Dressing up is addicting. Kinda conflicted though...

[Martine Amance]

Ah, the question of addiction. I have noticed that many in the the "community" called cross dressers seem to suffer from what may be called a compulsive/obsessive disorder. What I love about is that alcoholics and OCDs share similar brain scans. That is, when one does the PET-scans those who have OCD and those who are alcoholics show similar brain development. The kicker is that once on is "recovered", meaning having been off Alcohol for a number of year, the brain scans show a reversion toward the normal brain organization. I would not be surprised to see that those individuals for whom cross dressing is a compulsion show a similar physical organization of the brain. And I would assume that many tobacco smokers may have a similar structure.

I too have my degrees in psychology, the cognitive/neuro-science side of the house.

[Erica S]

I am so addicted to dressing in women's clothing. I am now partarly dressed as most early mornings I have. I had the time yesterday to put on a bra and one of my wife's long formal dresses. It is very silky and feels geat on ( a bit big oh well ), I just needed to feel the material next to me. I feel so much better, calmer when dressed. At the same time I know it to be differnet and not what is expected a man to be doing. I can not help feeling this way. I do not wish to stop. I know if caught it will be a war between my wife and I.

I do feel different when I am Erica. I like the feeling and long for it when I am not her.

I do not know what to do....

Hugs,

Erica

[Martina Hall]

I quit all alcohol eleven years ago, for health reasons. It was easy, mainly because I felt way better, right away. Quitting CD would be much harder, doubtful I could do that.

[Paulette]

I quit all alcohol eleven years ago, for health reasons. It was easy, mainly because I felt way better, right away. Quitting CD would be much harder, doubtful I could do that.

I think quitting alcohol is over-rated on the mohs hardness scale. Cigarettes was much worse. I can only say that for me, though. YMMV - no, it will vary. But the whole addiction issue is confused. I found that to quit smoking I had to re-define myself and act and try to think and believe like someone who was a non-smoker. It took a few months of self-hypnosis and constantly reminding myself that of course I didn't want a cigarette, but (for me) it worked. Very much the same principle as in AA, but without the religion and the "steps," and after a year I gradually forgot to remember to be a non-smoker because I was a non-smoker. My wife started up after a seven year hiatus and though it took a while to get used to the smell, I never wanted to start again. Not even to try just one. (I do threaten her with starting again if she continues to feel that she has to leave the room or the house every time she wants a cig.)

I could no more quit dressing than quit breathing. now. It's a basic part of who I am, and I like who I am. Dressing is fairly infrequent now that I have come to terms with being a cross-dresser and have outed myself to friends and family. The pressure to keep hidden, the thrill of the risk of being discovered? Those are insignificant now, and pretty much no longer attractive. I stop underdressing whenever it begins to feel like just wearing underwear, but start up again when the urge and the excitement of it returns.

Last night I felt very uncomfortable and couldn't sleep. And though I had no urge to dress, it felt that I wouldn't relax until I put on a nightgown, so I did. Fell asleep in about ten minutes, but woke up before dawn and had to take it off because it was too constricting. (It seems I've gained some weight.)

I like Ralitsa's list, and I'm pleased to see bottled water on it.

But back to CD and addiction. It's particularly difficult to stop doing it because it begins at such an elemental level of one's development. Very few discover it after adolescence, and many associate it with sexual pleasure if not with sensory stimulation. And I can well believe that OCD and CD brain patterns are similar. When I was young the drive and the urge were truly irresistible, even leading me into situations where I might have been hurt or arrested. Like any true addiction, it was necessary.

So my advice is not to fight it, but find a way to accommodate it. I've come to a kind of equilibrium between need and outlet by including my wife in my CD world, and by speaking frankly about it in blogs and social media. However, I don't discuss my sexual practices regarding CD any more than I'd would without CD: it's private!)

I've come to believe that none of this applies to those of us with a strong sense of dysphoria. That is, if in your mind you automatically and always think of yourself as a woman, then dressing in female clothes has little or nothing to do with addiction. It's a necessary expression of who you are.

Again, just my take on things. YMMV.

[Absaroka]

I am in fact a drug addict, and have been clean for many years. Just about anything can induce some sort of emotional and spiritual dependence, and with things like gambling it can have a lot to do with how it triggers our endorphins. So the urge to cross dress can certainly feel like an addiction and for some it could be. But sometimes I think the word addiction gets over used.

Addiction is an enemy of life. Breathing, for example, is not addictive. Sex and eating are in fact necessary for our life and for the continuation of the species. But some people do in fact become sex addicts and some acquire eating disorders that very much resemble addiction. Compulsive overeating in fact probably kills a lot more people than drug addiction.

I think the question to ask is how much is cross dressing interfering with your life? Is there a way to do it that is not destructive of your life?

I found, after many failed attempts, that there was no way to use drugs that did not have disastrous consequences. There was no such thing as "enough" and I was unable to stop using without assistance. I like to dress, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little. For me, after half a century of repressing it, it took a while (several years) to have "enough". But I seem to have found a balance that works for me with regard to cross dressing. The same balance may not work for someone else, but it works for me. The only possible balance with mind altering substances is to use none whatsoever. Faced with a choice of picking up a drug or cutting off my hand, it would be an easy decision. Faced with a life of continued drug use or quadriplegia, would be a difficult decision. I don't know what I'd decide. Fortunately these choices are not required of us.

I also have an eating disorder. This was an addiction that required me to come to terms with the concept of "enough" with regard to eating. That was very difficult. Knowing what situations I must avoid in order to remain abstinent has also been very difficult.

It may be that your wiring is such that the endorphin rush of dressing has set up a feedback loop that will lead to it causing grave problems in your life. For example, if you buy dresses instead of groceries.....However because of all the societal factors it can be very difficult to sort all these issues out with regards to cross dressing.

Good luck with all this. No matter what the answer, part of it is self acceptance. It can be very difficult to accept the truth when we have no idea what the truth is, however, so at some point self acceptance may mean accepting that the answer is "I don't know"