Opinion

Obsessions, including sexual, make us human 

Zack Lee
Opinion Columnist

Last weekis Houston Press ran an interesting and informative article on an organization that has recently moved its headquarters to our fine city: Sex Addicts Anonymous. This is a group with a treatment based on the twelve-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and its existence, along with several other groups in the same vein, shows us how common the modern hypochondriac really is.

Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA) provides on its Web site a self-assessment quiz "to assess whether you may have a problem with sexual addiction." Four of the 12 questions describe about 90 percent of the guys I went to junior high school with, especially No. 3: "Do you find yourself looking for sexually arousing articles or scenes in newspapers, magazines or other media?"

Does this mean that every 12-year-old boy who reads his sisteris Cosmopolitan is a sex addict? Thatis ridiculous. Being horny doesnit make you an addict, and we donit need another group for horny people -- we already have the Internet.

Similar twelve-step programs can be found in such groups as Emotions Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous. I know some of these groups serve to change peopleis lives for the better. Emotions Anonymous, for example, professes to "work miracles" in the fight against (among other things) boredom. Iim sure the plague of boredom has ruined more than a few lives, but this is nonsensical. 

These groups claim the ugliness doesnit reside in the act itself, but in the "obsession" that ruins lives. Obsession isnit to blame here. If Michelangelo hadnit been obsessed with his art, we wouldnit have the Sistine Chapel. If Einstein hadnit been obsessed with his calculations, we wouldnit have the theory of relativity. If Thomas Jefferson had not been obsessed with his idea of freedom, we wouldnit have the Declaration of Independence. Obsession doesnit ruin lives -- it colors them.

Maybe weive come to hate ourselves so much that we canit accept the pieces that make up our lives, or maybe thereis another factor involved. Patrick Carnes, a doctor credited with pioneering research in the field of sexual addiction, stands to make substantial professional gains if the American Psychiatric Association accepts the ailment as a mental disorder. To be accepted, sexual addiction would have to be recognized as a larger problem than it is today, and that means more people would have to come forward as addicts. Coincidentally, Carnes is practicing now at The Meadows, a clinic outside Phoenix, as the clinical director for sexual disorders.

The first step toward solving all our problems is realizing each one of us is different. Some of us think about sex more often than others. Some of us get bored faster than others, but just because we do something more often or faster than others doesnit mean weire sick. It means weire different, and if being different means we have a disease, well, I guess Iill see you all in the emergency room.

Zach Lee, a freshman English major, can be reached at

aliquidsoldier@hotmail.com