If you didn’t see “Sex Rehab” on Monday night, let me clue you in:  If ever there was a misbegotten first episode of a program, this was it.  Dr. Drew Pinsky may have tried to compensate for the titillating scenes of gratuitous sex by asking the new group of addicts deep questions, but I don’t think it worked.

If you are struggling with a sexual addiction, then tuning in to Dr. Drew’s program probably wasn’t going to be of any help.  If anything, it could be damaging.  The program showed graphically the kind of behaviors the women that were addicted were involved in, e.g., bondage.  Interestingly, they did not show the men that were addicted half naked and acting out.  What does that say about how women are depicted in our culture?  What does it say about exploitation?  And if, as we learn, the women are acting out sexually because of molestation, emotional neglect, and other terribly sad issues, isn’t the program just contributing to their addiction by glorifying the depiction of what go them into rehab in the first place?

Then, there is the whole question of addiction.  If a person is molested and then acting out sexually, that is perhaps more a symptom of post traumatic stress disorder.  Recent neurobiological studies are showing us that when someone has been abused, there are quantifiable changes in the brain.  These changes can affect the development of sexual and other hormones.  Sometimes, people become sexualized at a young age.  Note that not everyone that has been abused acts out, but it does happen.

In addition, in doing research for my upcoming book on mental illness and sexuality, about one-quarter of people with obsessive compulsive disorder have a sexual focus.  Sometimes this can lead someone to check things out sexually over and over again, e.g., going to the Internet to see if they are gay or attracted to children, even though in reality they know they are not.

Then there is bipolar disorder.  One of the symptoms of bipolar disorder is being hypersexual.  Without making a diagnosis and simply making an observation, I noticed that one man in rehab had rapid, pressured speech.  Is he a sex addict, or bipolar?

Whatever the diagnosis is, the fact that someone is having so many sexual issues that they need to be in treatment is a good thing.  The running theme in the intake with Dr. Drew was an inability to really connect with another human being, to have a meaningful relationship.  While having sex with countless partners might sound like a fantasy come true, at the end of the day the inhabitants of Pasadena Recovery want what most everyone wants:  to love and be loved.

I don’t know if I will watch any more episodes, but I hope that the focus from here on out will be on the story of how each one of these men and women courageously face and heal the heart of their symptoms and not on the enactment of the symptoms themselves.

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