The Ranger Online

Issue date: 6/30/08 Section: Premiere

Media Credit: Lindsay Medina Bylinda Vo-le, right, 17, shares her thoughts on being a sexually active teen. Her friend Mary Choe, 17, talked about preserving morals by waiting until a later age to become sexually active.

Media Credit: Brianna Roberts Kelly McDaniel, a sex and love therapist, helps singles and couples through their sexual and love issues in San Antonio.

Sex and teens have always been a risky combination, but adding the Internet has resulted in a sexual addiction for some.

Teens who were not particularly susceptible to sexual addiction can now be easily bombarded with sexual images. The mixture of increased hormones, curiosity and sheer time spent on the Internet means that teens are at risk of becoming addicted to sex, according to experts in the field.

"An addiction to pornography can happen in as short a time as six weeks if watched for 10 hours or more each week and if the person has a predisposition to addiction," said psychologist
Brenda Schaeffer, who wrote the book "Love or Addiction? The Power and Peril of Teen Sex and Romance."

The teen brain will have a difficult time breaking away from the addiction without support, Schaeffer said, who is a certified addiction specialist and practices in Minneapolis. Adolescent brains are not fully developed until age 22, so it can be harder for teens to put a stop to all of the sexual and romantic impulses, she said.

Moses, 17, who answered questions via his MySpace page, first had oral sex when he was in seventh grade. He learned about sex mostly from his older brother. He asked that his last name be withheld because his parents don't know he is sexually active.

He looks at porn and has sex but doesn't consider himself an addict. He considers his lifestyle normal.

"Honestly, every guy does when they have nothing to do. So I usually look at porn when I'm bored," Moses said.

San Antonio sex and love therapist Kelly McDaniel said sexual addiction is being fueled by the Internet and the plethora of pornographic images that it offers. Children are accidentally accessing pornography at a young age while doing something as innocent as homework.

"Something happens to the brain if you trigger the fear response and the arousal response at the same time. You create the most powerful neurological cocktail that there is. This is what we're going to start seeing affect children," McDaniel said.

Because of the Internet and the availability of sexual images and cyber relationships, many teenagers show signs of being sexually addicted, but they either think it's normal or are in denial. Teenagers simply aren't emotionally prepared to handle the fact that they're addicted, McDaniel said.

"So as professionals treating this, we may see the signs in a teenager or a 20-year-old but actually with an addiction, you have to own it yourself, and there aren't many teens or people in their 20s or even in their 30s who are willing," McDaniel said.

In her book, Schaeffer also expresses concern over cyber relationships, which can be just as powerful as those that take place face-to-face. However, cyber relationships often move faster than those off the Internet, and teens get addicted to the first rush of euphoria that accompanies the beginning of a relationship. The problem is that when the relationship ends, it is just as devastating as a relationship outside of a virtual world, and the cycle of happiness and depression doesn't allow room for recovery.

"People are developing fantasy affairs that they get really hooked into. I've met adults that still aren't able to let go, even when married with children," Schaeffer said.

While most schools cover the biological effects of having sex, the emotional repercussions of sexual activity are often overlooked.

Bylinda Vo-le, 17, became sexually active when she was 16. When she and her boyfriend split, she said it was harder on her than it would have been if they hadn't had sex.

"You get emotionally tied down to that person, so it's harder when you do separate," Vo-le said. Vo-le is not a sex addict, but she reflects the sentiments of many teens.

Sexual addiction is a neurological disorder that is more comparable with food addiction than a substance addiction and leaves someone craving the rush of serotonin and dopamine, therapist McDaniel said.

"Most sex addicts will tell you once they get into recovery that they don't even like the sex. They don't feel it," McDaniel said.

However, there isn't enough information about sexual addiction for teens. Most believe that it is a craving or a liking of sex rather than a chemical imbalance in the brain.

"Every now and then I get a craving for [sex] and it's hard to hold back," Moses said.

Schaeffer explains in her book that, like drugs and alcohol, sex and love are often used in an unconscious effort to self medicate or get high. The newness of a relationship is a neurological high. However, that rush is exhausting to uphold and eventually leads to a crash.

Even after a diagnosis, treatment is very tricky because, like food, sex is a healthy part of life. In fact, not having sex can be damaging as well. In addition, unlike with drugs or alcohol where sober is when the substance is no longer being used, sexual sobriety is determined by the addict.

While the addiction is the same, culturally there are vast differences between men and women who are addicted. Culturally, it is more shameful for women who are addicted to sex, so they identify with being love-addicted while men are more likely to use the term "sex addiction" because it doesn't imply dependency, McDaniel said.

Either way, the addiction is accompanied by feelings of loneliness and isolation.

"A lot of people think that sex addicts are out there to hurt people, and that's just not the case," McDaniel said. "It's a way of self-abuse, a way of living profoundly deprived of any love and connection."

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