SEX ADDICT: Ulrika's been diagnosed - have you?

I wasn't even sure I believed in sex addiction. I was inclined to write it off as an invention to excuse the behaviour of the selfish and the immoral.

EXCLUSIVE

News of the World columnist and TV star Ulrika Jonsson is as famous for her lovelife as her career.

Two divorces, an affair with Sven Goran Eriksson, an abusive fling with Stan Collymore — it's been a rollercoaster ride of passion and heartbreak.

She has never understood why she her relationships didn't go the distance. Then Channel 4 asked her to investigate the growing problem of sex addiction.

What Ulrika learned shocked her to the core. She began as a reporter, underwent therapy herself — and left with an astounding conclusion. Here is her story...

MY name is Ulrika, and I'm a sex addict...apparently.

This was the devastating diagnosis I was faced with by a team of therapists. And I was only there to make a TV documentary.

What started out as an innocent journalistic exercise suddenly turned into a traumatic journey of personal discovery.

If you had asked me six months ago to describe a sex addict I might have said someone who regularly visits prostitutes or cheats on his wife. I probably wouldn't have thought of women at all.

So when Channel 4 asked me to go to America and investigate the world of sex addicts and their therapists it was with huge curiosity, and some scepticism, that I agreed.

It was a journey that opened my eyes in a way I would never have anticipated.

Because what I discovered was that sex addiction has very little to do with "how many" or "how often".

The definition of a sex addict is someone whose sexual behaviour damages their life. Given that, I suppose thousands of us, who believed we were just unlucky or ill-used might fit that bill.

Virginity

What this addiction is actually about is how you use sex, how it makes you feel and the damage that it does — to you and to other people. When that penny dropped it knocked me sideways.

It was a discovery that gave me a chilling insight into my own childhood and the implications that had on my own loves and relationships.

I know people imagine they've got me taped... sassy Swedish blonde, adulteress, heart-breaker. In fact, I didn't lose my virginity until I was 17, I've had fewer partners than average and while I may have hurt others, the person hurt hardest was me.

Because I discovered that for virtually all my adult life I had been using the way I related to others to try to heal something in myself.

When I first had sex it was with a complete stranger. I just wanted to get it out of the way. I soon discovered someone desiring me made me feel of being wanted or needed.

But I would feel empty afterwards, emotionally unsatisfied, so I would have to have more sex — to refuel. I had a "male" attitude to sex — do it for it's own sake and to hell with emotional connection.

As any addict — to drugs, drink or arousing desire — will tell you, it makes you feel better for a while, but ultimately, never works.

The kick is fantastic for a few minutes. Then you need more.

It's not surprising that when damaged people seek something to fill a hole in their soul they often settle on sex.

The world is dominated by it. It's on billboards, on TV, in papers and magazines. If you don't want to pay for it, it's all there for free on the internet.

Anyone, including kids, can tap into more porn and perversion than it's humanly possible to absorb.

The upshot of this, coupled with poor sex education, is that Britain is the Western world's teen pregnancy capital and STDs are rife.

In search of answers I travelled to America, where sex addiction is treated with the same seriousness as better understood compulsions.

At the Pine Grove Centre in Mississippi I learned that of 1,000 sex addicts treated, 80 percent had suffered childhood abuse or trauma.

I also learned sex is not the enemy here. The problem is the way we use it to patch up a perceived inadequacy in ourselves.

When one therapist referred to sex addiction as an "intimacy disorder" it threw up many questions for me — and answered many more. Especially when I discovered this disorder is formed early on in life.

Some experts believe that what they call our "love map" — the way we think of ourselves and relate to others — is formed by the age of eight. It goes to the core of our approach to intimate relationships.

All the therapists I met insisted that some kind of early "trauma" — it could be as awful as sex or physical abuse or as slight as loneliness or rejection — shapes our whole outlook.

I already knew my childhood was not exactly normal. My mother left my father when I was eight and I lived alone with him for four years.

Abuse

I was not abused, but he kept a large library of porn which he made no attempt to hide. And I often witnessed him have sex with the many girlfriends in his life. It wasn't deliberate, he just wasn't bothered if I happened to be around.

When a therapist asked me how I would feel if a man behaved that way with my children I had to admit I'd want to kill him.

But I cannot bring myself to see that as abuse. What I do concede is it shaped me, and made it hard for me to feel a person worthy of love and respect. My early attitude was that sex was disgusting and as a child I was never allowed to make a connection between love and sex.

Therapist Dawn Zurlinden explained that deep down, I didn't feel valued by my parents so I try to prove them wrong. The way I do this is to make people desire me, so I become worthy in my own eyes.

I was also told I am drawn to men who are "emotionally unavailable" because I cannot trust.

What the world sees, I'm told, is a strong, independent working mum who fights her corner. What I feel inside, much of the time, is fear.

My experiences turned many of my preconceptions on their head. I met Marni, a god-fearing, middle-aged lady from the bible belt, whose life has been blighted by her compulsion for bad, loveless sex.

She's the most unlikely sex addict you could imagine... if you didn't know anything about sex addiction.

Before this project I was asked sniggeringly countless times to get sufferers' numbers — usually by men whose own appetites no woman could satisfy. If they tune in, I suspect they may be laughing on the other side of their faces.

And if you can't tell the difference between f***ing and making love — this programme is definitely for you.