Recently, reports of David Duchovny's sexual addiction have surfaced.  The speculations have so far ranged from Duchovny having a string of extramarital affairs to the more mundane claim of the actor's fascination to Internet porn.  Some people think that this is a case of life imitating art, as Duchovny plays the role of womanizer, Hank Moody, in Showtime's uber-sexy series, Californication (a role in which Duchovny earned a Golden Globe for).  And as an extension of this view, others see Duchovny as a method actor, someone going through a process in order to perfect his craft, an artist willing to go through the necessary motions to achieve the most plausible depiction of a role he has sought to play.  Hmm…isn't that a role we all would love to play?

      Aside from the question of what really drove Duchovny to his so-called addiction, what really interests me is his diagnosis of sex addiction.   How did it happen?  Did he, one day, out of the blue, realize that he was having too much sex or going on porn sites too much?  Was it self-diagnosis or was a shrink involved?  Or, maybe his wife, Tea Leoni said one day, “David, you seem to be madly fascinated with the Internet and spend so much time on it.  Are you by any chance browsing through the millions of web pages the whole time you are on the computer?  Or perhaps you're just looking yourself up on Google?  Be honest with me, please.  We can work this out.”?  And, also, the question of what is too much, that it can be interpreted as addiction?

      I've always been fascinated with the concept of addiction, being an addict myself (been a smoker for more than ten years and counting).  What constitutes an addict?  Because I'm too lazy to look up the “official” definition of addiction, I'd like to go back to an LSAT passage I was working on this afternoon.  It was coincidentally about---addiction!  According to the passage, “Addiction is defined as dependence on and abuse of a [psychoactive substance]”.  So I guess, in Duchovny's case, the psychoactive substance is sex, and in mine, nicotine.  So, if we were to use this definition, it is safe to say that Duchovny was (and probably still is) dependent on and abuses sex.  But, what do we mean if we say “dependent on sex”?  Isn't everyone dependent on it?  So, are we all then, normal warm-blooded folks, sex addicts?  What about the concept of abuse?  How would one “abuse” sex?  Many things come to mind, but we all have to admit that that part is quite questionable.

      Probably some information about sex addiction can shed light on some of our most pressing answers.  Apparently, some sex health experts estimate that about 3-5 percent of Americans are addicted to sex, and that includes men and women.  The symptoms range from “rampant promiscuity to spending hours looking at pornography to using sex to escape problems such as depression and stress”.  Hmm…if that's the case, the numbers should be drastically higher.  But, hey, that's just me.  Still, wouldn't you agree that at one time (okay, more than one time, for most) or another, we've all experienced those “symptoms”?  So, that still tells me that a lot of people are sex addicts.  To add to the confusion, some guy from the Sexual Recovery Institute in LA has postulated that the easy access that the Internet has given the masses, has driven some people to become sex addicts (okay, not his exact words, but the gist is the same).  The skeptic in me can't help but ask: “Couldn't there be other major factors as to why some people are sex addicts, aside from the Internet?  So, is he saying that before the Internet, there were no sex addicts?”.  Questions, questions, questions, and not a lot of answers.

      I could honestly go on and on about the concept of addiction and how Americans have this tendency to medicalize any phenomena they don't understand and think that prescription drugs is the panacea to these and all of society's ills, but that will probably be on another article.  With this, I will leave you with a thought:  Did the announcement of David Duchovny's sex addiction happen to coincide with the fact that second season of Californication (scheduled to air on Showtime on Sunday, September 28th) is just around the corner, or is he really an addict, compelled by his uncontrollable urges?  Is this another marketing ploy heavily cloaked by an appeal to the public's sentiment, curiosity and thirst for the bizarre? I guess we will never know, but it does make one think about their own addictions as well as  the society's addiction to sex, drugs and money.

By Banaue R. Terras