A Sex Rehab Primer With Jill Vermeire

Licensed marriage and family therapist Jill Vermeire was on hand during the filming of Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew, bringing her clinical expertise to the world of reality TV. We’ll see a lot more of her in the coming weeks, as she worked directly with Drew and the Rehab patients. First, though, we talked to Jill about her background in sex rehab, as well as some issues that come up during the Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew premiere (it debuts on air Sunday at 10/9c). Below, Jill talks about the nature of sex addiction, how co-ed sex treatment is helpful (not harmful), and why she was initially wary of taking part in a reality show about sex addiction.

First, do you want to talk a little bit about your background in treating sex addiction?

I got my master’s in clinical psychology at Pepperdine. I originally started working with drug and alcohol addiction, and I fell into sex addiction. I thought I was going to work in sex therapy, but I got a job at the Sexual Recovery Institute. That is an outpatient program for sex addiction, which I didn’t even know existed back then. I was fascinated and intrigued by the whole thing, and stayed on for a couple years and really got some intense hands-on experience and ended up getting certified as a sex addiction therapist through SASH. I’m pretty good at doing the work, so I stayed with it. And then I worked at a treatment center called the Meadows, where I learned about the other side of sex addiction, which is the female side, and the “love addiction” part. I got back to L.A., and really carved out my niche. And I’ve been doing lectures, in-services, training and working with the men and the women with sex addiction for probably five or six years now.

How did your involvement in this show come about?

I guess they had started looking for a sex addiction therapist, and as they did their research and started talking to people, a lot of people mentioned my name. [Producer] Steve Longo called and asked if I would be interested. It’s such a sensitive subject, and knowing reality TV, I had the instant concerns of, “Oh god, are they going to exploit? Is it just a bunch of crazy people who just want to be famous and they’re not going to be serious about it? It’s just going to be a bunch of hijinx and mishaps that they’re going to put on TV.” But when I started seeing the production team, and found that they really wanted to hear my ideas and they really did want to implement real treatment, I felt a lot more comfortable. That’s when I agreed to sign on. You get nervous as a clinician, having built a pretty good reputation for yourself, doing something like this — something that’s never been done, with the sex addition part, but also knowing how reality TV is. But after meeting Drew and getting the sense that they were going to listen to the ideas and that I was really going to have a strong voice in what we did, I agreed to do it. And I’m really glad I did.

What was your opinion on Celebrity Rehab when you were asked to do this show?

Without knowing what really happened the whole time of filming, but having watched the show, I thought, “Well, it’s definitely shedding light on addiction. And it’s a good voice for people who are struggling with addiction to see.” I mean, the world is influenced by celebrities. So to put it on TV definitely brings attention to it. I know from hearing feedback from some of the cast members and people in the real world that it really has influenced a lot of people to get help. But I also thought, “Well, they definitely do things that you don’t really do in regular rehab.” I’ve worked in a lot of rehab, so I could definitely feel the TV aspect of it. Sober House was more entertainment. I thought that show was a little bit more in the reality TV world, and not so much in real-treatment world. And I’ve talked to Dr. Drew about this stuff.

But you’re confident that Sex Rehab will accomplish more than what you saw on the Rehab shows that came before it?

Yeah. It’s going to challenge what the world believes, or doesn’t even know, about sex addiction. The main thing is that it’s not about sex. It’s not a bunch of perverts in trench coats. And it’s not about being a porn star, though we did have porn stars on the show. What I’m hoping will come through is that underneath any sex addict, whether you’re a porn star, or celebrity, or just a regular person, it’s really about the pain and the shame and severe consequences. It can be really life threatening, and there really is treatment, and hope for recovery. Underneath any sex addict, no matter who they are, is a very wounded person who needs a lot of support and education and help.

Was modifying treatment to the reality TV template a hard process for you?

Yes. In a normal treatment setting, you go and meet with your clients, and you have your individual sessions and you do your groups and you check in with them and you deal with things as they come up. I’d say that one of the biggest challenges about it being a TV show was the time limit, because it was only three weeks. Normally treatment is four or five weeks for residential, and then they continue in outpatient and day treatment. So this was intense and a much faster pace. We had to jump into the work that normally you wouldn’t do until later in treatment. And one of the hardest things was going on the floor. If I wanted to meet with one of my clients and go do a session, or review homework with a client, I couldn’t just do that because it was a TV production. You have to wait for a camera to be available, you have to make sure that there’s nothing else going on that they’re filming. The waiting time was somewhat challenging.

I thought maybe something that was modified for the show was the fact that male and female patients were living together. Is that unusual in non-televised therapy?

No. There actually is only one gender-specific treatment facility, currently. It’s in Santa Fe, and it just started this year. There are no other women-only/men-only treatment centers.

That seems like a recipe for disaster. We see James and Jennifer openly flirting on the first episode.

Yeah. And that’s common. In a real treatment center, there’s always staff everywhere: the therapists and the techs and the support staff, and you have treatment team meetings all the time where everyone’s reporting what they’re seeing. So in real life, we would have had the experience of, “I’m noticing that James seems to be obsessing about Jenny.” Or, “I’m noticing that there’s some flirtation going on between these two patients.” And we nip it in the bud. We ask them to not sit next to each other, we ask them to refrain from talking, we can put them on contracts. When I worked at the Meadows, it was very common for them to wear a little sign on their necks saying “Men Only” or “Women Only”, meaning that they could only talk to men or only talk to women. What happens is that the flirting brings up whatever their real issues are: objectifying and sexualizing the opposite sex. Or maybe they’re using that to avoid really being intimate and showing their true colors, because they’re kind of acting out and kind of getting a high off of the sexualizing and the obsessing and the fantasizing. When you see it in action and you call them out on it, they get to admit that they’re doing it, they get to see how they do it, how it shows up in their lives. And it gives the therapist a chance to see how it shows up, as well. And then you get to really go in and do the work and look at what’s underneath and what’s driving it: the fear of really being known, the fear of being intimate in a healthy way, and not sexualizing everything. When people sexualize and objectify, it’s because they don’t really think that they have anything to offer other than their sexuality, and they also have a hard time seeing other people are real human beings: they seem them as objects. It’s actually really helpful when the flirting does happen.

You talked before about gender-specific treatment, and I know your site separately lists sex-addiction traits common in men and women. Is there overlap?

Yes. Men and women both equally objectify and sexualize other human beings. Chronic masturbation is prevalent in both sexes. Pornography use is prevalent in both sexes. Men tend to do it more often than women, but female sex addicts do view a lot of pornography. The chronic one-night-stands, causal sex, multiple partners — that’s prevalent in both sexes as well.

Sex-addiction seems particularly hard to treat and diagnose. Obviously, a healthy lifestyle would exclude drug use. A healthy lifestyle arguably would exclude drinking. But a healthy lifestyle typically includes sex. We’re talking about an offset of a delicate balance there.

That’s why sex addiction is very similar to an eating disorder. Sex addiction and eating disorders are the type of addiction we call process or a behavioral addiction. They’re different than chemical addiction. You need food to live, and although you don’t need sex to live, as a human being we all have a need for intimacy with other human. Sex addiction isn’t the kind of addiction where you can just take away the drug, and that’s how you’re sober. That is why it’s so difficult. If your addiction is other human beings, you have first to take away the drug, and then you have to learn how to have a healthy relationship with the drug. It’s just like with food. Food is the drug for somebody with an eating disorder. Altering the relationship with the drug, while still having it in your life can feel really overwhelming and sometimes hopeless and really complicated.

I think after watching this show, a lot of people are going to think, “Am I a sex addict?”

Well, typically people who aren’t sex addicts don’t wonder. It’s just like someone who’s an alcoholic. If you’re not an alcoholic, you’ve probably never wondered if you’re an alcoholic. If you’re wondering, there’s a good chance that it’s something you maybe need to look at. You may not be a full-blown sex addict, but if your sexuality or your sexual behavior is causing problems in your life, or impeding it in any way, it is definitely recommended that you take a look at it. And it’s a lot easier to do it with a professional who knows what they’re doing.

Learn more about Jill and sex addiction at her website.

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