Rabbi: “Are you just going there to meet chicks?”
Luke: “God forbid. I’m not going there because I have behaviors out of control. I haven’t had sex in almost a year and a half.”
Rabbi: “With a person?”
Luke: “And I haven’t looked at porn in three months.”
Rabbi: “You haven’t looked at your own website?”
Luke: “No.”
Rabbi: “I haven’t looked at porn in two weeks.”
Luke: “Because your computer is busted.”
“I was describing my fantasies to my therapist about a month ago and he said, ‘That sounds like eroticized rage.’ All of my fantasies are eroticized rage.”
“I read these books on sex addiction. I don’t even fit stage one because I’m not acting out. I’m not doing anything behaviorally but all my fantasies are basically anger acted out. I said, I want to get clean. I want to get sober. Because I’m walking around dreaming about boinking chicks. There’s gotta be a finer, higher way to live my life. Why don’t I fantasize about being married? Why do I fantasize about boffing chicks at Ralphs? So long as they’re not tattooed and pierced.”
Rabbi: “I don’t buy sex addiction. Torah tells us that that is the way God made us and we have to fight.”
“Are you banging broads?”
Luke: “No.”
Rabbi: “Then you’re doing great. Why do you have to go to Sex Addicts Anonymous? That’s phony baloney.”
“There’s no such thing as sex addiction. It’s called being a male.”
Luke: “A longtime therapist of mine said to me, ‘You’re not a sex addict. I treated you for years.’ I said, ‘I’m not particularly interested in whether or not I’m a sex addict. I’m interested in whether or not the 12-step program can enhance my life. The price of entrance is to say, I’m a sex addict.
“Number two, I’m not interested in reducing my sexual desire. I’m interested in reducing certain emotional problems that hurt my life. For instance, in high school, I was a gambling addict.”
Rabbi: “Now that’s a real addiction.”
Luke: “It got really bad. I got thousands of dollars in debt [to a fellow student who I paid off about $100 total and we went our separate ways]. After high school, I said, I’m never going to gamble again. And with the exception of two times when it was with other people’s money, I have not.”
“So I’ve got this underlying addictive personality. What’s important is what’s underneath that. I’ve got this hole in my soul that I try to fill through excitement. Gambling fed that excitement. So I cut out gambling. Then it was chasing scoops. Big stories got my adrenalin pumping. That excitement fed my junkie side. I needed that excitement. Sexual conquests, real or imagined, would feed that junkie side. I know that I wouldn’t be so jonesing for a fix if I had my life together.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I tend to talk about sex inappropriately and too often.”
Rachel Resnick wrote the memoir Love Junkie. She is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller Go West Young F*cked-Up Chick. She has published articles, essays, and celebrity-profile cover stories in the Los Angeles Times, Women’s Health, and BlackBook.
in December 2010, Luke Ford talks to Kirsten Rogoff, a licensed marriage and family therapist with offices in the South Bay, California. She is a trained psychoanalytic in sex addiction.
