Addiction Interaction Disorder

I have been doing interventions for about 10 years. I have done around 180. I have always been successful in bringing the message to the still suffering alcohol or addict and his family. The loved one usually goes to treatment. I thought I was good at what I did until the term "addiction interaction disorder" began to crop up in my daily life. The term originally was coined by Patrick Carnes, the great sex addiction guru. It has been further refined by Rob Weiss in all of the groundbreaking work that he has been doing around sex addiction. Now when approaching an intervention I ask many more questions because there are always many layers to addiction and there is always more fused into the process or hidden under the surface. 

In my interventions what I have consciously done is achieve a better understanding of addiction interaction, which again puts me in a better position to serve the needs of my clients. This leads to better episodes of treatment for these clients and much better outcomes for clients and their families. I now see what clinicians have long noted, which is that sex addiction has been woven into an intricate web of addictions, compulsions and avoidance strategies. If we consider this going into treatment, then the treatment experience is enhanced as we are treating the whole person and all of the nuances of their personal addiction. 

We know that multiple addictions combine to overwhelm a person by their complexity and power. The phenomenon is so strong that no specific focus is strong enough to escape from it. So what happens is that if the addict has pulled the interaction card, they switch from one problematic substance or behavior to another. If they can’t use one substance or activity to escape and dissociate from life, they’ll use another. For instance, Marie is an active alcoholic who occasionally feels bad about her drinking and sobers up. But any time she stops drinking, she binge eats, numbing out with food instead of her usual alcohol. Later, when she goes back to drinking, her food consumption returns to normal.

With co-occurring addiction, addicts utilize multiple addictions simultaneously. For instance, Jason drinks alcoholically, uses cocaine, and gambles at the local casino. Most nights he tells himself he’s only going to have a beer or two at home, but before he knows it, he’s coked up and sitting at the blackjack table, with the nearest cocktail server on high alert. Nearly always, if he’s doing one of his addictive behaviors, he’s doing all three. The mono-drug user and addict is a vanishing species in American culture. The reality for our patients is that they have made a number of “bargains with chaos.” If each addiction brings unmanageability to the patient’s life, it would be clinically negligent to think that the resulting chaos from each does not compound the problems of the others. The whole may in fact be more than the sum of its parts. In my own journey I used to attend a meeting in Chicago where a happy and sober friend would announce at the beginning of the meeting that he was addicted to anything he did twice. He would say this in jest! I get it, I understand.

Patrick Carnes produced data that connected sex addiction with other addictions. In a study published in 1991, he followed a sample of 932 sex addicts. Within that sample, 42% reported chemical dependency, 38% reported an eating disorder, 28% reported compulsive working, and 26% reported compulsive spending. As part of their recovery, they also identified multiple addictions in their mothers (22%), fathers (40%), and siblings (56%). Over time, numerous studies have documented the comorbidity of sex addiction and other addictions.

Cross- and co-occurring addictions are especially common among men and women who act out sexually. In one early survey of male sex addicts, 87% reported regularly abusing either an addictive substance or another addictive behavior. Male sex addicts often pair sexual activity with stimulant drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine (plus erection-enhancing prescription medications such as Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra). There is no similar research for female sex addicts – in fact, there is a dearth of research on female sexual addiction in general – but we can assure you that female sex addicts do frequently present in treatment settings with cross- and/or co-occurring issues. Often they pair their sexual acting out with an eating disorder, but they may also pair it with alcohol or drugs, including meth and cocaine.