Hollywood actor Michael Douglas is perhaps the most high-profile celebrity to confess to being a sex addict and seek treatment for the illness. His repeated public philandering broke up his long marriage to ex-wife Diandra. Douglas (above left with new wife Catherine Zeta Jones) has refused to appear in a sequel to Basic Instinct, the box office hit in which he starred in X-rated scenes with Sharon Stone.
Late last year it emerged that British pop star Robbie Williams was being treated for sex addiction. For months the former Take That singer had been receiving counselling for the condition, according to newspaper reports. Williams (above with friend Tania Strecker) reportedly sought help from Dr Michael Gormley, who treats wealthy patients for sexual addiction at a private Knightsbridge clinic in London.
Gormley was reported as saying: 'In very simplistic terms, it is a compulsion to have sex of some kind or another, which leads to danger. Like all addictions, it is harmful. It is either harmful to yourself or to other people and people persist in doing whatever they are doing despite the harm. The difficulty is that on one level if you are a single man with willing single women who are responsible about infection and pregnancy, there isn't a problem in the world's eyes. But the problem is more intimate and more subtle. You have got pulling power as a famous person but background does not come into it. You still end up feeling depressed and breaking relationships.'
The late basketball star Wilt Chamberlain never acknowledged an illness nor sought treatment, but he famously boasted in print of having slept with 20,000 women. In an interview shortly before he died of a heart ailment in late 1999, he said: 'The point of using the number was to show that sex was a great part of my life as basketball was a great part of my life. That's the reason why I was single.'
But he added: 'With all of you men out there who think that having a thousand different ladies is pretty cool, I have learned in my life. I've found out that having one woman a thousand different times is much more satisfying.'