Gail Porter lifts lid on sex addiction therapy

The former TV presenter also suffers from stress-related alopecia. Picture: TSPL

The model and presenter said she attended a self-help group after being diagnosed as being bi-polar.

Edinburgh-born Porter, 43, whose claims to fame include having her naked picture beamed on to the side of the Houses of Parliament, said she believes her extreme sexual behaviour was a symptom of the depression she suffered after being diagnosed with the mental health disorder.

Porter, a mother-of-one, said she had to attend a women-only sex addiction group after becoming attracted to the men in the therapy sessions.

Speaking about the treatment she underwent, Porter said: “I went to a sex addicts’ group. And when we came out everyone was really horny. It’s like ‘Do we go for a burger afterwards – or back to someone’s home?’ The girls ended up having to go to a female only group.”

The presenter, who has also struggled to deal with stress-related alopecia which caused her hair to fall out in 2005, said she was now looking for relationship, but fears her baldness is putting men off.

Porter shot to fame in the early 1990s as a children’s television presenter before moving on to Top of the Pops and The Big Breakfast. She married Toploader guitarist Dan Hipgrave in Edinburgh in 2001 but divorced in 2005 at a time she was suffering from stress, drug addiction and depression.

She said: “I watched this TV dating show recently and a young guy was asked his worst dating fear, and he said ‘If I was matched with a woman and she had no hair.’

“The worst thing baldness causes is loneliness.

“I wondered if I’d been some really evil person in a past life to deserve this. Your friends say it doesn’t matter, but it does to blokes. Sometimes I need to be on my own. Sometimes I really want a cuddle.

“I go to the cinema on my own every week and there’s always a fat bloke in the corner with a big bucket of popcorn and he always says ‘All right, Gail!’ That’s the highlight of my single life these days.

“I’d like someone to go to the pictures with. Otherwise, it could end up with just me and the fat bloke with the popcorn.”

And she revealed that trying to control her mental health issues is constant battle and she has spent recent weeks in bed suffering from depression.

She said: “I went to the doctors not so long ago, on my knees and in tears. I told him how bad I was; I didn’t have my mum and my dad and brother were away.

“I said I didn’t want to put this on my friends and begged him to help me. He said: ‘We’ve got a three-month waiting list, will that suit?’”

Alison Cairns of the charity Bipolar Scotland said the condition manifested itself in different ways, with sex addiction affecting some sufferers.

She said: “When someone is unwell and have bi-polar they act completely out of character. One of the key characteristics can be a loss of sexual inhibition.

“But it is a personal illness and not everyone is the same. The most common form is characterised most often by depression. Not everyone would lose their inhibitions.

Ms Cairns, speaking at the start of Scottish Bi-Polar Awareness Week.

Admission is first step to a cure

HOLLYWOOD actor David Duchovny publicly announced he was seeking treatment for sex addiction in 2008.

The actor, above, who played a sex-mad writer in the US TV show Californication, had previously denied rumours of excessive womanising. He said: “If you’re single and in the public eye and you have a few dates you’re a sex addict.” And Rapper Kayne West has said he suffered from sex addiction at a young age but transferred his energy into making music. He said his current drive comes from being a sex addict at a very young age.

“Look at the drive people have to get sex – to dress like this, get a haircut and be in the club in the freezing cold at 3am. If you can focus the energy into something valuable, put that into the work ethic.”