I'm a female SEX AND PORN ADDICT (audio)

Erica Garza on "Latino USA" (Episode #1812) NPR via SCPR.org, Simon and Schuster Publishers; Crystal Quintero, CC Liu, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

They call me Blanca ("White"), a Hispanic from L.A., and a sex- and porn-addict.

Princesses? We're victims of a cruel SS false flag operation, so stop staring at our butts.

I'm in recovery, so I wrote this memoir.

Los Angeles sex addict Erica Garza (who made it back from the brothels of Buddhist Bangkok, Thailand), author of Getting Off: One Woman's Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction, talks about her complex and often destructive relationship with sex.

• AUDIO: LISTEN NOW (starts at Minute 35)

This book is a courageous account of one woman’s unflinching and ultimately hopeful journey through sex and porn addiction.

A fixation on porn and orgasm, strings of failed relationships, and serial hook-ups with strangers, inevitable blackouts [from the abuse of intoxicants] to blunt the shame -- these are not things we often hear women share publicly.

But Erica Garza brings them with candor, eloquence, and introspection in Getting Off.

• HELP! I'm an addict, too! Is there any help? Yes: SASH
• Is there such a thing as Buddhist recovery from addiction?
• Inside Sex Addiction Rehab with Dr. Drew Pinsky (Oprah) Addiction specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky helps male and female sex addicts. How to identify and treat intimacy issues. 
• VIDEO: Dr. Drew explains abuse, sex-addiction connection
• Sex Addiction: A Real Disorder (The Dr. Oz Show) Leading specialist explains sex addiction and its 5 warning signs.

It all started with...[Roman Catholic] shame.

What sets this account apart from a typical memoir is the absence of any [memory of a] precipitating trauma.
 

There was nothing beyond the garden variety of hurt we’ve all endured in simply becoming a person -- reckoning with family, learning to be social, integrating what it means to be sexual.
 

Lana Del Rey can sing the soundtrack.

Whatever violence or abuse Erica Garza’s life took on through sex addicted behavior was of her own making -- fueled by guilt, fear, loneliness, self-pity, self-loathing, and the hopelessness these feelings bring on.
 

Yes, girls watch porn and get addicted.

It happens as she runs from one side of the world to the other in an effort to break her habits -- gong from East Los Angeles to Buddhist Southeast Asia, through the brothels of Bangkok and the yoga studios of Bali, to disappointing stabs at therapy and 12-step programs back home in the USA. 

• My Addiction to Sexual Shame (The Cut) Essay about one woman's journey through sex addiction adapted from Erica Garza's book Getting Off
• A Recovering Sex and Porn Addict Tells All (New York Times) Is sex addiction real? I was never particularly convinced, until one afternoon spent in a dark theater in Buddhist Si Racha, Thailand, changed my mind. It was the spring... 
• "Sex addiction can happen to anyone" (The Guardian) Erica Garza confronts her experience of overcoming sex and porn addiction and the shame that still surrounds it. 
• Shame, Porn, and Perversion: “Getting Off” (LARB/lareviewofbooks.org) Kristin Sanders talks about sex, addiction, and technology in her review. 
• GETTING OFF by Erica Garza (Kirkus Reviews) Her memoir begins in bed, where she is having sex with a man she neither knows well nor particularly cares for. This scene sets the tone for a narrative that never deviates from its intent to educate and engross readers with the random sexual escapades and private pains of a woman at... 
• Getting Off: One Woman's Journey Through Sex and Porn (Goodreads) This is a bravely honest memoir from writer Erica Garza about her personal struggle... 
• "Getting Off": Erica Garza discusses recovery from sex and [orn (thefix.com) The common narrative about women who are sex or porn addicts is that they must have been sexually abused. But sex addiction can happen to anybody, [because] it doesn't have to start with abuse or a big trauma. 
• Erica Garza (@ericadgarza) on Twitter

It sucks, it sucks bitter b*lls to be an addict.

In these remarkable pages she draws an evocative, studied portrait of the anxiety that fuels her obsessions, as well as the exhilaration and hope she begins to feel when she suspects she might be free of them.
 

Yet, there is no false or prepackaged sense of redemption here. Even her relationship with the man she will ultimately marry seems credibly, painfully rocky as it finds its legs with several false starts.
 

[The Buddha was right about sex]

Her increasing sense of self-acceptance and peace by journey’s end feels utterly earned and free of recovery platitudes.

In exploring American and Mexican-American cultural taboos surrounding sex and porn from a female perspective, she offers a brave and necessary voice to our evolving conversations about addiction and the impact of Internet culture. Look Inside the Book

Speak up. I landed on my feet. It pays to be light-skinned (colorism) for any race.

Refuge Recovery: 12 Steps without "God" as a Higher Power: Against the Stream

Also on the audio: Priscilla Villarreal, who calls herself “Lagordiloca,” has become a highly controversial social media sensation in the North American border city of Laredo, Texas. Each night Lagordiloca drives through the streets of Laredo chasing and live-streaming violent crime scenes, accidents, and immigration raids. Latino USA goes on a ride-along with Lagordiloca. Plus La Chamba talks about their cover of 1979 classic chicha song, “Cariñito.”