the diagnostic and statistical man ue manual dsm, does not list sex addiction as a disorder. you think about these addictions, the hallmarks of substance abuse. one of them is physical withdrawal. and again, you write about this very candidly in your book. it's tough to be a recovering alcoholic. you have physical withdrawal symptoms. that's one of the things that people look at in terms of saying, this was an addiction. that zedoesn't happen with sex, though. >> well, look, there are substance addictions and then there are behavioral addictions. if you want to broadly define the term "addiction," we can have a semantic debate. but it's a compulsive behavior that you continue despite the fact it's destroying your life and destroying the lives of people around you. so ultimately however you want to define it, it's a huge problem in america. >> look, if you have a gambling addiction, quote unquote, you can still close your home to forecloe foreclosure. alcoholics can still get arrested for dui. before i let you go, i want your take on one more thing. ariel cost troe offering wh

i believe people can recover from schizophrenia and bipolar and psychosis and all the dsm-labeled categories. not everyone recovers, but many do and many go on to live very happy and successful lives. and even if you don't recover to what other people's standards are what they think "recovery" is, you can get to a point within your own life, you can achieve a lot of happiness. so i advocate recovery and i advocate hope, hope for a better tomorrow for ourselves, our community and our world. thank you. >> thank you very much. and i thank everyone for coming out to do your presentations. it is very much an eye-opener and thank you again. we can go on to item no. 8. information report on the golden guardian exercise on may 15, 2013, the disability perspective. presented by council members chip and denise. >> thank you, roland. there has been a miswording on agenda. this is more of an update than a report. the disaster -- disability disaster preparedness committee is meeting july 5th and we're in the process of accumulating data from the experiences of people with disabilities who participated as

it wasn't included in the latest dsm, resulted in him possibly not getting the death penalty. >> i can't blame him because you see this victim status everywhere. when did it suddenly become okay to use amore fis disorders. anybody who does anything wrong is a victim. >> i'm going to go away for two weeks and then we're going to move on. there's no personal -- >> the other side of this coin is that as a society, a contemporary society we are supposed to empathize with everyone. so it's actually our fault if we don't forgive the monster. what's wrong with us? >> i think, look, i think there is a fine line between addiction and things we should forgive and things that we should take into account. i don't know that we should forgot, greg. and i don't know that it becomes the be-all, tell-all excuse for bad behavior. i think that if you're dealing in the case of aerial castro, you're dealing with one situation that maybe you don't get the death penalty. . >> we take part in that. >> how do you distinguish between a real addiction and a fake addiction. >> yeah, it's a great question, and that'

and when it comes to -- >> guest: it's the definition from the american -- this is from the dsm. do what i describe in the book. >> host: when we are talking about addiction and people who become addicted give me a discrepancies of who is at risk and why they are at risk. >> guest: that's a difficult one. when we think about addiction, one of the things that americans have done that is. we act as if the drug is special. it has to do with the pharmacologies of the drug. it has a lot to do whether or not they are plugged in to society, responsible, a wide range of social factors play in control. what we have done in the country we have paid less attention to those things because it is less sexy to really talk about the fact that this person was irresponsible before they started using drugs. this person was overindulging in a wide range of behaviors before drugs. infed -- instead we have chosen to focus on the biology of individual. what does their brain look like. can we tell if somebody is addicted by their brain. no, and hell no. there's no evidence that would suggest that sort o

the diagnostic and statistical manual, dsm, you're familiar with this, jane, the official psych bible addictions, you think about the hallmarks of substance abuse. one of them is physical withdrawal. and again, you write about this very candidly in your book. i mean, it's tough to be a recovering alcoholic. you have the physical withdrawal symptoms. and that's one of the things that people look at in terms of saying this was an addiction. that doesn't happen with sex, though. >> well, look, there are substance addictions and then there are behavioral addictions. and if you want to broadly define the term addiction and we can have a semantical debate about it but it's a compulsive behavior that you continue, despite the fact that it's destroying your life and destroying the lives of people around you. and so, ultimately, however you want to define it, it's a huge problem in america. >> you know, look, if you have a gambling addiction, quote/unquote, you can still lose your home to foreclosure. alcoholics can still get convicted of dui. so, i mean, the excuse part i think you and i both