SAVAGE LOVE DE-KINKED By Dan Savage Hey, Dan: I know you and other sexperts say that kinks are ingrained and not something you can get rid of, but mine have all vanished! Ever since I started on antidepressants my relationship with my body and how it reacts to pain, both physical and mental, has completely changed. I used to love getting bit and spanked and beat black and blue, but now all that just hurts. I used to love getting humiliated and spit on, commanded to do dirty things, but none of that holds much appeal anywhere. So what gives? Were these even kinks in the first place if they could vanish so easily with one little pill? Or were these coping mechanisms for emotional problems I no longer have? I know my libido is suppressed due to the meds. Did my kinks just follow my libido out the door? The Missing Kink Antidepressants showed your kinks the door at the same time they showed your libido the door. Zooming out for a second: While some people find that consensual BDSM helps them cope with trauma and/or process their emotional problems — or work through the kind of traumas that create emotional problems — many people into BDSM have no significant history of sexual trauma, TMK, or whatever trauma(s) they may have suffered, sexual or otherwise, didn’t create or shape their kinks. And while consensual BDSM can provide therapeutic benefits to a person who 1. has a history of trauma and 2. has an interest in kink — by making them feel in control of their own bodies (even if they’re temporarily ceding that control) — not everyone who’s kinky can point to a traumatic event at the root of their kinks. And kinky people shouldn’t have to cite trauma to justify the pleasure they find in getting bit, spanked, beaten, bruised, bound, etc. “It’s become an oft-repeated narrative of many a wellness think piece that BDSM and freaky fetishes are actually okay because they help people deal with their traumatic past,” as the writer, comedian and self-described “Leatherdyke Muppet” Chingy Nea wrote in a recent essay about the creeping pathologizing of kink. “What gets you off is not
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inherently born of trauma or sign of dysfunction, nor does it require suffering to validate it. Being turned on by weird fucked-up things you want to do with another consenting adult is acceptable simply because it’s hot and sexy and fun.” OK, TMK, back to your question: Antidepressants — one little pill that can relieve mental anguish and disappear a libido at the same time — can’t cure kinks, but they can suppress them. I mean, think about it … if you’re not horny right now because of the antidepressants … you’re not going to be horny for the things that get you off when you are horny … because you’re not horny … because the antidepressants. If you miss your libido — and if you miss all the hot and sexy and fun and fucked-up things you used to enjoy with other consenting adults — work with your doctor to find a different med that relieves your depression without tanking your libido, TMK, or a different dosage of the med you’re currently on that provides you with emotional benefits without depriving you of your libido and the kinks that come bundled with it. Follow Chingy Nea on Twitter @ TheGayChingy.
Hey, Dan: I’m a longtime reader who appreciates the candor and insight you’ve offered since, what, the 1990s! Yeesh. With that in mind, I have a piece of advice I’d like to share with your readers. I’m a 56-year-old gay man. From my 20s though my 40s, I was as sexually active as often as it was possible for me to be. I loved sex and had it every chance I got. It made me feel alive! Then, just as I was about to enter my 50s, I started to have erection problems. I could still come, but a spongy dick is egodeflating. Not wanting to accept what was going on, I talked to my doctor about it. I’ve tried Levitra, Cialis and now Viagra, as well as a host of cock rings. Not much of anything seems
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and game partner and still have tons hot and fulfilling sex without ever pulling your dick out. Which is not to say you shouldn’t pull your dick out — you should. But if you’re feeling selfconscious about your cock, GHOST, seek out guys who aren’t looking for sexual experiences that require a hard dick and you’ll feel less inhibited about pulling your dick out and getting yourself off as you get Joe Newton them off. to help. I miss my sex life, and I miss You already took your own advice, the confidence that came with it. I GHOST, now you need to take mine: didn’t expect this, nor did I plan for it. Stop grieving what you’ve lost and It’s a lonely feeling. get out there and enjoy what you’ve That’s why I think it’s important still got. for your readers to understand the Hey, Dan: I read this in a recent following: Have all the sex you want column of yours: “... if your parents and that you can while you can so are still fucking each other that long as you’re not hurting anyone means your parents still like each or putting anyone at risk! Do this other.” Not always, Dan. My father as often as you want to. Don’t put fucked my mother daily while he those sexual fantasies on the back was having an affair with another burner. Don’t stay in a relationship woman. As soon as the other that stifles you sexually! You owe it woman’s husband died of cancer, my to yourself to experience what you father left my mother. Affair aside, want to experience today. Don’t take he didn’t much like my mother, tomorrow for granted as tomorrow which was evident from the way he might have something else in store treated her and not just from the for you. Guy’s Hard Off Seems Terminal affair. Maybe he wanted to keep her in place until he could leave, maybe Good advice — don’t screw he had a monstrous sex drive, I don’t tomorrow what you can screw know. But he didn’t like her. My Asshole Dad today — and I’m glad you didn’t pass on any of the opportunities Thank you for writing in, MAD, and that came your way back when you you’re absolutely right: A lot of people could still “obtain and maintain” — and not just married people — a fully erect cock. But I worry fuck people they don’t like. And some you may be passing on all the people are only nice to their spouses sexual opportunities that are still when they want sex and resume available to you. Even if the rockneglecting their spouses and/or hard erections of your youth and treating them like shit immediately early middle age are gone forever, after they get sex. I obviously needed GHOST, you can still give and to qualify that statement, MAD, and receive pleasure. You can suck a if I had it to do over again I’d go with cock, you can get your ass fucked, this: “If your parents are still fucking you can fist and be fisted. And not each other, that’s a pretty good sign every gay dude into daddies wants they might still like each other.” to be plowed by his hot daddy. Lots of gay guys wanna be orally serviced by hot daddies and lots of mail@savagelove.net gay guys love having their holes t@fakedansavage eaten and stretched with big toys www.savagelovecast.com and fists. You can be a good, giving
