Name: Todd
Gender: male
Age: 42
Location: OKC
Here’s one for you. Several months ago I had difficulty sleeping so I got a prescription for Ambian. I’ve been using it off and on for several weeks and it worked fine. But I think there are side effects. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and find the TV in my bedroom on and a porno in the DVD player. There’s lube and cum stains on my sheets, but I don’t remember a damn thing. I’ve heard of people sleepwalking, but not to this extent.

Some people don’t just walk in their sleep; they eat as well. And some people, like you, have sex in their sleep. As sleep disorders go, this is pretty extreme, but researchers are finding that abnormal nocturnal behaviors like eating, having sex, even driving a car may be a side effect of that popular sleep medication you’re taking.

You may be a parasomniac, someone who is prone to unusual sleep-related behaviors. Ambian may be aggravating and intensifying or triggering the condition. And curiously enough, there is such a thing as a sexsomniac.

Sexsomnia is an umbrella term for any sexual behavior (masturbation, taking dirty, even fucking) that happens while the person is asleep. The incidences of sexsomnia appear to be on the rise, but that might be attributed to growing public awareness.

As an aside, get this. — A surge in naked sleepwalking among guests has led one of Britain’s largest budget hotel groups to re-train staff to handle late-night nudity.

Travelodge, which runs more than 300 business hotels in Britain, says sleepwalking rose seven-fold in the past year, and 95 per cent of the sleepwalkers are scantily clad men. Isn’t that amazing?

The exact number of sexsomniacs is difficult to determine because it usually isn’t that much of a problem to warrant treatment or even reporting. Perhaps if you weren’t taking Ambien you wouldn’t have even known you were a sexsomniac.

I’m gonna guess, Todd, that you don’t share your bed with a regular partner, right? The reason I ask is that some sexsomniacs have been know to assault their partner, either in the form of non-consensual sex, or consensual sex that becomes disturbing or violent.

So it would seem that the best treatment for you would be to stop the Ambien. You might want to consider an herbal remedy for sleeplessness, one that doesn’t have as many unhappy and unwelcome side effects of this particular prescription med does.

Name: Zoe
Gender: female
Age: 25
Location: Boise
I learned how to masturbate when I was 12. From that first time I’ve loved how it makes me feel. No matter how good my lovers are; they never come close to the pleasure I feel when I’m touching myself. I like the intimacy I have with my boyfriend, but he’s not very good in the sack. I’ve been trying to get him to watch me masturbate, or we could masturbate together, so that he’d know how to touch me and make the bells ring. Unfortunately, he’s really straight-laced and he thinks my suggestion is perverted. He resists every time I bring it up. Sometimes after we have sex, I wait for him to fall asleep then get myself off. Is this selfish?

You betcha it’s selfish, selfish as all get-out. Not you, Zoe, but the bonehead you’re fuckin. This is a classic — “you can lead the horse to water, but you can’t make him drink” sorta deal. Only here we have a — “you can lead the horse’s ass to the mysteries of pussy, but you can’t make him appreciate them.”

I gotta ask, what’s a sexually enlightened chick, like you, doin’ with a bozo, like him? Do you actually think that he’s gonna magically come around one fine day and let you lead him to nirvana? I think not. You know why I think this? It’s because you’ve created a monster, an — “all I need to worry about is me gettin’ off in my girlfriend’s snatch” kinda monster. And that’s one fuckin’ scary monster.

I am of the mind that it’s fruitless to try to get an obstinate partner, like your guy, to do something he doesn’t want to do. The nagging alone will harden his resolve to resist. In the numbskull’s defense, he may be missing the point completely. He may not understand why you want him to watch you pleasure yourself. So if your agenda is to get him to be a better lover, you’re gonna have to come up with a new strategy on how to approach the big lug.

First off, he needs to be told, in no uncertain terms, that he’s not the Hercules in the boudoir he thinks he is. This is gonna sting his ego like crazy and it might very well be the end of him and you altogether. But I assure you, risking this is much better than maintaining the status quo. Because, with each passing fuck, he will be more convinced, then the fuck before, that he’s da man.

Once you burst his bubble, you’ll need to immediately inflate a new one for and with him. Us men folk can’t long survive without our illusions. Begin this inflation process by taking some responsibility for this predicament. Own up to keeping him in the dark about his lack of sexual prowess. Then tell him that there’s a very easy and fun fix for the problem. Maybe if he understands that you want to jill-off for him as a tutorial, he’d be more compliant.

I’d be willing to guess that if you made this presentation more of a game or a role-play scenario then a seminar he’d be more receptive. Why not try something like this. Introduce a blindfold into your sex play. Have him strip down to his jock for you, then blindfold him. It’s gonna be his job to get you off without using the magic wand he has stuck in his jock. The blindfold will necessitate that he use his hands (and mouth) to find and pleasure you. While you tease his dick inside his jock, guide his hands to your pussy. He’ll no doubt be fumbling around at first, so you’ll have to encourage him with some dirty talk, or actually use his hand to jill yourself off. Just remember keep it fun and playful and keep his dick safely tucked away.

You can see how this little exercise could be educational for him without being emasculating. Once he figures out that there’s more to sex than the old in and out, he might actually cum around, so to speak. Similarly, you might, on another occasion, submit to the blindfold yourself and have him use your hand to jack himself off. In time, you be able to do away with the blindfold altogether. But then, you might want to introduce restraints of some sort. While he’s buck naked and restrained put on a hot and horny show for him. Tease him with your self-pleasuring, but don’t let him touch you. Maybe rub yourself with his stiff cock. Since he’ll be unable to resist, it will be like masturbating yourself with his johnson. Doesn’t that sound like a load of fun for all concerned?

However, if the monkey resists even these sexy games; kick him to the curb and find yourself a new man that will appreciate your fine self.

Name: Alex
Gender: male
Age: 19
Location: Indianapolis
I noticed from your bio, dr dick, that you are a pornographer. How do you justify that? Isn’t pornography basically an insult to human sexuality? How do you square that with being a sex therapist and believing as you say that you affirm the fundamental goodness of sexuality in human life, both as a personal need and as an interpersonal bond.”

Wow, Alex, you actually took the time to read my bio? I’m impressed. You bring up a very interesting point, albeit with a bit of a jab. You’re right, I am a pornographer. If that’s the only word you can come up with to describe what I do at Daddy Oohhh! Productions. I like to think that the adult material I produce is not in conflict with my basic, over all philosophy about human sexuality. BTW, thank you for quoting it as accurately as you did.

Admittedly, porn is a thorny issue in our sex-negative culture. Lots of people are hostile to the notion that there could actually be something uplifting and life affirming about the depiction, in any medium, of sexual behaviors. Lots of people believe that even nudity, let alone full-blown sex, is bad and that it corrupts the consumer, especially if the consumer is a youth.

I don’t happen to share that perception. But this is such a hot-button issue for most people that it’s very difficult to have a civil discourse about the place pornography has in our, or any other culture. Since we find it so difficult to talk about sexual things in the public forum; it’s no surprise that pornography, the public exposure of sexual things, continues to be a big bogyman for even otherwise enlightened people.

I hasten to add that, for the most part, the adult entertainment industry richly deserves the dubious reputation it has. There is an enormous amount content in the marketplace that degrades, dehumanizes and exploits. And I’m not just talking about the stuff that doesn’t suit my tastes. Because there’s a lot of good stuff out there that doesn’t particularly appeal to me.

Therefore, I caution you in your youthful zeal not to reject everything that depicts sexual behavior as worthless just because a good portion of it is indeed shameful junk. That would be like discarding all religion because a good portion of its practitioners degrade, dehumanize and shame those who don’t share their belief system.

You apparently also think there is an inherent contradiction between being a sex therapist and a pornographer. I don’t agree. For over 25 years I’ve been involved in all sorts of cutting-edge sex education and sexual enrichment projects. So why not attempt to bring a fresh, healthier perspective to adult entertainment. Sounds like the perfect role for a sexologist to me.

Humans have been depicting sexual behavior, in one fashion or another, since we were able to scratch images on the walls of our caves. Some of these depictions are intended to titillate, others to educate, even others to edify, but all are expressions of the passions of the person who scratched, painted, wrote or committed to videotape the images they did. And let’s not forget that in more sex-positive societies than our own, sexual practices were and are integral parts of worshiping the deity.

I think that if you were really interested in getting to know my thoughts about pornography, you’d do well to check out some of my work. I am so proud of the work that I do that I put my real name on all my products.

Porn, like most forms of human expression, can be both gold and dross. And maybe, just maybe, we need the crap in order to appreciate the treasure. The definition of what is ‘pornographic’ changes with the times. Community standards also play a part. A lingerie catalog that showed women in bras and panties is ‘pornographic’ in some place, but be no big deal in others.

Also today’s porn maybe tomorrow’s art. A lot of stuff that hangs in the Louvre museum today was, in its day, considered scandalous and pornographic. Happily, we do evolve.

I argue that there is a purpose to sexual depictions, smutty or otherwise. I mean, why else would such depictions be so pervasive and appear in every culture and in every age. And it’s not just because it’s art. Most pornography, by its very nature, is decidedly not art. So if it ain’t art, per se, what the fuck is it? Most pornography is simply designed to arouse sexual desire. And that, generally speaking, is a really good thing. It’s precisely this very pursuit that probably brought you, young Alex, to my site in the first place. Am I correct?

Sexual desire can stimulate an array of thoughts and behaviors from tender, intimate, and passionate to raw, fierce, and cruel. The mood of the consumer also plays a part. If your libido is raging, you might find a certain depiction stimulating. While the same depiction can cause disgust when your hormones are more in check.

Porn tends to show what people fantasize about, rather than what actually happens in the lives of most people. And just so you know, everything is exaggerated in pornography, body parts, sexual situations as well as sexual responses. Everything is staged and a lot of it is faked. Exaggeration is a time honored way of calling attention to something that is otherwise pretty mundane…like sex itself.

In the end, Alex, you will have to decide for yourself what merits pornography has, if any, in our culture. I suggest, however, that you approach porn with a slightly more dispassionate eye than you are currently using. You may find that it has something to teach you about yourself, your culture, as well as the history of human kind.

Good luck ya’ll