Christopher Hitchens admits that he's one of "those men who were never really in battle and wished they had been."

His wife said that, back in 2006, adding: "There's a whole tough-guy, 'I am violent, I will use violence, I will take some of these people out before I die' talk, which is key to his psychology – I don't care what he says. I think it is partly to do with his upbringing."

He now says it's true: "Yeah. Yes. One of the things I've realised, writing the book, is that it has to be true."

What did he feel on September 11, 2001?

"[E]xhilaration. Because I thought, now we have a very clearly drawn confrontation between everything I hate and everything I love. There is something exhilarating about that. Because, OK, now I know what I'm doing."...

"Do I ask myself... do I think our civilisation is superior to theirs? Yes, I do. Do I think it's worth fighting for? Most certainly."...

"Guantánamo slightly threatened at one point to change my attitude towards capital punishment. I thought it would have been good if some of those people could have been taken out and shot. Yeah, put up against a wall. Lincoln would have done it. Of course, I would have been against it if they had. But that's how I felt."

And he still believes believes he was right about the war in Iraq: "Yes, absolutely. I was right and they were wrong, that's pretty much it in a nutshell."

His mother thought there was "one unforgivable sin." It was "to be boring." And, according to the author of the linked article, there's a connection between the avoidance of boredom and the indulgence in alcohol:

He can't really manage eye contact. Once noon arrives, though, he brightens up, proposing the first scotch of the day with one of those bluff jokes about rules for drinking so dear to saloon bar bores the world over....

It seems to me so evidently the case that Hitchens is an alcoholic that to say much more feels unnecessary. But for the record, he trots out all the usual self-serving, defensive evasions: "For me, an alcoholic is someone who can't hold his drink" or, "I'm not dependent, but I'd prefer not to be without it." The longest he has ever been was a dry weekend "in fucking Libya", and he claims he drinks only to make other people less boring. So, presumably, he doesn't drink when he's with Amis? "Er, yuh, I do."

I wouldn't say he's exactly boring himself when dry, but drink certainly makes him livelier company than the 10am sober version, and we pass a highly enjoyable few hours in a pub garden, during which he tries out successive renditions of a Shakespearean sonnet, Being Your Slave, What Should I Do But Tend, on the photographer [a beautiful woman, who, earlier, had expressed disbelief in the effectiveness of seducing women with poetry].

Now, doesn't that make you want to read his memoir? It's "Hitch 22."

There's a big epidemic, no, not of sex addiction...

... but of wives deciding their husbands are sex addicts who must get treatment.

I’ve been a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Sex Therapist for 30 years.... But until about three years ago no one ever came in claiming to be a sex addict, or saying that his partner told him he was one....

I don’t treat sex addiction. The concept is superficial. It isn’t clearly defined or clinically validated, and it’s completely pathology-oriented. It presents no healthy model of non-monogamy, pornography use, or stuff like S/M. Some programs eliminate masturbation, which is inhumane, naïve, and crazy....

Oh, I observe people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and a few other exotic states. That accounts for some of what laypeople call “sex addiction.”

What I mostly see instead of “sex addicts” is people who are neurotic or narcissistic....

Thanks to regular commenter Julius Ray Hoffman, for sending me that link.

Read the whole post by Dr. Marty Klein. It's pretty funny, these men sent in by their wives to get treatment, after learning from their wives that "either I’m a sex addict and I couldn’t help it and I need treatment, or I’m just a selfish bastard and she wants a divorce."

How come so many women have gotten the idea they can diagnose this ailment? It's easy to figure out that wives grasp at the idea of addiction instead of facing the pain of rejection and betrayal, but why the big change in the last 3 years? There are people — not Dr. Klein — who make money in the addiction treatment racket, and they've managed to get their pitch out to the public, but how and why now? Some "Oprah" show?

I looked back into my blog archives to see what relevant things started 3 years ago. In 2007, there was the Larry Craig story. That got processed as "sex addiction" to some extent. In 2008, there was the Eliot Spitzer thing. Hmm. I wonder why something so inherently unbelievable gained traction when politicians were using it. It's testimony to the strong appeal of the sex addiction theory of marital infidelity that women bought it when they heard it from such low-credibility sources.

***

Is "sex addiction" one of these things that's going to be treated under the new health care regime, even as Medicare patients are given pain pills in lieu of hip replacements and heart valves?

ADDED: Why aren't wives more worried about treatment for sex addiction? You want the man to be "sexually addicted" to you. How would health workers remove the part of his sexuality that's goes toward other women and leave the part that goes to you? Even assuming this is a disease, the cure seems dangerous, unless you want a desexualized husband.

"Picture an addiction so lethal it has the potential to render an entire generation incapable of forming lasting marriages..."

"... and so widespread that it produces more annual revenue — $97 billion worldwide in 2006 — than all of the leading technology companies combined."

National Review freaks out about pornography... in an article by an anonymous woman who thinks her husband rejected her and left her for another woman because of pornography.

Addicts have a choice.

Right?

"It's such an important issue in America right now - the sex addiction outbreak."

We're all really concerned about him and hope he gets better."

"The medicalization of kind of what used to be called moral... you know... uh... or immoral... the medicalization of what used to be called immorality is certainly a topic that a lot of people, I'm sure, especially conservatives, have given... have given... devoted some ink to."

Isn't it strange how uncomfortable Bob Wright is talking about the subject of religion and morality? It almost seems that an alarm goes of in his head saying: Don't go there! That's what conservatives talk about! Watch the whole clip. The context is Tiger Woods, and I'm intent on enlarging into a more general critique of addiction therapy as a religion substitute. Does Wright cut off the conversation at the point where he can't see how to avoid sounding like a conservative?



And it's particularly odd since Bob was so intent on characterizing the discussion of Tiger Woods as frivolous. I'll limit myself to one clip, but the idea that we were stooping to talk about this subject came up a few times.

"Ann questions the sincerity of Tiger’s apology/Bob thinks Tiger’s swinging may have hurt his swing/Has this scandal harmed impressionable young fans?/Ann and Bob catch Winter Olympics fever/Amy Bishop and the banality of crazy/Was the Austin kamikaze pilot a terrorist?"

It's the new Bloggingheads! With Bob Wright and me!



ADDED: Here's a missed opportunity:



I shoulda said "Yeah, I've heard about his 'large part.'"

Michelle Cottle is really getting on Barack Obama's case about playing golf.

She writes:

Why would a leader vowing to shake up Washington--to alter the very nature of politics--sell his soul to a leisure activity that screams stodgy, hyperconventional Old Guard?

Sell his soul? Golf is not the devil. Isn't it possible that he golfs because he enjoys it? Unlike basketball, you get some leisurely strolling time. You can talk. You can smoke! And you're outdoors.

There are signs that Obama has been nursing a creeping golf addiction for some time now.

If there's an addiction involved, I bet it's smoking.

He took up the game a little more than a decade ago as a newbie state senator hoping to bond with more rural, conservative colleagues. Next thing you know, he was hooked....

So he actually has something genuine in common with the clinging-to-guns-and-religion crowd. That's horrible to Cottle, who'd like him to play basketball, like a good urban liberal.

Golf is a dying game--on the skids for nearly a decade, according to a 2008 report by the National Golf Foundation. The number of Americans who golf has fallen by some four million.... One observed problem: evolving family dynamics. Men once free to spend all weekend on the links are now expected to help shuttle the kids to soccer, walk the dog, and generally pull their weight on the home front. The first lady may be understanding about her man’s special recreational needs. But does President Obama really want to be associated with a game so antithetical to modern life?

Cottle is really hostile to golf.  She doesn't mention Tiger Woods, but I'm sensing a Nordegrenesque female rage — even though Obama is as uxorious a politician as I've ever seen. Though Cottle presents herself as the modern woman, she's mouthing ancient female complaints. (What is less hip than a "golf widow" cartoon?)

Let the poor man play golf if he's too tired to look cool playing basketball, needs a long walk, and loves his fresh air well-mixed with tobacco smoke. As long as the golf course is close to the White House — leave him alone!

"I tend to think technology addiction has to do with fear of, or aversion to, direct human contact."

"It allows you to seem to relate to others while actually staying inside your own head and keeping control of the encounter as if it was only your fantasy. Yes, porn, but that's only symptomatic, or emblematic."

Something Amba wrote in the comments back here that disturbed me. Now, come on into my comments and have an experience with me.