Sex addiction: Real, or just so much hokum? If anyone’s qualified to give an opinion it’s Steve Phillips, the former ESPN analyst and Mets GM who had an affair with 22-year-old production assistant Brooke Hundley, while both were employed at ESPN. Phillips tried to end the relationship, and Hundley sent a letter revealing all to Phillips’ wife. Which is always fun. After several months in hiding, Phillips is talking about it all (the 13th step: Rehabilitating one’s career?). He says that sex addiction is real. But he also says that it’s not an excuse; it’s a diagnosis. Ah, the New York Mets, Brooke Hundley and Tiger Woods in the same post. Enjoy, America.
Phillips huddled with Mike Francesca on WFAN in New York on Sunday and had a couple of interesting things to say. Key quotes:
“The reality is that I knew that I was lost, but until this blew up I didn’t know where to get help for it. So, yes, this blew up and then I said what is going on with me? I needed the help and found the help and I didn’t declare myself a sex addict, therapists declared me that and showed me the path to try to be able to get come help.”
“The reality is that when somebody is an addict they try to control things on their own. The twelve steps are out there for all the different addictions, but the first step is that you are powerless over your addiction and that your life becomes unmanageable,” Phillips said. “You cannot do it by yourself. Whether it is drugs or alcohol or sex or gambling or food or whatever that addiction is. In order to get admitted into these facilities that treat sex addiction you have to go through an interview process to explain to them, tell us your story, tell us what is going on with it and they have criteria that you have to match.
“There is also tests that you have to take to be able to do it. Ultimately for any addiction it comes down to, and again I am not an expert at this and I can only speak from my own experience because I am not an expert. I can tell you from my therapy, my treatment, my program, my experience, my life, that people get diagnosed in a lot of these programs as sex addicts. The reality is they want it to stop, try to stop, stop for periods of time, ultimately couldn’t stay stopped and whatever there addiction was within sex addiction, alcoholism or anything else it comes down to… It is a trauma-based illness, that you had some trauma in childhood that has created some hole inside, some brokenness inside of you that ultimately you try to fill or medicate by whether it is alcohol or drugs, sex or something else. The treatment I did really was based around trying to get to the basis of what was that damage done and how to start changing those beliefs.”
On if Phillips knew for sure that Tiger Woods was at the Hattiesburg facility.
“I saw the pictures. He said that he was at a place for forty-five days. He never said that he was in Mississippi, but everybody assumes that he is. From everything that I know about their program there and if he was actually there, and we all kind of hear that he was, he went through the same program that everybody else went through. They don’t craft it individually. It is designed to put you in groups with other addicts that are there to go through the program together.”
My take on his stay in sex addiction therapy — and sorry if I’m Mr. Grumpy Cynic here — is that it looks good on a resume. If at some point Phillips wants to be employed again by a big network, the first things that executives are going to want to see is some sort of assurance that the Hundley mess won’t happen again. A framed “I graduated top of my class at Gentle Path” diploma would go a log way toward that.
***
Steve Phillips: “I didn’t declare myself a sex addict, therapists declared me that…” [Sports Radio Interviews]
