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Researchers who’ve looked at the brains of the lovelorn say rejection by a romantic partner lights up areas of the brain that are associated with addiction, reward, craving, and depression.

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For most, sex addiction and love addiction seems impossible. But there is such a phenomenon. It is not just merely insanely stalking a person you especially like. It is an illness, probably a mental illness that entails compulsivity when it comes to sexual activities and having numerous partners, and being fond of casual sex and self gratification. Sex and love addiction is a progressive illness which cannot be cured but which, like many illnesses, can be arrested. It may take several forms—which includes, but not limited to a compulsive need for sex, excessive dependency on one or many people, or a chronic preoccupation with romance, intrigue, or fantasy, an obsessive compulsive pattern, either sexual or emotional, or both, exists in which relationships or sexual activities have become increasingly destructive to career, family and sense of self-respect. Sex addiction and love addiction, if left unchecked, always gets worse.

Victims of sex and love addiction has a found a way to help their illness. Sex and love addiction was born. This was founded by a former Alcoholics anonymous member. Though, he had been sober, he was unfaithful to his wife for a period of time. He founded sex and love addiction anonymous as an effort to stop his compulsive sexual and romantic behavior.

The organization encourages members to identify their own “bottom-line behaviors.” The organization identifies these behaviors as “any sexual or emotional act, not regarding its initial impulse may be, which leads to loss of control over rate, frequency, or duration of its occurrence or recurrence, resulting in spiritual, mental, physical, emotional, and moral destruction of oneself and others.”

In addition, the Sex and Love Addiction Anonymous uses the 12-step program and the 12 traditions in helping their members recover from the addiction. The good thing with the organization is that since everyone is a victim, they are empathic about each other’s experiences and feelings. Thus, they claim to understand what the other person is going through and are able to offer support through sharing and meetings. As quoted, “we found in each other what we could find nowhere else: people who knew the depth of our pain. Together we found hope and the care of a loving Higher Power. Our commitment is to help others recover from sexual addiction, just as we have been helped.”

Sex and Love Addiction Anonymous’ twelve-step program are the following:

1. We admitted we were powerless over sex and love addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with a Power greater than ourselves, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to sex and love addicts, and to practice these principles in all areas of our lives.

Meanwhile, these are their Twelve Traditions:

1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon S.L.A.A. unity.

2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority — a loving God as this Power may be expressed through our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.

3. The only requirement for S.L.A.A. membership is the desire to stop living out a pattern of sex and love addiction. Any two or more persons gathered together for mutual aid in recovering from sex and love addiction may call themselves an S.L.A.A. group, provided that as a group they have no other affiliation.

4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or S.L.A.A. as a whole.

5. Each group has but one primary purpose — to carry its message to the sex and love addict who still suffers.

6. An S.L.A.A. group or S.L.A.A. as a whole ought never to endorse, finance, or lend the S.L.A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, or prestige divert us from our primary purpose.

7. Every S.L.A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.

8. S.L.A.A. should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.

9. S.L.A.A. as such ought never to be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.

10. S.L.A.A. has no opinion on outside issues; hence the S.L.A.A. name ought never to be drawn into public controversy.

11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, film, and other public media. We need guard with special care the anonymity of all fellow S.L.A.A. members.

12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

T.V., the internet, twitter, facebook, alcohol, cigarettes, food, you name it. People are addicted. It is human nature to be addicted. Do we choose our addictions or do they choose us? Is it in our genes? Who knows? But the fact our nation is addicted remains. National addiction to love. National addiction to the soap operas of other people’s lives. National addiction to the tragedies of the day we find on the 10:00 news. When does it become an addiction? Today we face as a nation, the ever growing fact of technological over-stimulation. With the bombardment of information inherent in the invention of the internet, the nation has become addicted to, what else, information. But that is human nature right? Even biblical nature. Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, and ever since, mankind has been hungry for more. We, as a nation, cannot get enough information! It runs our lives! Since we now have a host of information at our fingertips, we have begun to ask even more questions.

With all the things to be dependent on, information seems to be one of the healthier choices. Our national addiction to technological stimulation may be making us evolve more quickly, or it may just be giving us cancer. Only time will tell. But in the meantime the world is definitely getting more and more interesting. But because this bombardment of information is still new in human history, it is at its age of infancy and we are still learning how to utilize it wisely. We have a long long way to go before we are able to gather all of this information and use it to create world peace and harmony. But little pockets of goodness are beginning to pop up. It’s now more convenient than ever to spread the word about problems that we face such as global warming, poverty, addiction. People are able to find out where to get help for issues when they need it. We are learning and adapting and beginning to control our national addiction. And someday it may stop being our addiction and just be used more as a tool. Or not.

Our nation’s more negative addiction is that addiction to oil and fossil fuels, which needs to change soon. The earth and human kind are both suffering greatly due to this addiction. We must, as a nation, come together to create alternative and efficient fuel systems. Once we break our addiction to oil we will have less war, a cleaner world, more air to breathe, and we will be able to enjoy our positive national addiction to information much longer, due to our years on this earth being extended. Oil has to be one of the most negative national addictions we can have. It sucks the life out of the earth, it’s dirty, it’s toxic, it causes war, greed and corruption. The only thing good about it is that it let’s us drive to mama’s house. Other than that, it sucks. Let’s come up with an alternative. Something that will help our garden grow and create jobs. Come on people! Let’s put together a twelve step for that one.

Thank you for allowing me to rant. I hope this gave you some small amount of information you.

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Today I have the honor of interviewing Vivian Eisenecher, author of Recovering Me, Discovering Joy, and a sought after speaker, mentor and writer since 1996. Her other published works include articles for Chicken Soup for the Soul and Womans World. Her inspirational story has been enthusiastically received by churches, companies and corporations, national organizations and national associations. She is passionate about reducing the stigma of mental illness and substance abuse. She love

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