist behind closed doors, and, as explained by Valery Zaleski, "sexomaniacs organizations have no function in terms of treating the disease. Rather, it is a voluntary gathering of people with the same intimate interest."   

Hardly anyone heard about cyber-sexomania. Even the largest Internet search engines do not give any results for the given search word. Yet, cyber-sexomania exists and has a number of characteristics that distinguish it from the "regular" sexomania. Columnist of www.interfax.by asked his source about it.

"The so-called cyber-sexomania, or online sexomania is even newer sub-specie of psychosexual disorders, whose main feature is an obsessive desire to pleasing oneself, or a sexual act with the use of materials of a sexual nature located on the Internet. As an option one can have a virtual sex lover who wants to get carnal pleasure at a distance."

Number of cyber sexomaniacs grows in direct proportion to the degree of penetration of online resources in our lives.   According to Mr. Zaleski, for the most part modern cyber sexomaniacs are young men and women aged 17 to 25, as well as adult men from 40 to 50 years old.

According to the American "'Society for the Advancement of sexual health," the exact statistics on the number of patients suffering from cyber sexomania does not exist, but their data in the U.S. alone shows that this disease affects over 9 million people. In addition, if a few years ago the number of psychiatrists who specialize in this disease was no more than two hundred, now in America there are more than fifteen hundred of them. Nearly every major city has a special center for treating people who are addicted to sex.

It is interesting that in the past 10 years in the U.S. the composition of sex-dependent patients has changed. If earlier the patients were men of 40-50 years old, now they are teenagers and the elderly. Many of them were handed over to the medical centers by their relatives who accidentally "caught" their grandfather watching porn or found messages of a sexual nature on the phones of their 12-year-old son.  

Experts say that the root of the problems is the same as that of drug addiction. Such patients should always maintain a high level of availability of dopamine in their body - a substance that stimulates the brain region responsible for pleasure. Famous sex addicts are golfer Tiger Woods and former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Kirill Matveev

Medpulse