the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.
In an interview with ESPN, former NBA star Winston Bennett chronicled the story of his sex addiction. During his time in the NBA Bennett had sex with approximately 90 women a month, and 45 women a month after he got married. According to Bennett, (in an extreme "dirty dog" moment), he slept with another woman just 5 hours after he married his wife.
Bennett also says that he spent huge swathes of time, looking for sex, cruising for sex, and paying for sex with prostitutes. He confessed to picking up women in malls, restaurants and massage parlor's.
According to Bennett, his basketball career allowed him to have an incredible dating life. Unfortunately, his risky life style also allowed him to infect his wife with chlamydia. It was not unusual for Bennett to have sex with 3-4 women per day, and he rarely, if ever used a condom.
As far as I'm concerned this is the equivalent of playing Russian Roulette with his life. The fact that neither him or his wife contracted AIDS or HIV is a miracle.
I personally do not believe in sex addiction. I think that it is a lame excuse for men who can't keep it in their pants, and women who can't keep their legs closed. In other words, it is the last bastion of refuge for those who are either not mature enough to control their urges, have no self control, or need an excuse to be unfaithful. It does not involve chemical dependency, and it seems to be heavily related to opportunity. Nobody has ever tried to sell their mothers VCR to feed their sex addiction, and nobody has ever taken their little brothers sneaker money for a sex hit. Bennett stated in the ESPN interview that his basketball career allowed him to have an incredible dating life. That "dating life" gave him access to an endless supply of women, and he was able to indulge his carnality with reckless abandon without being hindered by being a "common man", but enabled by his money, fame and status. In his mind he believed that he was so special, and so privileged that he was immune to STD's, and too smooth to ever get caught. How else do you explain having unprotected sex with multiple women during the late eighties-early nineties when a relatively new STD called AIDS reached epidemic proportions?
Money not only buys excuses, but it also provides the opportunity for to treat those excuses as if they were legitimate. The only difference between Winston Bennett and a lot of men was opportunity. He had sex with all of those women because he wanted to, not because he had to, or was so enslaved by a compulsion. His diagnosis of sexual addiction gave him the opportunity to ease his wife's pain because it provided a separate entity to take the blame, and alleviate him of all responsibility. Money cannot buy happiness but it can buy you a certified, clinical excuse.
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