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Monday, Jun. 21, 2010
Melissa Leong, National Post  

Russell Forrest addresses the 100 or so people assembled in the conference room: "I applaud your courage and your willingness to break the silence," the therapist says. "I think everyone here is terribly courageous."

People have come from all over the Greater Toronto Area -- and even from as far away as Montreal -- to the Holiday Inn just off of Highway 404 in Markham, Ont., to attend Bellwood Health Services's first free public seminar on sexual addiction . Some heard about it on the radio. Health professionals make up a third of the crowd.

Penny Lawson, Bellwood's manager of family services and special programs, explains its symptoms and tells anecdotes including one about a boy who would watch his mother undress through a window; he became a man who would sneak into a colleague's house to pleasure himself while she slept.

"What do you say to the member of the public who says, ‘This sex addiction is just males getting caught in a relationship or having an affair and using this as an excuse and flocking to treatment centres?' " one woman asks.

"What we say is the addict is not making a choice," Lawson, 69, says. "It is a behaviour that they are compelled to do and they need and deserve help."

Despite controversy surrounding the diagnosis of sex addiction, therapy and 12-step programs continue to expand to meet a growing demand, following the much-publicized experiences of Tiger Woods, David Duchovny and Jesse James.

Polls suggest most people think the diagnosis is nonsense. Even experts differ on whether it is an addiction like drug or alcohol addictions. The diagnosis does not exist in the psychiatrist's bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -- though "hypersexual disorder" is being proposed for the next edition being revised for 2013.

"There seem to be more people seeking help now," says Vicki Patton, a certified sex addictions therapist based in Nova Scotia. "Having Tiger Woods out there, it's given people permission to talk about it and say ‘I have a problem, too, and maybe I can go for help.' "

A representative from the Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA) headquarters in the United States says the organization has doubled in size in the last seven years. More SAA groups, which are based upon the 12-step approach in Alcoholics Anonymous, are cropping up across Canada. A group started in Winnipeg about a year ago. The Greater Vancouver area has 13 different SAA meetings; in the last few years, the meetings have grown by one meeting per year.

Doris Vincent, whose practice exclusively treats sex addicts, recently held a workshop for health professionals in her Edmonton office. "I've presented in the past and had very few people interested. [This time], the room was full. We had to bring in chairs."

Therapists must train in the U.S. or the United Kingdom to become certified sex addiction therapists and only about 25 in Canada have done so.

"There are gaps in other provinces that just don't seem to offer any support," Patton says. She used to work at Top of the World Ranch Treatment Centre in British Columbia but recently moved home to Nova Scotia because she knew the East Coast was in need of more services. She hopes to host public workshops like the one the Bellwood held.

In 2000, Lawson sought training from Dr. Patrick Carnes, who championed the term "sex addiction" in in his 1983 book, Out of the Shadows. "In 1984, people were starting to come [to Bellwood] for cocaine addiction and the occasional person would talk about their sexual behaviour when they were on crack. We really didn't know how to treat it."

She and two colleagues pioneered Bellwood's sexual addictions program. Last year, 445 people inquired about their SA program.

"People would wait until their partner was asleep and stay up half the night with the porn sites and go to work the next day with an hour or two of sleep. Another client might present with multiple relationships."

It costs $12,000 for the centre's three-week, in-patient treatment. Clients are asked to become celibate for 90 days and healing can be a two- to five-year process, Lawson says.

"The task in recovery is rather like an eating disorder . Alcohol you can give up. Sex is a primary drive," Lawson says. "You have to learn a healthy relationship to it."

She speaks to those gathered at the Holiday Inn -- they are a mix of males and females, younger and older -- and thanks them for coming.

"This is not an addiction that you can't recover from," she says. "Help is available."

mleong@nationalpost.com