In January 2012, one of the winners of the Venice Film Festival, the film "Shame" will be released on the world screens. The main character of the picture, played by actor Michael Fassbender, is obsessed with sex and is unable to control his sex life. He tries to find support from his family, and also seeks help from employees. In real life, according to scientists, such obsessive states are becoming more common
Doctors from the United States and Europe are forced to state that sexomania, a word that until recently was used exclusively in a humorous context, is indeed a serious disease along with drug addiction and alcoholism.
It affects more than 9 million people in the United States and slightly fewer in Europe. The world is overwhelmed by epidemics of sex addiction, British journalists write. A few years ago, few people took this disease seriously, but over time, more and more people began to go to doctors, complaining that a constant passion for bodily pleasures prevents them from living and working normally.
Most of the patients said that their families broke up after the spouse found out about the numerous betrayals of their partner in life, which he simply could not control. Many "drug addicts" played countless novels at work, which inevitably led to the fact that the patient could not concentrate on the tasks assigned to him and lost his position.
According to representatives of the American Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health, there is no exact statistics on the number of sex addicts, but according to their data, more than 9 million people are affected by this disease in the United States alone. In addition, if a few years ago the number of psychiatrists specializing in this disease did not exceed two hundred, now only in America there are more than one and a half thousand. Almost every major city has a special center for the treatment of people addicted to sex.
Interestingly, over the past 10 years, the composition of sex-dependent patients has also changed greatly. If earlier problems with uncontrolled sexual desires arose in men aged 40-50, now the ranks of sex addicts have replenished with adolescents and old people. Many of them were handed over to treatment centers by relatives who accidentally "caught" their grandfather watching porn films or found sexual messages on the phone of their 12-year-old son.
There are women among sex-dependent patients, but they are still much less than men. Experts say the root of the problem for sex addicts is the same as that of addicts who take stimulants and other chemicals. Such patients need to constantly maintain a high level of dopamine in the body - a substance that stimulates the part of the brain responsible for pleasure.
Notable sex addicts include the famous golfer Tiger Woods and the former head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, doctors say.