(Un) Happy Ending

Sex addiction in women is on the rise in Australia, but even as cases increase and awareness of the condition grows, the shame, secrecy and stigma remain. Writer Alley Pascoe investigates the unspoken-about condition

- By Alley Pascoe

It's a regular Tuesday morning in the late 1990s and Lucy* is on her way to her office job in the CBD. She's wearing yesterday's clothes and nursing a hangover, while trying to work out where she is exactly. She has no idea. Memories of the night before come back to her in fragments, like shards of glass. She remembers going for a casual Monday night drink after work, the man she met at the bar and the desperate need she felt to be with him. She doesn't remember leaving the bar, how she got to the man's apartment, if they used protection when they had sex, or even his name. In the harsh light of day, she has to squint to try to remember what his face looks like.

Lucy has been here before - not on this very street trying to get her bearings and find a taxi - but standing in the dark shadow of a drunken night and random hook-up. The worst part is, she knows she will probably do it all again that night. Come the afternoon, the screams of her hangover will be replaced with something much worse: silence. The empty void in her heart will need filling and she'll go to desperate measures to do so. Before she finishes work for the day, she might even meet the maintenance man on the top floor of her office building and have sex with him right then and there. Later, she might hook up with one of the five men she has on rotation or pick up another stranger at a pub after two bottles of white wine. This is an average day in the life of an undiagnosed sex addict - an endless cycle of emptiness, desperation, shame and longing.