Tales of a female sex addict My compulsion began when I was 12 and took me to dark places. I wasn't just hooked on porn -- I was hooked on shame

The first time I masturbated I was 12 years old. I was in the bathtub, helpless to a steady stream of warm water cascading down my lady parts, while the most intoxicating buildup brought me to my first orgasm. Nothing in my hush-hush Catholic upbringing and innocent friend circle had prepared me for this earthshaking experience, equal parts pleasure and shame. I didn’t know what I stumbled upon, only that it felt scary and wrong, but I tried not to care. No longer would I be crushed out on Eddie Vedder or Chris Cornell. H2O had stolen my heart.

After that, sex was always on my mind. Dredging through the book “Treasure Island” in seventh grade, I told myself I was allowed to masturbate to orgasm at the end of each chapter so I could finish by the due date. There are 34 chapters in that book and, having made that deal, I breezed through them over the course of a few blissed out days. Robert Louis Stevenson will forever be an erotic novelist in my mind.

My hormones were a freight train, and I tried to keep up. I wonder now if I would have lost the thrill of masturbation eventually, once the novelty wore off, but I found new thrills. I started staying up late, when Mom and Dad were snoring away in oblivion, to watch softcore porn on Cinemax. Shannon Tweed became my nighttime hero. I didn’t know whether to hate her or love her, but I knew I needed her. During the day, I made other arrangements. My brother was three years older, and I'd wait for him to leave the house and then raid his stash, hidden in his bedside drawer under men's fitness magazines and school notebooks. Girlie mags. Unlabeled VHS tapes. I masturbated every day, multiple times a day, until I was e...