In his book profiling the lives of eight people with addiction, writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis writes candidly about his own sexual demons.

BY CHRISTOPHER LISOTTA

A contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Benoit Denizet-Lewis is known for his pieces on American culture. For the first time Denizet-Lewis has written a book, America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life, where for nearly three years he followed eight individuals all dealing with different kinds of addiction — drugs, eating, drinking, gambling — while candidly revealing his own struggle with sexual compulsion.

FRONTIERS: One of the people you interviewed was a bisexual bodybuilder. What was it like writing about someone who had body issues? It seems like that could have a lot of resonance for many gay men.

BENOIT DENIZET-LEWIS: One of the arguments I make and I truly believe—and let me preface this by saying most gay people are not addicts—if you look at studies on smoking and substance abuse, the LGBT community has higher rates of addiction than the heterosexual community. I believe for many of us it is inherently traumatic to grow up gay in this culture. From a young age we learn to have shame around our sexuality, we learn to compartmentalize, we learn to keep secrets, so we are really set up in a pretty messed up way from a young age. We have these traumatic childhoods so it is not surprising we would grow up looking for validation in a lot of different ways so we can feel good about ourselves. So that's why some of us struggle with sexual addiction, and why some us struggle with body image. Todd, our bisexual bodybuilder, was an extreme example of this. He was someone who used crystal meth but also was psychologically addicted to steroids. If he did not take them he felt like he was shrinking. I think a lot of gay men can relate to some issues around body dysmorphia.

Did writing this book help you with your own addiction, or was your overcoming your addiction a separate journey?

I don't think you can separate them. I am by no means cured. I had a relapse while writing the book. I really related to everyone in the book. An intellectual understanding of their addiction really does not do much good for an addict. That's not going to keep me from spending 10 hours on the Internet looking at pornography. They are separate things, and that's hard for a lot of people to understand—that knowledge, while helpful, is not nearly enough. I have to every day accept that I have an addiction and ask for help. But if I do those things, I'm in pretty good shape.

You write about addiction among the elderly, which many people dismiss even as it becomes a big problem.

Addiction is skyrocketing among people in their ‘50s and ‘60s. This is something we don't talk about much. The other big trend that is going on is illegal drug use is decreasing a little bit, but we're just replacing them with prescription drugs. And just to add to what we talked about earlier, when I talk to people in the gay community about sex addiction, there are two reactions that I get. The first is, “Honey, we're all sex addicts and stop stressing out about it.” The second reaction I get is, “How dare you try to make sex more shameful.” I'm not trying to make sex a bad thing. Sex is a great thing when not done in a way that adds to the shame and sadness and isolation. For sex addicts, it ceases to be fun after a while. Most gay men are not sex addicts. And as for criticizing gay liberation, I'm not doing that either. I got an e-mail the other day from a 19-year-old guy who said, “I'm a great kid, I have great friends but I live this secret life; I've had sex with 200 guys, I can't get off the Internet and I just found out I'm HIV-positive.” A lot of time, people say, “Oh you're 19, don't worry about it.” But for this kid it's not fun. He has an addiction to it. Sometimes it's hard to tell what's garden-variety, I just came out of the closet, kid in the candy store, and then what goes over the edge and turns into something really sad.

After following these people for years and seeing the setbacks, are you hopeful about overcoming addiction or are you emotionally drained?

The first thing we need to do is have a conversation about this and talk about it openly. I would certainly have preferred to not have come out (as a sex addict) in this way. But I believe we have a serious problem in this country, and one that costs a staggering amount of money. We are much more comfortable talking about the consequences of addiction. It is an incredibly costly problem. I'm hopeful that we start talking about this in an empathetic, nuanced and intelligent way.