How Steve-O Turned to Harm Reduction For Sex Addiction– Podcast Episode 35
Reviewed By: Dr Stanton Peele
Posted on October 5th, 2020 - Last updated: September 18th, 2023
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Welcome to the LPP Podcast Episode 35!
What is Sundays With Stories?
Stanton Peele and Zach Rhoads, an addiction and a child development specialist respectively, converse about the realities of addiction and substance misuse in their Sunday conversations. Stanton and Zach work together in the online Life Process Program and in publications like Outgrowing Addiction: With Common Sense Instead of “Disease” Therapy. Their Sunday Conversations tap into this overwhelming truth: people have the capacity to overcome addiction. And, in fact (like Zach himself) they regularly do so.
The audio version of the podcast is here:
How do we know?
ALL life studies of people’s substance use show that people successfully come to grips with their addictions. Moreover, people all around you can tell you tales of such natural, developmental recovery. Only they’re not “allowed” to tell their stories, for fear of offending the dysfunctional, but all-powerful, recovery community.
Today’s Episode
Today, Zach and Dr. Peele discuss Stephen Glover’s (AKA Steve-O) addiction story.
Steve-O is the TV personality who produced and starred in the Jackass movies. During and subsequent to his rise to his movie career, he developed addictions to drugs and alcohol.
He went to a disease-based rehab and has abstained from alcohol and drugs ever since (which LPP doesn’t necessarily discourage, but we don’t demand it either).
Later in life, however, Steve-O developed a sex addiction, and decided he wanted to kick this addiction as well. At first, he abstained from sex (just as he did drugs and alcohol). But after abstaining from sex for a year, he realized that the best way to beat a sex addiction is not to abstain, but to form more healthy and stable sexual relationships and ditch the destructive cycle (Steve-O is now a stand-up comedian and podcaster, and he’s in a healthy relationship.)
In other words: Steve-O discovered, on his own, that the best tools for beating addiction are harm-reduction, moderation, and overall life-balance, via meaning, purpose, and personal responsibility— all of which he achieved without support groups or disease-based therapies.
Whether Steve-O can generalize the common sense thinking that he established for kicking his sex addiction as a way of kicking drugs and alcohol addictions. . . Well, that’s discussed in today’s episode.
We hope you enjoy!
