Not that Ozzy & Sharon Osbourne’s recent marital troubles should be any real litmus test to the quandary of infidelity among married folk, but once again the term “sex addiction” is being bandied about via the couple’s troubles. It seems Sharon O. has been on T.V. commenting on Ozzy’s self-admitted sex addiction over his recent affair with Michelle Pugh, but really, does sex addiction actually exists?

According to David J. Ley, Ph.D. psychiatrists and therapists diagnosing patients as sex addicts is irresponsible as the term sex addiction does not appear in American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The layman as much as the media uses the term to cover a wide range of possible other problems, as it seems to be another one of those modern catch-all politically correct phrases. In the seminal book on this subject Ley’s “The Myth of Sex Addiction,” reveals that the misdiagnosis and jump to assumption over the idea of a person being addicted to sex (and needing to ‘repent over it) has grown into a cottage industry around the men (it’s mostly men who are termed addicted) who seek treatment…which Ozzy Osbourne currently is.

Levy further postulates that we really didn’t hear about sex addiction too much or ever at all before the Bill Clinton sex scandal broke. He also points out that American society is basically anti-sex, anti-pornography, anti-masturbation, basically anti any behaviors running counter to the God-fearing Puritan ethos so popular at the building of this country.

Harmful addictions do exist for humans. Compulsive behaviors have led many a man and woman astray. But if a thing-like sex addiction-simply does not exist, is an umbrella term for other possible concerns, or is simply being used to create a revenue stream for men and women using questionable therapies for bogus diagnosis, then the myth has become a very real and pervasive lie.