Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction

This book is excellent. I suggest anyone read Ms. Cheaver's self analysis for clarity in dealing with her compulsive behavior. Her story is compelling and meaningful for the addicts as well as those who are unsure abuot their own behavior.

Susan Cheever is most often mentioned as the daughter of literary great, John Cheever. However, with this book she has entered a new arena of her own. With this book, Susan has presented us with a novel that explains that sex addiction should be treated not as a failure of morality or character but as a disease of brain biochemistry resulting from a combination of genetics and life events. This is a groundbreaking effort and one that is a great read. In 'Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction' Susan Cheever has given us an entrance into the world of all addicts and what it means to be addicted. In the end, she says," there are no easy answers. A straight look about some crooked feelings. Desire shows us the difference between the addiction that cripples our emotions, and healthy, empowering love that enhances our lives." In this book, we learn that Susan has been an alcoholic and a sex addict. She has detailed the conversations she had with experts in neuroscience and psychology of addictive behavior. People who are addicted to alcohol, sex and drugs share common traits. Some sort of "otherworldly suspension of will" comes over addicts, and they cannot stop themselves nor do they understand at the moment the will is not there. In fact many addicts are attracted to more than one agent. Many alcoholics smoke. Food addicts who have gained so much weight they need gastric by-pass surgery, find that after losing weight they may turn to gambling, or alcohol or sex. One addiction may lead to another. A person who has a predilection to addiction, may go for years without acting out on that addiction, and then one day, bam, it has started. There is a loss of will from the activation of similar brain pathways no matter what the fix is. Susan Cheever shares her own story of alcoholism and sex addiction. Her three marriages, her affairs, the stories behind the stories. She also shares many stories of friends or acquaintances to provide us with a basic understanding of the humans inside these behaviors. She interviews many behavioral scientists and psychologists. Some have conflicting views and several disagree with Cheever. She dissects the scientists opinions and forms one of her own. Addicts do not have control over their behaviors. They try, but always fail. One addiction may and usually does lead to another. This may be a combination of genetic and life experiences. It leaves me with a feeling of deja vous. These wonderful people in my life have no real control over some of their behaviors and it is not until they come to an understanding and want to change these behaviors that their life may change. No amount of nagging in the world will affect this kind of change. Good to know, is it not? We all hate nags, don't we? I found this book to be forcefully written. Susan Cheever shares her belief that sex addiction is much more accepted than alcoholism or drugs. "She says, and this is a central theme of the book, that "in our world, addiction to ot

I have known Susan Cheever - not well, but just enough to like her and be glad to see her --- for almost thirty years. We met when I was writing a New York Times Magazine profile of her father. I loved those stories, and, because I was young and naive, I did not grasp that the man who wrote them might also have invented himself. My John Cheever was a recovering alcoholic who lived in the country with a classy wife, dogs, wood fires --- the whole country squire bit. What I did not know about John Cheever --- and what he very much feared I did --- was that he was bi-sexual, probably leaning more toward gay. Had I known this, I would never have written it, nor would the Times have published it. This was 1979, when gays were beautiful young men in discos. Secrets run in families. Susan Cheever struck me as a talented young writer; like any number of children of the famous and troubled, she seemed to want nothing more than to do her work and have a quiet life. It seemed absolutely right that she would write a biography of Bill Wilson, the father of Alcoholics Anonymous, the program that saved her father. And I'd admire anyone who could write a book called "American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau". So it was quite a surprise to open 'Desire'and discover this was more than a smart third-person exploration of sexual addiction. It's also a first-person account of four decades of personal trouble. Susan Cheever's parents had told her she was unattractive and would have a hard time finding a husband. She found three --- and countless lovers. "Whenever there was a crisis," she writes, "I found a man to help me take the edge off the feelings of helplessness and pain." But if you're looking for a lurid tale of hotel rooms and low times, you'll be disappointed by this brief --- 169-page --- book. Cheever's problem is a launch-point, not an opportunity to bleed on paper. Right at the beginning, she states her goal: This is a book that explores the boundaries between the kind of love on which a life can be built, and the passionate kind of love that is an addiction.... The most familiar addictions in the world we live in are addictions to alcohol and drugs. Unlike those addictions, the addictions which use people as a substance are often hidden behind our ideas about love. Addiction to people, she notes, is not like other addictions. No one praises addiction to alcohol and drugs --- but who says love is a bad thing? Especially falling in love, when the world seems fresh and life looks thrilling. But at the end of the day, she says, we must ask ourselves: Is addiction to "love" really different from the chemical addictions? Cheever has read a lot, and she has the great journalist's ability to find the right quote and telling statistic. In these pages, you'll learn that a study found that "more than half of cocaine users had sexual compulsion problems." That men who abuse