However, viewing pornography online is not without a high cost. Author and former sex addict George Collins wrote a new book "Breaking the Cycle: Free Yourself from Sex Addiction, Porn Obsession and Shame" addressing the consequences of porn usage in the workplace. These include extreme losses of productivity that cost companies millions of dollars each year.

Another consequence of porn usage at work is the loss of a promotion or income increase from poor or stunted performance. Employees who work alongside coworkers that view pornography may heighten the costs of pornography by suing their employers for establishing an unsuitable work environment.

Author Michael Leahy, also a former sex addict, has written the book "Porn at Work: Exposing the Office’s No. 1 Addiction," and said that 70 percent of the pornography people view online happens during the workday hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Human resources workers have also addressed the growing problem of porn use at work, with more than 60 percent of a group of 500 saying they had discovered pornography sites and materials on computers in the workplace.

Leahy believes that not only is porn more accessible than ever, many young males who are entering the workforce are already used to viewing pornography online on a regular basis and have experienced an atmosphere that normalizes pornography before they ever enter the workforce.

Emotionally, excessive pornography use is linked to loss of sexual performance and drive, depression and the destruction of family and social relationships. As usage progresses, a porn addiction can develop, which many researchers believe can be as strong as cocaine and has a similar effect on brain function, particularly the reward system. Excessive porn usage in the workplace can also be a sign of sexual addiction.

Like other addictions, porn usage in the workplace can become progressively more serious over time, with some people spending six to seven hours a day viewing pornography at work. Beyond the loss of a job, pornography addiction is often linked to obsessive and unwanted sexual thoughts that people describe as leading them to feel "hopeless" and "trapped."

Professional help is needed to recover from pornography addiction and can include individual counseling, group-based counseling or support from groups like Sex Addicts Anonymous. Counseling and treatment options can be recommended to employees who are discovered viewing pornography in the workplace, and the authors urge human resources professionals to take pornography viewing at work seriously and to have a plan in place for when it occurs.

In the U.S., it is estimated that at least 24 million adults are living with sexual addiction.

At first we were great together, so in sync that we’d often finish each other’s sentences. We called each other all the time, and went away for romantic weekends. I tolerated his taste in movies and he tolerated my obsession with all things Disney princess.

After about nine months together, the relationship started going downhill around Valentine’s Day. I wasn’t expecting diamonds, but I did think he’d take me out to dinner and give me a rose or something. I gave him a romantic card and a “free massage any time” certificate. He was busy that day, so he said that he’d like to do something special the following weekend. But it didn’t really happen, and I guess I pouted, and then I didn’t want to have sex when he did. Then we started criticizing each other for little things, then for bigger things. Finally, he left.

It’s a common scenario that many people have lived over and over. Sharon O’Hara, MFT, the clinical director at the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles, calls it “Lid Love.”

“It’s a concept based on the idea that we all carry around a jar of shame and guilt,” she says. “When you’re in love, it’s as if your beloved becomes a lid on your jar of guilt and shame, neutralizing all of the lies and secrets so that you feel nothing short of amazing. The pattern is predictable, beginning with trying to please the other person, never quite succeeding and then losing the lid and creating more guilt and shame.”

The High of New Love

When you fall in love with someone, you are basically in an altered state of consciousness – almost like a high. O’Hara calls this high “limerence,” after a book called Love and Limerence written by Dorothy Tennov. Scientists have discovered some of the specific chemicals, such as oxytocin, vasopressin and phenylethylamine (PEA), which make up this druggy state that the brain manufactures when you’re in love.

“Keeping the limerence going differs for different people,” O’Hara explains. “Men, for example, often get a boost in limerent levels just by looking at their beloved. Women are less visual and respond more to hearing sweet little nothings.”

With the lid firmly in place, both partners can avoid facing their deep-rooted feelings of shame and guilt. It’s as though having someone else’s complete and loving attention covers up all of the negatives from the past, says O’Hara. “If he loves me, I must be okay,” is a common feeling during this stage of a relationship.

The Lid Loosens

Over time, each partner begins to disappoint the other in small ways, then bigger ways, and the criticism begins. For example, a woman may get angry that her partner doesn’t call when he says he will. Her nagging makes him want to call less. Soon enough, the lid loosens.

“No one can live up to another person’s expectations all of the time,” explains O’Hara. “We want our partners to fix whatever is annoying us so that we can get back to feeling good. No matter how we phrase it, our criticism feels like attack bombers dropping more guilt and shame into an already pretty full jar. And when our partner gets defensive, we feel more junk piling into our jar.”

As a result of feeling so much shame and guilt, one partner leaves, desperate to find a new lid.

“Most of us go though a number of lids (new relationships) while the pile of guilt and shame keeps growing,” says O’Hara. “Every time we think, ‘This time will be different – I learned my lesson from the last lid.’ Sometimes we try to patch up that old lid: ‘I know, I’ll just send my lid to a treatment center, get the bumps out, then he’ll be back to calling me everyday, giving me my shot of limerence.’”

But it’s only a matter of time before both partners end up picking on each other again.

“This whole dynamic is what passes for love in our culture,” O’Hara says. “I call it ‘Lid Love.’ It’s conditional love: I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. I’ll be your lover, but only if you love me back the way I ask. After all, it’s your job to make me happy – that’s what we’re saying in the Lid Love scenario.”

People spend their lives looking for the perfect lid, the Prince Charming or Miss Perfect who is going to make us feel good about ourselves. The real problem all along, says O’Hara, is the jar of shame and guilt that’s just been growing with all the mutual mud-slinging.

Finding Love in a Pile of Lids

Many people can relate to the Lid Love scenario O’Hara describes and bounce from relationship to relationship, wondering why they can’t sustain love long-term or find their “soul mate.” So how do you go about finding deep, lasting love?

“You’ve got to stop looking for lids,” says O’Hara, “meaning men whose job, you think, it is to make you happy. Most of us look for a relationship to try to solve the pain of not knowing who we really are.”

Although people may not consider themselves addicts, Lid Love is just another term for romantic addiction. Similarly, sex addicts and porn addicts, who may have given up on finding love, are looking for fantasy lids. When they realize they can’t get limerence from the Internet, they may turn to substance abuse or other destructive behaviors to try to replicate it.

It’s difficult to stop these patterns, says O’Hara, when magazines and other media are full of how-to guides on becoming a more attractive lid. An integral part of the solution, she says, is to “stop focusing on finding the right guy – or girl – to solve your self-esteem problem. Then you can build the courage to face up to your own jar of guilt and shame.”

One of the best ways to work through feelings of guilt and shame is by doing the 12 Steps, especially the inventory steps, on your love life. The other way out of Lid Love, says O’Hara, is “realizing that love isn’t something that you have to find – it’s what you really are, and it is expressed in everything that you do.”

At a time when finding sex or romance has become as simple as sending a text or logging onto a hot website, the online and smartphone experience can encourage behavior that is more about the hunt for sex and pursuit of romance than trying to establish any kind of genuine, intimate connections.

According to leading international sex addiction author and expert Robert Weiss, LCSW, CSAT-S, “our rapidly evolving sex-tech landscape has both contributed to and exacerbated the problem of sex, love, and relationship addiction. We are particularly concerned about those individuals who are emotionally vulnerable as well as those men and women with previous histories of emotional challenges, trauma, or addiction.”

Signs of Sex Addiction

To understand the way sex, love, and relationship addiction has evolved over time, we must first understand the nature of the problem. Some of the behaviors indicative of sex addiction include:

• Multiple extramarital affairs
• Compulsive masturbation, cybersex, or use of pornography or prostitutes
• Sexual harassment or stalking
• Multiple anonymous sex partners
• Obsessive dating and pursuit of sex

Sex Addiction Then and Now

“Once porn websites, online chats, web cams, Craigslist, and now smartphones became available anyone could get online and gain immediate access to explicit sexual content and experiences. Those same romantic and sexual adventures which had previously taken some work to obtain – i.e. to find porn, a prostitute, a sexual hook-up, or a date – became something you could just click on,” explained Weiss.

“Those who previously had to push themselves to get out there to meet people for sex and dating now no longer have to leave their home to meet someone,” said Weiss. “In other words, the previously motivating factors that would have pushed the individual to go out to meet people have pretty much gone away.”

Now that we have social networking, smartphones with GPS locators, and “friend finder” apps, people can find a sex partner within three blocks without ever saying a word. Dating can be accomplished with a clever line and photo-shopped image. Thanks to technology, the ease of access to sexual content and romantic pursuit – for both sexes –has increased exponentially, which for some has brought  a new wave of interpersonal and relationship problems.

“We are evolving a generation of individuals who don’t even have to leave the house to find someone for sex; therefore they don’t necessarily develop the social skills (examples: managing rejection or negotiating a date) required toward evolving intimacy and relationships,” said Weiss.

By the mid-2000s, it was clear to those of us in field of sex and love addiction that there was a very real, rapidly evolving problem. Weiss then became a regular on such talk shows as The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, Larry King, and Good Morning America to help educate the public. He wrote multiple books on the potential problems of cybersex and online porn as well as sex addiction among gay men, and began speaking to professionals about sexual addiction assessment and treatment.

The Biggest Behavioral Health Issue of the Decade

With the steady march of continued technological advancement, some which are bringing us closer and closer to “virtual sex,” we are seeing a greater number of sex addicts seeking help. Given the current trajectory, sex addiction will continue to escalate and plague many millions of men and women.

“Sexual addiction is poised to be the one of the biggest behavioral health problems of the next 10 years,” said Weiss. “There’s a whole generation of very young people who have been exposed to explicit sexual content that their brains are simply not ready for, and this portends an increase in both fetishism and addictive sexuality.”

Cutting-Edge Treatment for an Evolving Problem

The problem of sex addiction has changed, with treatment methods evolving in kind.

“In the early 1990s I trained in one of the only residential sexual addition treatment centers in the country,” said Weiss. “At that time there were few therapists treating this disorder, and there were no structured outpatient programs.”

Recognizing the need for outpatient sex addiction treatment, Weiss set out to create a center of excellence based in his home, Los Angeles. In 1995 he opened the Sexual Recovery Institute, a structured, two-week intensive outpatient program where patients stay at a local monitored residence, while receiving individual and group treatment daily for a full workday of  6 to 8 hours. Within two years, the Institute had employed six full-time therapists and was treating as many as 150 clients per week.

Residential Treatment for Sex and Love Addiction

“What is needed at reputable addiction and mental health centers around the country is a simple awareness that sexual problems can encourage and support relapse and disease in many individuals, yet we don’t talk enough about it,” said Weiss. “We don’t ask enough questions. If you don’t at least address sex while someone is in treatment, these issues can be later acted out in ways that continue to inhibit personal growth and healing.”

With Weiss’ guidance, some of the nation’s top drug rehabilitation programs have introduced education and support for sexual addiction. Once such program, The Ranch, is a nationally acknowledged, 35-day residential facility near Nashville, Tennessee. The Ranch provides a comprehensive educational and therapeutic curriculum for sexual addiction and related intimacy disorders. In addition to a standardized addiction treatment curriculum adapted to meet the needs of sex and love addicts, patients participate in art, equine, and adventure therapies, ropes courses, sweat lodges, and many opportunities for experiential treatment.

“Specialized residential treatment allows clients to deal with their presenting sex and relationship concerns as well as deal with the underlying issues driving their problem sexual behavior,” said Weiss. “We understand the relationship of past trauma to current client triggers and relapse prevention. Clients get the tools they need to stop the behavior as well as a more evolved way of looking into their past that helps to reduce their shame.”

Tech has its good side as well. In this case, online life can also support sex addicts through recovery apps like iPromises, online 12-Step support groups, and an abundance of web-based educational and therapeutic resources.

The Cost of Not Getting Help

There is a lot of secrecy and shame surrounding sex addiction. Clients may not want to go to a 12-Step meeting for fear of seeing someone they know. Some may not want to spend precious dollars for treatment or believe that it can help them. In these cases we ask clients to consider the costs of continuing their behaviors and not getting structured, focused help.

Weiss comments, “I ask hesitant clients to consider the costs of a lost marriage, broken family, and divorce. What is the cost to children who find extensive porn on a parent’s computer or witness their parents struggling with painful betrayals and infidelity? Sadly, these situations, along with health, legal, and career losses are the logical outcome of unaddressed sexual addiction.”

Research also indicates that teenagers in the U.S. are experimenting sexually sooner than before, which may be a consequence of heightened exposure to sexually-themed materials online and in music and television. For some teens, this activity can lead to obsessive thoughts about sex that interfere with daily living. For others, it can be the starting point for a sexual addiction, which can have lifelong emotional and physical consequences.

Similar to other addictions, a sexual addiction may lead to a loss of control for a teenager. They may be unable to control unwanted sexual thoughts and may spend hours viewing sexual materials online. They may also lose social connections and suffer in school.

Sex Addiction Treatment for Teens

Many teens are too ashamed of the problem to seek help, and many adults may consider the obsessive behavior a normal part of adolescence. Few sexual addiction treatment options exist that are tailored toward adolescents, but more inpatient and outpatient programs are becoming available as research broadens toward teens and sex addiction.

Some treatment centers focus solely on teens with sexual addictions and offer custom treatment strategies that involve several areas, such as learning new ways of coping with triggers or new techniques for handling stress. New skills for working through social situations may also be offered, as well as treatment through outdoor or physical activities.

Many teens may use sexual behaviors as a way to escape negative feelings, so learning new coping tools can be effective. New strategies for returning to their normal environment are also part of the treatment for teens with sexual addiction.

Signs of Teen Sex Addiction

Parents should look for changes in their teen’s behavior, such as more time alone in their room or secrecy about their Internet searches. Some teens may begin a sexual addiction through sexting, so parents are also encouraged to know what messages their teens are sending and to whom.

Internet filters can help prevent a teen from viewing sexual material online, but no filters are perfect. Experts recommend not allowing a teen to browse the Internet alone in a private room, but rather in a common room of the home.

Having an upfront conversation about sexual addiction and sexual materials online can be helpful preventative strategies for helping teens avoid the dangers of sexual addiction. Professional counselors can help parents approach the subject effectively and to learn ways to maintain the conversation throughout their child’s teen years. Research indicates repeating the conversation is more effective than only discussing it on a limited basis.

The study, addressed in recent articles, also refers to a highly discussed Newsweek article in which researchers had a difficult experience finding men who had not participated in strip club activities, masseuse activities, sex by phone, computer or the Internet on low enough levels that would enable them to fall into the "non-paying" for sex services category.

When men who don’t pay for sex were compared to men who pay for sex or sex-related activities, the group of men with paid sexual experiences showed higher tendencies to engage in acts of violence toward women. They also expressed lower levels of compassion toward women in the paid sex industry. Their attitudes about how paid sex and the prostitution industry harm families and women were different than the men who had not participated in paid sex behaviors. The men who purchased sex activities also realized that in some situations, women are forced into the behavior, but this was not a deterrent toward their participation in the services.

Critics of the Newsweek article have said that some men pursue sex as a form of entertainment, but this may not mean a greater chance of violent tendencies toward women. Dialogue among experts continues to explore questions around whether online pornography may be connected to higher likelihoods of violent behavior.

A recent report in the L.A. Watts Times discusses Anthony Weiner’s entrance into treatment for texting multiple women with illicit photos of himself. The U.S. congressman has yet to clearly state what type of treatment he is undergoing, and this may be contributing to negative stereotypes, suggests the article. His peers seem to be unsure whether he truly has an illness or is seeking to gain more time to repair his image.

Experts including Robert Weiss, who founded the Los Angeles-based Sexual Recovery Institute, are quoted in the article in response to the question of whether or not Weiner’s actions represent an actual illness. Weiss points out that Weiner’s actions resemble someone who is living with a serious addiction. This includes hiding the behavior, continuing to engage in it despite the heavy risks, and not making open or honest admissions about it. Other addiction experts have compared sexual addiction to compulsive overeating or addictive gambling, in that the patient knows it’s wrong and that it harms them, but remains unable to stop without professional help.

New York Pathways social worker Timothy Lee, who is among a team that regularly works with people with sexual addiction, says the act of sending sexual photos to strangers may indicate serious emotional problems that could have been present for years.

When I suggest that hypnotherapy might be useful in the treatment of a client’s sexual compulsion problem, the response is typically one of the following:

• “I’m afraid of going into trance – I might lose control.”
• “You’ll find out things about me that I don’t even know myself.”
• “I’m just not the type to benefit from hypnosis.”

However, trance is really nothing out of the ordinary; it is a naturalistic experience that occurs routinely in daily life. Daydreaming, fantasizing, driving a car, and watching TV are all trance states.

Almost everyone can be hypnotized. The old debate about whether or not a subject is “hypnotizable” has become moot. Hypnosis happens when a person allows it to happen. A willingness to “think with” and imagine the things that are suggested are states amenable to achieving a hypnotic effect.

A willingness to learn and an attitude of receptivity coupled with practice enhance the hypnotic effect. Willingness is the critical word – it is the client’s willingness to experience himself differently that produces change.

What Is Hypnosis?

Hypnosis is an inner, altered state of consciousness in which the critical, logical, conscious part of the mind is temporarily suspended. This makes the subconscious available to receive suggestions for new attitudes, beliefs, and values. While the individual is in touch with the subconscious mind, new psychological connections can be made.

When you can let yourself go into a goal-directed daydream to the extent that you dissociate yourself from your surrounding environment and become completely engrossed in your inner reality, you are in an alternate state of awareness. This is called hypnosis.

While in a trance state one is free to accept positive, healthy, constructive suggestions without the interference of thoughts, objections, excuses, and rationalizations.

How Can Hypnosis Help the Recovering Sex Addict?

Hypnosis can stop the purely cognitive functions the person is familiar with and engage him in new inner experiences which will produce different attitudes about sex. This leads to a lessening of the toxic core beliefs about the self which is the foundation for the sex addiction.

Trance induction is using the power of the unconscious mind to re-work the neurological wiring, born of childhood experiences, that creates unwanted, self-destructive impulses and behaviors that continually result in adverse consequences.

Hypnosis is used to re-train the client’s neurology to increase the ability to tolerate unpleasant effects/feelings that are often triggers for sexual acting out.

The experience of the erotic haze is intense and compelling. One reason for its hold on people is that it is a psychologically stimulated neuro-chemical state, induced by the release of adrenaline, dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin that occurs when the sex addict engages in intense sexual fantasy, rituals, and behaviors.

In truth, maintaining the high of intense sexual cruising and fantasy is more sought after than the sexual act itself. Like a gambler walking into the casino, sex addicts are high on their own neurochemistry long before actually acting out.

Dorothy Hayden, LCSW has been specializing in treating sex addiction and chemical dependency for 15 years. She has training in sex addiction therapy, psychoanalysis, hypnosis and cognitive behavioral therapy. The full text of her writings on sex addiction can be found at www.sextreatment.com.

According to a report from Women Citizen, the office has become one of the top environments in which people view online pornography. Some former porn addicts, including Michael Leahy, author of Porn Nation, said he recalled spending some entire work days viewing Internet pornography.

In some cases, employees may be using the handheld technology or smartphones provided to them by employers to view pornography, believing it to be more anonymous than their computer or their home-based technologies. In a June 2011 report from Harris Interactive and Qumu, almost 50 percent of employees surveyed in a group of more than 2,500 said they believed pornography viewing was happening in their workplace with smartphones. Three percent reported they were viewing pornographic videos in the workplace.

The problem, says Leahy, can start out with an employee viewing a few minutes of porn on the job – but then quickly progresses to an hour, and then an entire day, as the person loses control. The fears of getting caught can lessen as the porn addiction becomes more invasive.

For some, including Leahy, the job site can become the only place where a pornography addict can count on accessing Web pornography. Viewing the sites online at home with a spouse and children present was too dangerous, says Leahy, and because he was addicted to the material, only one option remained – the workplace.

Recent research studies have explored the connection between subjects like sexual sites, chats and connections on the Internet with higher rates of infidelity. Conclusions seem to reinforce what sexual addiction experts and treatment professionals have known for years – the Internet may not be the actual cause of a person’s sexual addiction, but it can serve to help keep the problem secret from friends and family, as well as to quicken a person’s ability to find online sexual relationships.

Access to online pornography has skyrocketed in the past few years, with an estimated 25 million pornographic Web sites available. According to some research studies, as many as 60 percent of people who have sexual compulsions or sexual addictions do use the Internet to find online forms of sexual materials. Even young people or children can view sexual materials online, and some experts, such as Angie Ridings, an Oklahoma-based counselor, say this can lead them down a path to sexual addiction.

Few online sites with pornographic content ask for verification of a person’s age, and many can be accessed anyway by entering a false age. No matter at what age a person views Internet pornography, research suggests that the material triggers modifications at the brain level that can come in the form of dopamine releases. As the pattern continues, a person can become dependent on this dopamine activity to feel "ok" or to escape from negative emotions and life stressors.

Like other addictions to drugs or behaviors like gambling, treatment experts say the person loses their ability to stop the behavior – despite the destruction to their families, careers and finances. Treatment options include group support or group therapy, individual counseling, Internet monitors and couples-based therapy, because the addiction has such a strong impact on the spouse and on the marriage.

Pornography use on the Internet may also fuel other behaviors associated with sexual addiction, such as escalation of online sexual chats to real-life meetings with multiple partners. Other Web sites create an environment for people with sexual addictions to encourage each other to continue with their addiction, creating an anonymous "peer support" area online. The Internet is powerful toward sexual addictions, say experts, because it provides a sense of confidentiality and can allow users a false identity, as well as 24/7 access – a different scenario than previous forms of sexual materials from a decade ago.

In some cases, an underlying condition, such as an anxiety-related illness or a mood disorder, must also be addressed during the recovery process for sexual addiction. Parents are urged to have a talk about online pornography early with their children, and repeat that talk many times, as rising numbers of pornographic viewers are falling into the 12 to 17-year age range.

It’s a sign of the times, perhaps, and a sad one at that, when a member of Congress, Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, is urged by House Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Party, to step down in the wake of a sexting scandal involving Weiner.

The only thing missing in this new kind of sex scandal is, apparently, sex. What Rep. Weiner, 46, has admitted to doing is exchanging messages and photos, some sexually explicit, with a number of women online.

Weiner has never met any of these women, one of whom is a 17-year-old girl in the state of Delaware.

The public disclosure of Weiner’s actions caused a media frenzy in the past week after Weiner held a press conference where he admitted exchanging lewd photos with a handful of women online. Then, an X-rated photo of Weiner surfaced on a website and the media firestorm escalated. Calls came immediately for the married congressman to step down. The latest development, coming after Wasserman Shultz and Pelosi urged Weiner to leave his congressional duties, is that Weiner has departed to go into treatment.

In a statement, Lisa Heller, Weiner’s spokeswoman, said that the congressman had departed “to seek professional treatment to focus on becoming a better husband and healthier person. In light of that, he will request a short leave of absence from the House of Representatives so that he can get evaluated and map out a course of treatment to make himself well.”

This is what society in the age of Twitter and Facebook and social media with instant and always-on connectivity has brought us to. Tweet whatever you like, send mild to racy to downright sexually explicit texts and photos – all in a virtual world. No consequences, right? Let it all hang out.

Well, as many who’ve become caught up in sexting have found out to their dismay, there is a consequence to such behavior. What you say and do – even online – has repercussions.

Sexting is a form of addictive behavior. While it may not be as damaging to the body physically as long-term dependence on alcohol or drugs, when it takes over a person’s life to the point where he or she continues to engage in the behavior despite mounting negative consequences – that’s addiction.

What Rep. Weiner will find out, if he is truly motivated to overcome his compulsion to sext, is that he can learn to overcome this addiction.

He likely has no idea what he is getting into, or what the treatment will be that will help him learn to find more appropriate and healthier ways of behaving.

But that’s what treatment for sexting addiction or any other kind of sexual addiction is all about. For that matter, it’s what treatment for any addiction is all about.

And there is no single treatment that works for everyone. Every person’s situation is unique and treatment should ideally be tailored to the person’s specific needs.

After a plan is created for the individual, a period of learning about the disease of addiction is usually next. There are generally workshops, lots of one-on-one professional counseling, group therapy sessions, family treatment and various forms of therapeutic treatment. Some of these may involve cognitive-behavioral therapy or CBT, but there are many different treatment modalities that may be used.

In addition, there is no set time limit for how long it will take before the individual who goes in for treatment for sexting or sexual addiction will be at a point where he or she will be able to resume normal life. It’s different for everyone. Some will arrive at that point where they are ready to enter recovery sooner than others. Some will relapse once, twice, several times. Many will continue to require professional counseling even after completing formal treatment.

And most will go on to participate in 12-step self-help groups for many months and even years after rehab ends.

So, while the media spotlight that has been on Rep. Weiner may fade a bit, the journey that the congressman is embarking upon has only just begun. In fact, it is a journey that he will likely be on for the rest of his life.

Welcome to the world of treatment and recovery. It is possible to overcome public disgrace and humiliation, to again regain the trust of loved ones and friends. Whether or not Rep. Weiner returns to active work in the House of Representatives remains to be seen. What’s most important is that he begin to heal – for himself and his family.