The Bisher Addiction Brief Survey
You cannot mange what you do not measure.
The BABS (Bisher Addiction Brief Survey) is the simplest and most efficient addiction survey available, allowing the individual to quantitatively determine if certain behaviors, environments, celibacy contracts, etc. are healthy or unhealthy for you.
In the process of striving toward sustainable sexual integrity - moving away from porn addiction, sexual addiction, repeated infidelity or problematic sexual behavior - as one navigates new territory there are, understandably, many many questions that come up. Many such questions can look like:
Am I a porn Addict? Am I a sex addict?
Is it problematic if I watch less porn than I used to?
Is it okay for me to be intimate with my partner while I’m in recovery from sex addiction?
My partner doesn’t want me watching certain movies, but I feel fine about it, what should I do?
These are incredibly common questions and I believe it is incredibly important how you determine an approach to answering them. In the Bisher Addiction Brief Survey, I have compiled the simplest and most efficient quantitative survey to aid in answering these and other questions empirically - beyond simply ‘feelings.’
The BABS consists of only three questions (four for couples). Answering ‘YES’ to all three questions indicates a problematic nature with the behavior. Answering ‘YES’ to less than all three would indicate that the behavior is NOT problematic. Let’s take a deeper dive down below…
Mood Regulation
Engaging in an activity with the intent to feel better can be a wonderful thing. A hot shower. A large iced coffee in the summertime. Watching a beautiful sunset. Holding a loved one tightly. Observing incredible art. A great workout. Taking a nap on a Sunday afternoon. Putting on your favorite hoodie. Going out to your favorite restaurant. These are all wonderful, beautiful examples of healthy mood regulation.
Mood regulation can also be incredibly unhealthy. “I really need a stiff drink tonight.” Turning to porn to escape life for a bit. Masturbating for stress relief.
Indicating a ‘Yes’ response to the mood regulation question is one of three parameters that is helpful to understand and establishing problematic behavior. And let's move onto the other two…
Negative Consequences
Doing something to regulate your mood that does not have negative consequences is by definition not problematic. Taking a nice hot bath at the end of a long day so that you can feel better, achieve relief, is not problematic as there are likely not negative consequences. Now, if you take so many long hot baths that your electric and water bill become on affordable for you well now we have negative consequences.
This question about negativeThis question about negative consequences gets a little bit tricky in the context of a relationship. Individual who is engaging in potentially problematic behavior may feel that there are no negative consequences to what they are doing, however, their partner may feel otherwise. Their partner may feel that their behavior is having negative consequences. We will hold off on diving deeper into that component until further down below where we will talk about transparency.
For our purposes here, we simply want to answer the question of whether or not a certain behavior that is utilized to feel better, find relief or achieve some degree of satisfaction brings with it negative consequences. If the answer here is yes along with yes to mood regulation, so now you are two for two yeses for both mood regulation and negative consequences then you are continuing to consider this behavior for problematic nature… Now we turn to the final criteria…
Unmanageability
It is logical than when a behavior used for mood regulation brings with it negative consequences that the individual will then set boundaries so as to avoid these negative consequences in the future.
To stick with the same bath example, setting a boundary would look like ‘I am going to only take four baths per week so as to not generate an exorbitantly high water and electric bill… However, if I am then unable to keep my self-established boundaries and find myself violating them (eg. taking two baths per day) and once again my bills are too much for me to afford… this behavior is now clearly problematic and a spiral of dysfunction begins.
Clearly, as we we look at more problematic sexual behavior such as porn addiction, it is even to understand this concept of unmanageability. Maybe the boundaries set are pertaining to content matter, duration, frequency or place (not at work) and then the individual finds themselves breaking these boundaries again and again, we now have a cycle of unmanageability.
Results
At this point, for individuals, if you have indicated a ‘YES’ response to all three - mood regulation, negative consequences and unmanageability - it is fair to establish that the behavior in question IS indeed problematic.
However, things get a bit more complicated if one is in a relationship… let’s continue below for those in relationships…
Transparency (for couples)
It is very common, when in a relationship, for an individual to feel that they engage in a behavior that COULD be viewed by some as problematic (eg. masturbation, porn consumption, strip clubs, cam sites, AI companionship), however that individual may genuinely feel that for them it is within the bounds of being self-regulated and it brings about zero negative consequences. The partner in the relationship may disagree and feel quite differently, indicating that they feel either the behavior DOES hold negative consequences or they may disagree that the individual is able to manage the behavior.
This dilemma can be a tricky one and I would state that this discussion in and of itself is a negative consequence that must be addressed as it is creating tension in the relationship.
Ultimately, for the individual questioning the behavior, one more criteria must be satisfied. Does the individual engage in the problematic behavior in secrecy? If there is a lack of transparency in the relationship then there is indication of a problematic nature. In plain language, even if all three criteria are not met from above, if I have to deceive my partner then the behavior is problematic at its core regardless of negative consequences and control.
The Bisher Addiction Brief Survey
