A sexual addiction test, and what it can and can’t tell you.
This is the screen researchers built to match the World Health Organization’s definition of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder. Nineteen statements about the last six months, each answered from 1 to 4. It gives you a score and a plain reading. It is not a diagnosis, and it will not call you anything.
It counts sex the way the researchers did: masturbation, porn and sex with a partner all count, and so does anything else that does the same job for you. Answer for what you actually did, not for what it is called.
Your answers never leave this page — nothing is sent, nothing is stored.
For adults, 18 and over. The statements are the Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder Scale (CSBD-19) by Bőthe and colleagues, 2020, reproduced under CC BY 4.0; the source and what we changed. Looking for Patrick Carnes’ own Sexual Addiction Screening Test? It is copyrighted, so we don’t reproduce it. The official free version is here.
Even though my sexual behavior was irresponsible or reckless, I found it difficult to stop.
On a keyboard, press 1 to 4.
Take a breath.
Whatever the number turns out to be, you just looked at it straight. Almost no man does.
It doesn’t flag compulsive sexual behavior.
In the research samples, most adults scored well under 50. The average total was about 29.
Your total sits below the line the researchers set. That is a real answer, and a narrow one. This screen asks about control and what it costs. It does not ask whether something in you is troubled by what you look at, and a man can score low and still be right that something needs to change.
If that is you, you are not overreacting. The section further down is about the difference between losing control and losing peace, and ten honest questions looks at the same ground in plain words, including the secrecy and the cost to your life.
I’m Luke — I built this. For years I’d have said no to most of these. I was doing well. It was only sometimes.
If the answers ever start to change, you won’t have to face that alone.
It flags a pattern worth taking to someone trained.
50 is the line that best separated a small high-risk group in the research samples. Most adults scored well under it. The average total was about 29.
Your total is at or above the line the researchers set. Read that slowly, and then read the rest, because the number is the smallest part of this. It is a screen, not a diagnosis: in the study, about three in four people at or above 50 belonged to the high-risk group, and about one in four did not.
What a clinician looks for is wider than a score. The WHO’s diagnosis asks for a pattern that has run for an extended period, six months or more being its own example, and has caused real distress or damage to your life. It does not count distress that is entirely about moral disapproval of the behavior. A person who sits down with you can weigh that. A questionnaire cannot.
Nothing here says you’re broken, or that you are anything. It says something has been taking more of your life than you meant it to. What helps is not trying harder. It is not doing it alone: one man you trust, this week, and someone trained soon. Here’s how to find them.
I’m Luke. I built this, and I’m not a brand.
For years I’d have said no to most of these. I was doing well. It was only sometimes.
I was ten the first time. Thirty-eight before I told the truth out loud.
What finally freed me wasn’t trying harder. It was no longer doing it alone.
You’re not too far gone. I wasn’t.
What the nineteen were asking.
Five questions, really, each one a part of the WHO’s description. Your own answers are above. Here is what each area is for, with the statements exactly as the researchers wrote them.
Control
- Even though my sexual behavior was irresponsible or reckless, I found it difficult to stop.
- I could not control my sexual cravings and desires.
- My sexual desires controlled me.
The WHO’s description opens with a persistent pattern of failing to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges. That is what these three are about. None of the three asks how often. A man who looks once a week and cannot stop when he decides to has more going on than a man who looks more often and can. Frequency is the easiest thing to reassure yourself with and the least informative.
The center of your attention
- Sex has been the most important thing in my life.
- I would rather have had sex than to have done anything else.
- When I could have sex, everything else became irrelevant.
The WHO lists it as a possible sign: the behavior becoming a central focus of life, to the point of neglecting health, personal care and other responsibilities. Wanting is not the question. Everyone wants. The question is whether it has moved from one thing among many to the thing the rest of the day is arranged around.
Cutting back
- I was able to resist my sexual urges for only a little while before I surrendered to them.
- Trying to reduce the amount of sex I had almost never worked.
- I was not successful in reducing the amount of sex I had.
The WHO names numerous unsuccessful efforts to cut down as another possible sign. Read these as evidence of effort, not of weakness. The rules, the blockers, the stretch that held for a while all count here, and what they show is that trying harder from inside the loop was never going to be enough by itself.
Doing it without enjoying it
- I had sex even when I did not enjoy it anymore.
- Although sex was not as satisfying for me as before, I engaged in it.
- Although my sex life was not as satisfying as it had been before, I had sex.
The WHO includes continuing with little or no satisfaction from it. This is the area that surprises men. By this point a lot of them are not chasing pleasure at all. They are chasing relief, or the end of a feeling, and the pleasure has faded while the pull stayed.
What it costs
- I did not accomplish important tasks because of my sexual behavior.
- My sexual urges and impulses changed me in a negative way.
- My sexual activities interfered with my work and/or education.
- My sexual behaviors had negative impact on my relationships with others.
- I have been upset because of my sexual behaviors.
- My sexual activities interfered with my ability to experience healthy sex.
- I often found myself in an embarrassing situation because of my sexual behavior.
The WHO asks for marked distress, or significant impairment, in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of life, and lists continuing despite adverse consequences. Seven statements, because this is where the diagnosis lives: work and study, your relationships, your own sense of who you are. It is also where guilt can lift a number that control alone would not, which is why the next section exists.
This is the shape the WHO describes, set out as questions. It is not a verdict on you. The pattern is the bramble. You are the man underneath it.
Losing control and losing peace are different troubles.
A questionnaire can count how often a man could not stop. It cannot tell whether what hurts is the not stopping, or the distance between what he does and what he believes. Both are real. They need different help, and men who grew up in church often carry both at once.
When it is control
You decide, and it does not hold. You hide it. The cost is something you can name: time, sleep, money, a marriage, your own trust in yourself.
This is what the screen is built for, and what a trained counselor works on, usually with another person in the room. It was hardly ever a willpower problem.
When it is conscience
You believe it is wrong, you grieve it, and when you decide to stop, you can. That is not nothing. It is also not what the WHO’s diagnosis describes, which leaves out distress that is entirely about moral judgment.
The help for it is a pastor or a counselor who will take your convictions seriously. The grief is a sign of what you love, not of a disease.
Research on religious people finds that moral disapproval often predicts feeling addicted better than the amount of use does (Grubbs and colleagues, 2019). So the first job is to find out which trouble you have, and the second is to be honest that it may be both.
If you want a second reading.
No single test settles this. These are worth knowing about, and none of them replaces a conversation.
Patrick Carnes’ own test
The Sexual Addiction Screening Test, from IITAP, the institute that trains Certified Sex Addiction Therapists. It is free and anonymous. It comes out of a clinical model that treats this as an addiction, and its scoring is read differently from the scoring here, with different lines in different versions. Take it as a second opinion. Take the official SAST.
Ten honest questions
Plain-language questions drawn from Carnes’ criteria. No score. It asks about secrecy and about the cost to your life, which this screen only touches. Answer the ten.
The two-minute reflection
PATHOS, the six questions Carnes’ team built for clinics, in a gentler form. No score. Take the reflection.
A person
Any licensed counselor who treats compulsive sexual behavior, or a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist found by area in the IITAP directory. Bring the score if you like. The conversation matters more than the number.
Where this comes from.
The nineteen statements, the four-point scale, the scoring and the line at 50 are the Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder Scale (CSBD-19): Bőthe, B., Potenza, M. N., Griffiths, M. D., Kraus, S. W., Klein, V., Fuss, J., & Demetrovics, Z. (2020). The development of the Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder Scale (CSBD-19): An ICD-11 based screening measure across three languages. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 9(2), 247–258. doi:10.1556/2006.2020.00034. Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.
What we changed, as the licence asks us to say. The statements are shown one at a time, in an order mixed across the five areas. The researchers’ definition of sex is paraphrased. The area names and everything written about your result are ours; the researchers did not write or endorse them. The scoring is theirs, unchanged: add the nineteen answers, for a total between 19 and 76, with the line at 50.
What the research shows, and what it doesn’t. The scale was tested in four community samples, 9,325 adults in the United States, Hungary and Germany, and not in clinics. At 50 it picked out almost everyone in the high-risk group the researchers had identified, and about one in four of the people it flagged were not in that group. They describe it as a first step before a clinical interview, and say the clinical value of the line still needs testing in people seeking treatment. The average total in the largest sample was about 29.
The definition it follows. The statements track the WHO’s compulsive sexual behaviour disorder (ICD-11, code 6C72), which the WHO places among the impulse-control disorders, not the addictive ones. It describes a persistent pattern of failing to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges, over an extended period (six months or more is the WHO’s own example), causing marked distress or significant impairment. It does not count distress that is entirely about moral judgment or disapproval of sexual urges or behavior. Read the entry at the WHO.
Honest answers.
Is this the Sexual Addiction Screening Test (SAST)?
No. The SAST is Patrick Carnes’ screening test, and it is copyrighted, so this site does not reproduce it. The official version is free and anonymous at IITAP’s RecoveryZone, and this page links to it. What you took here is the Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder Scale (CSBD-19), a different instrument, published open access under a Creative Commons licence that lets anyone reproduce it with credit. Researchers built it from the World Health Organization’s ICD-11 definition; the SAST comes out of Carnes’ clinical model. They ask about overlapping things and are not interchangeable.
Can a test tell me whether I am a sex addict?
No test can, and this one does not try. It is a screen: a first step that tells you whether a conversation with someone trained is worth having. Whether “addiction” is even the right word is argued over by clinicians. The WHO’s ICD-11 lists compulsive sexual behaviour disorder as an impulse-control disorder, and the American DSM-5 does not list it at all. What is not argued over is that losing control of sexual behavior, and paying for it, is real. The longer answer is here.
What does a score of 50 or more mean?
In the research that built the scale, 50 out of 76 was the line that best separated a small high-risk group from everyone else. About three in four people at or above it belonged to that group and about one in four did not, so it is a reason to look closer and not a conclusion. The ICD-11 diagnosis also needs a pattern that has run for an extended period, six months or more being the WHO’s own example, with marked distress or damage to your life, and it does not count distress that is entirely about moral judgment. A person who talks with you has to weigh that, not a questionnaire.
I scored low but I still think it is a problem. Am I wrong?
No. This screen measures loss of control and what it costs. It does not measure whether something in you is troubled by what you look at, and a man can score low and be right that something needs to change. If the trouble is conscience, or a marriage, or the way you see people, that is real and deserves a real conversation, with a pastor or a counselor. It is a different problem from compulsion, and the two need different help.
I am a Christian and a lot of this feels like guilt. Does that skew the result?
It can skew other tests. Research on perceived addiction finds that religious people more often feel addicted than their actual use would predict, and that moral disapproval explains much of the gap. The CSBD-19 mostly asks about control and consequences and not about guilt, and the ICD-11 definition it follows explicitly excludes distress that is entirely about moral judgment. But no questionnaire can sort conscience from compulsion in a person. Someone sitting across from you can.
Is anything I answer saved or sent?
No. Your answers stay on this page. Nothing is sent to Bramble or anyone else, nothing is stored in your browser, and nothing is put in the address. Close the tab and they are gone. If you allow analytics, the page is counted as a visit like any other page on the site, and your answers are never part of that.
What should I do with a high score?
Tell one person you trust this week, and then find someone trained. A Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT) is listed in the IITAP directory by area, and any licensed counselor who treats compulsive sexual behavior is a fair place to start. Bring the score if you like, but the conversation matters more than the number. And if you want a quiet, structured way to clear it day by day, that is what Bramble is for.