Spouse of sex addict recovery
SAMHSA’s National Helpline | SAMHSA
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SAMHSA’s National Helpline is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders.
Also visit the online treatment locator.
SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357) (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service), or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders.
This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations.
Also visit the online treatment locator, or send your zip code via text message: 435748 (HELP4U) to find help near you. Read more about the HELP4U text messaging service.
The service is open 24/7, 365 days a year.
English and Spanish are available if you select the option to speak with a national representative. Currently, the 435748 (HELP4U) text messaging service is only available in English.
In 2020, the Helpline received 833,598 calls. This is a 27 percent increase from 2019, when the Helpline received a total of 656,953 calls for the year.
The referral service is free of charge. If you have no insurance or are underinsured, we will refer you to your state office, which is responsible for state-funded treatment programs. In addition, we can often refer you to facilities that charge on a sliding fee scale or accept Medicare or Medicaid.
If you have health insurance, you are encouraged to contact your insurer for a list of participating health care providers and facilities.
The service is confidential. We will not ask you for any personal information. We may ask for your zip code or other pertinent geographic information in order to track calls being routed to other offices or to accurately identify the local resources appropriate to your needs.
No, we do not provide counseling. Trained information specialists answer calls, transfer callers to state services or other appropriate intake centers in their states, and connect them with local assistance and support.
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Suggested Resources
What Is Substance Abuse Treatment? A Booklet for Families
Created for family members of people with alcohol abuse or drug abuse problems. Answers questions about substance abuse, its symptoms, different types of treatment, and recovery.
Addresses concerns of children of parents with substance use/abuse problems.It's Not Your Fault (NACoA) (PDF | 12 KB)
Assures teens with parents who abuse alcohol or drugs that, "It's not your fault!" and that they are not alone. Encourages teens to seek emotional support from other adults, school counselors, and youth support groups such as Alateen, and provides a resource list.After an Attempt: A Guide for Taking Care of Your Family Member After Treatment in the Emergency Department
Aids family members in coping with the aftermath of a relative's suicide attempt. Describes the emergency department treatment process, lists questions to ask about follow-up treatment, and describes how to reduce risk and ensure safety at home.Family Therapy Can Help: For People in Recovery From Mental Illness or Addiction
Explores the role of family therapy in recovery from mental illness or substance abuse. Explains how family therapy sessions are run and who conducts them, describes a typical session, and provides information on its effectiveness in recovery.
For additional resources, please visit the SAMHSA Store.
Last Updated: 08/30/2022
Recovery and Recovery Support | SAMHSA
Recovery and Resilience
Resilience refers to an individual’s ability to cope with change and adversity. Resilience develops over time and gives an individual the capacity not only to cope with life’s challenges but also to be better prepared for the next stressful situation. Psychological resilience, the ability to cope with adversity and to adapt to stressful life events, varies widely from person to person and depends on environmental as well as personal factors. It refers to positive adaptation, or the ability to maintain mental and physical health despite participating in stressful situations. Resilience is playing up those protective factors so they can outweigh the risk factors. Optimism and the ability to remain hopeful are essential to resilience and the process of recovery.
Because recovery is a highly individualized process, recovery services and supports must be age appropriate and offered over the life course and flexible enough to ensure cultural relevancy.
What may work for adults in recovery may be very different for youth or older adults in recovery. For example, the promotion of resiliency in young people, and the nature of social supports, peer mentors, and recovery coaching for adolescents and transitional age youth are different than recovery support services for adults and older adults.
Recovery and Relationships
The process of recovery is supported through relationships and social networks. This often involves family members who become the champions of their loved one’s recovery. They provide essential support to their family member’s journey of recovery and similarly experience the moments of positive healing as well as the difficult challenges. Families of people in recovery may experience adversities in their social, occupational, and financial lives, as well as in their overall quality of family life.
These experiences can lead to increased family stress, guilt, shame, anger, fear, anxiety, loss, grief, and isolation.
The concept of resilience in recovery is also vital for family members who need access to intentional supports that promote their health and well-being. The support of peers and friends is also crucial in engaging and supporting individuals in recovery.
Peer support assists individuals to engage or stay connected to the recovery process through a shared understanding, respect, and mutual empowerment. Peer support extends beyond the reach of clinical treatment into the everyday environment providing non-clinical, strengths-based support. This relationship can help lay the foundation for SAMHSA’s four dimensions of recovery.
Recovery Support
SAMHSA advanced recovery support systems to promote partnering with people in recovery from mental and substance use disorders and their family members to guide the behavioral health system and promote individual, program, and system-level approaches that foster health and resilience; increase housing to support recovery; reduce barriers to employment, education, and other life goals; and secure necessary social supports in their chosen community.
Recovery support is provided in various settings. Recovery support services help people enter into and navigate systems of care, remove barriers to recovery, stay engaged in the recovery process, and live full lives in communities of their choice.
Recovery support services include culturally and linguistically appropriate services that assist individuals and families working toward recovery from mental and/or substance use problems. They incorporate a full range of social, legal, and other services (PDF | 409 KB). that facilitate recovery, wellness, and linkage to and coordination among service providers, and other supports shown to improve quality of life for people (and their families) in and seeking recovery.
Recovery support services may be provided before, during, or after clinical treatment, or may be provided to individuals who are not in treatment but seek support services.
These services, provided by professionals and peers, are delivered through a variety of community and faith-based groups, treatment providers, schools, and other specialized services.
The broad range of service delivery options ensures the life experiences of all people are valued and represented.
For example, in the United States there are 34 recovery high schools that help reduce the risk in high school environments for youth with substance use disorders. These schools typically have high retention rates and low rates of students returning to substance use.
Additionally, SAMHSA's Bringing Recovery Supports to Scale Technical Assistance Center Strategy (BRSS TACS) advances effective recovery supports and services for people with mental or substance use disorders and their families.
Find more Publications and Resources on Recovery and Recovery Support.
90,000 pride or disease? – Moscow 24, 08/06/2018August 06, 2018, 00:00
Society
The World Health Organization (WHO) has introduced new ailments into the International Classification of Diseases. In addition to dependence on computer and video games, another concept was introduced into the classification - "compulsive sexual behavior disorder" or, more simply, sexual addiction.
Who can be sick and is it difficult to treat, read the material of the portal Moscow 24.
Photo: depositphotos/pavelrumme
Illness or crime
Recently, more and more women and girls have reported being sexually harassed by famous men. After numerous confessions, the popular hashtag #MeToo has even appeared, emphasizing the condemnation of sexual violence and harassment. At the same time, many of the accused admit that they had problems with sexual addiction. For example, producer Harvey Weinstein and actor Kevin Spacey are now undergoing treatment for a now-recognised ailment.
The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) includes 55,000 diseases, injuries and disorders. The document allows professionals from different countries and areas of healthcare to use a common language and share information around the world. The latest version of the ICD was adopted 27 years ago, in 1990. WHO has now released the eleventh edition, which has been in the works for more than a decade.
The new version became completely electronic for the first time. More than one and a half thousand specialists were involved in its creation. May 2019ICD-11 will be submitted to the World Health Assembly for approval by WHO Member States. The new classification will come into force only in January 2022.
According to a sexologist, professor of the Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis Alexander Poleev, sexual addiction is not just an attraction, but the desire to be in sexual relationships with many partners.
"Sex addiction has always existed, and this is not necessarily an increased physiological attraction, it is rather a psychological dependence on sex. At the same time, it has quite little to do with sex, a sick person is not chasing sexual pleasures, he is chasing new partners," noted the expert.
The famous golfer Tiger Woods started having problems in his sports career with family problems. According to the most restrained estimates, Tiger had accumulated more than a hundred mistresses, whom he hid from his wife.
A divorce after this fact followed a few years later, when their children grew up a little. Also, parting with his wife was the reason for Tiger's 45-day treatment for sexual addiction in a special clinic. How much he recovered, one can only guess.
Photo: depositphotos/ IgorVetushko
The expert explained that the inclusion of sex addiction in the classification of diseases became necessary with the advent and spread of the Internet. Experts have identified tens and hundreds of thousands of people whose main content of life is sexual relations with new partners.
The Internet has created ideal conditions for sex addiction: a lot of new acquaintances from which to choose. This is due, among other things, to scandals with sexual harassment. One of the illustrative cases was the story of the ex-chairman of the International Monetary Fund, Doctor of Economics, who allegedly tried to rape a New York hotel maid. He told the court that such painful conditions were found on him.
Alexander Poleev
sexologist
Sex addicts can behave normally in everyday life. Not all sexaholics admit their disorder. “For example, at work, a sexaholic can be a normal, modest person. But it takes him so much time to find new sexual partners that there is no time left for professional, spiritual and human development. It is usually difficult for such a person to start a family,” the doctor added. .
For actress Lindsay Lohan, sexual contact with all sorts of people, of all ages and genders, was a way of dealing with loneliness. Becoming famous at a young age, the actress admitted that she felt very lonely, hiding in hotel rooms from the paparazzi chasing her. The means of emotional release for Lindsey were violent parties, illegal drugs, alcohol and numerous short relationships. According to media reports, among the "close friends" of the actress were James Franco, Joaquin Phoenix, Justin Timberlake, Colin Farrell.
Symptoms of acute sexual addiction:
- lack of control over one's behavior;
- understanding that the satisfaction of one's "passion" will lead to many stupid things;
- desire to get rid of addiction, but lack of opportunity;
- more and more sexual partners are needed to enjoy;
- the search for sexual partners takes more and more time;
- sacrificing important aspects of one's life to carnal pleasures;
- Sexual contact is a way to cheer up.
To treat or not to treat
Photo: depositphotos/KateNovikova
According to Poleev, like any disease, sexual addiction should be treated, and treatment can be facilitated by the help of the patient's relatives. It happens that parents, sisters, brothers, friends and even a girl bring the patient to the doctor, the interlocutor of the portal Moskva 24 emphasized. Most often, like any neurotic disorder, it disappears with age, since addiction is usually a consequence of various childhood experiences, an increase in self-esteem, a sense of superiority and dominance.
Alexander Poleev
sexologist
However, not everyone in society sees this as a clinical illness. Actress Karina Zvereva opposes such a definition.
The disease really exists, it's true. However, this is not a clinical case that requires highly specialized experts. Everything from the head. By the way, in my life I have never met people with such a disease.
Karina Zvereva
actress
Actor David Duchovny did not want to admit his unhealthy amorousness until 2008, and lived with such a diagnosis for several decades. He told about his violation only after his wife Tea Leoni did not consider it necessary to endure constant betrayal by David. An interesting fact, but David hated his "diagnosis" and even underwent treatment for sex addiction, which did not bring the actor any benefit.
In addition, from a legal point of view, the recognition of sexual addiction as a disease will not change anything in judicial practice.
“Sexaholism itself does not imply violence, but if there is a use of social and professional position or a threat of dismissal, then the court doesn’t care if the defendant is a sexaholic or not,” the interlocutor of the Moskva 24 portal concluded.
Fedotov Anatoly
society medicine psychology history
Celebrities who suffer from sex addiction
Harvey Weinstein, who has been on the front pages of the media all week because of allegations of sexual harassment, went to treatment for sex addiction. The Hollywood producer is not the only one who is forced to struggle with an unstoppable love of sex. Gazeta.Ru is about men who have become hostages of their own libido.
Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, accused of harassment, arrived in Arizona for treatment of sex addiction. According to TMZ, he is likely to choose the Meadows clinic. There are programs for the treatment of sexual addiction and anger management, including Gentle Path ("Quiet Path") - a 45-day course that the patient undergoes in a hospital.
Month of stay in the clinic, according to the site Rehab Reviews , costs $37,710. Treatment consists of consultations, medication, yoga and hippotherapy. True, only the patient himself can say whether horse racing and talking with a psychologist help to pacify the increased libido.
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According to psychologist Arina Lipkina, sex addiction as a disease really exists. “Sexaholism is difficult to treat due to the fact that such a person often justifies his behavior and thoughts. People with sex addiction may deny that they have such a problem at all.
Another difficulty is to identify the difference between the fact that people have different sexual needs (libido) and the fact that it becomes an addiction.
Problems begin when a person is unable to control his sexual arousal and crosses another person's personal boundaries to please himself (during sexual intercourse). At the same time, realizing the consequences -
deterioration in health, loss of a career or family - he still regularly goes for it, spends an excessive amount of time and energy on getting sex, refusing even work or some important events, ”said Lipkina Gazete.
Ru.
There are no exact causes of the illness. Some psychologists suggest that dopamine (the pleasure hormone) released during sex is mistakenly ranked as essential to survival. There are also studies that in people with sex addiction, the frontal lobe, which is responsible for logic and morality, is weakened by the midbrain. Sometimes this is associated with the sexual education of children in dysfunctional families.
While doctors are looking for the causes of diseases, more and more men suffer from sexual addiction. In particular, famous men.
Tiger Woods
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One of Meadows' star patients was golfer Tiger Woods. In an attempt to recover from sex addiction, the athlete took the same 45-day Gentle Path course. Woods, like Weinstein, ended up in the clinic because of the facts of his intimate life that suddenly surfaced in the media. After a public scandal with his wife, women who wanted to share stories about Woods's endless betrayals began to actively contact the American media.
Some attached voice messages with evidence, others detailed orgies involving 15 prostitutes. According to rumors, Tyler had 120 mistresses in six years of family life.
Russell Brand
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The popular English humorist Russell Brand also had to undergo treatment for sex addiction. The stand-up comedian spent almost a month in a rehab clinic in Philadelphia. Brand decided on such a step on his own - several times he publicly admitted that the attacks were stronger than him. “My sexual addiction grew every day, when I was offered to take part in an orgy, I agreed to the offer without even thinking!” — said the comedian in an interview.
In 2007, Russell released his autobiography My Booky Wook, one of the chapters of which is devoted to his sexual weaknesses. The comedian admitted that there were moments in his life when
80 women were in his bed in a month.
David Duchovny
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After the first season of Californication ended in the United States, the tabloids suggested that the actor's family began to discord with his wife, actress Tea Leoni.
And they turned out to be right: in 2008, David Duchovny publicly admitted that he was suffering from sexual addiction and was going to fight it. “I voluntarily went to a sex addiction treatment facility,” he said in a statement through his lawyer. “I ask for respect and privacy for my wife and children as we view this situation as a family issue.”
David admitted that he hated his "diagnosis", but the course of treatment did not save him, and in 2014 the couple divorced.
Charlie Sheen
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Unlike the others, sexaholic Sheen is not going to be treated for his illness. Doctors have repeatedly recommended the star to go to a rehabilitation clinic, but Charlie preferred not to pay attention to public opinion and participate in orgies. According to the actor himself, he is a sex machine, and 5 thousand women have already been in his bed. “I pay for sex because I can’t stand any foreplay,” he said in an interview. In addition, Shin dreams of building his own porn empire.
Anthony Wiener
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A series of sex scandals in the life of an American ex-congressman began in 2011 and continues to this day. First, the politician, who was in an exemplary - in the eyes of the public - marriage, was caught in correspondence with intimate overtones at the same time with six women. Then photos of the reproductive organ were leaked to the press, which he sent to his female acquaintances. The third scandal was associated with the publication of an intimate photo of Anthony in the Twitter feed (the ex-politician wanted to send an erotic picture in a private message, but mixed up the buttons). His sexual problems have become such a discussed topic in society that in 2016 even the documentary film Wiener was released.
In September of this year, his name again appeared on the front pages -
Viner was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison for sexting with a 15-year-old girl.
"I'm sick and there's no excuse for what I'm doing," he told a federal court judge in Manhattan.
The investigation into Wiener began after the schoolgirl told the Daily Mail about her intimate correspondence with the ex-congressman between January and July 2016. According to the judge, at the same time that Wiener was in contact with the minor, he was “in contact with 19other women."
Mick Jagger
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Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger has earned a reputation as an animal because of his unstoppable desire for sex. According to the musician himself, there are about 4 thousand women in his intimate biography. According to journalist Christopher Anderson, who wrote the book Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger, the musician's promiscuity was more pathological than that of typical rock stars. “He has personal problems. Jerry Hall said that he was a sex addict and she asked him to seek professional help, ”The Fix quotes him. Keith Richards, a friend of the musician, also recommended consulting a doctor. “They were ecstatic when he sought the help of a sex therapist until he seduced that therapist,” Anderson says.
