1. Sexual addiction is generally defined as a compulsion to seek out sex at any cost. It can embrace any form of compulsive sexual activity from masturbation, to serial relationships, to paying for sex.

2. Like cocaine and methamphetamines, sex dramatically increases levels of dopamine, the “feel-good” neurotransmitter in the brain.

3. After drugs, alcohol and shopping, sex is the fourth most common reason for debt in the UK. One in four callers to the UK Insolvency Helpline blames their financial problems on paying for sex.

4. Dr Marty Klein, a psychotherapist and the author of America's War On Sex: The Attack On Law, Lust, & Liberty, says: “Feeling out of control isn't the same as being out of control, and an unwillingness to exert self-discipline isn't the same thing as being addicted. People who masturbate too much, look at too much porn, or cheat on their partners are not ‘addicts'. They just don't like the consequences of their decisions. They may be impulsive, or angry, or lonely, but we [psychotherapists] know how to help them.”

5. Most self-confessed sex addicts are also dependent on other substances and it is often their use of alcohol and drugs that forces them to seek help. Recovering sex addicts are put on a 12-step programme, much like that of recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, with Sex Addicts Anonymous (www.saa-recovery.org).

6. But other psychological disturbances (obsessive-compulsion, bi -polarity, histrionic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and generalised anxiety) can also be expressed sexually and there is a danger that the label “sex addict” channels those who need other kinds of mental help into inappropriate 12-step-based recovery programmes.

7. In co-operation with hospitals, treatment programmes and private therapist”, the leading authority on sex addiction, Dr Patrick J. Carnes, has developed a diagnostic screening test (Sast). You can take the test at www.sexhelp.com.

8. Confirmed sex addict? Me too. Tests such as Sast have encouraged 16 million people in the US to label themselves as sex addicts.

9. The American Psychiatric Association does not recognise sex addiction as a mental illness and the term “sex addict” does not even appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the psychiatric profession's official diagnostic handbook.

10. Sexual pathologies hold a mirror to society. Remember, masturbation, promiscuity, homosexuality and nymphomania were once classified as psychiatric diseases too.

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