Hot-button EXPERT
Local therapist in national spotlight for controversial views on sex addiction
David Ley has built a career out of sex. The Albuquerque therapist started his career talking about sex behind closed doors, then in the pages of an award-winning book and finally he found himself on the national stage. Several national talk shows, including Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz and Anderson Cooper, have had Ley on their shows as an expert. Ley gained attention after stating he doesn’t believe sexual addiction is real. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is the reference guide for mental illnesses published by the American Psychiatric Association, does not recognize sex addiction. This is something Ley often points out but it hasn’t quelled his critics. In the media, he has been accused of not understanding the true nature of addiction and other therapists have written articles disputing his claims.
“When you have a set belief system and someone like me challenges the status quo, it gets attention,” he said. “Mental health can be quite conservative and traditional.”
Ley said he believes there are unhealthy behaviors associated with sex but instead of treating patients for sex addiction, he advocates helping them develop a healthy sexuality, which contains six components: honesty, negotiation, mutuality, shared values, safety and consent.
The recent scandals in Hollywood and elsewhere have thrust Ley into an even brighter spotlight. The New York Times published an article in early October detailing a decade of sexual harassment by producer Harvey Weinstein. Numerous well-known women have come forward with stories about Weinstein’s inappropriate sexual behavior. Shortly after being exposed, Weinstein claimed he was battling a sex addiction and checked himself into rehab.
“As soon as he said he was a sex addict,” Ley said, “my phone started ringing off the hook.”
Invaluable resource
While the talk about sex addiction is the most sensational and controversial part of his work, it’s not the only part. Ley is a well-respected therapist in the city’s mental health community. He serves on the Mental Health Response Advisory Committee, which assists the Albuquerque Police Department on mental health issues, and on the Board of
Directors of Albuquerque Healthcare for the Homeless. He’s the executive director of New Mexico Solutions, an outpatient mental health and substance abuse program with 75 providers throughout the city.
Jenny Metzler, executive director of Albuquerque Healthcare for the Homeless, met Ley approximately eight years ago when the two were often at the same meetings. She said he has an uncanny ability to stay up-to-date on current trends and information.
“I’ll just be getting an email about something,” she said. “He’s already read it, analyzed it and is thinking about the implications of it.”
She said his ability to listen and see the bigger picture make him an invaluable source, as does his sense of humor.
“He’ll throw something out there that will just make me laugh out loud,” she said. “He keeps us all from taking ourselves too seriously.”
Sense of humor
Ley learned early not to take himself or life too seriously. He was born with one hand. He had to spend a week in the hospital after his birth and during that time his parents went home and practiced doing everything with one hand. They decided, he said, the message they wanted to send to their son was “you can do things other people can. You just have to do them a different way.” Ley also experienced bullying for being different when he was younger.
“I’m a man with one hand,” he said. “That affected me in different ways.”
Ley met his best friend Alfredo Aragon when the two were enrolled in the clinical psychology Ph.D. program at the University of New Mexico. Aragon, a neuropsychologist at the University of New Mexico Hospital, said the two immediately became close friends. Aragon describes Ley as a genuine, smart person he can always turn to for professional and personal advice. Aragon said the two share the same sense of humor, which is mostly making fun of themselves.
“He’s really funny and kinda ‘nutty,’” Aragon said. “Certainly funnier than me, but I don’t let him know that. I let him believe I’m funnier.”
In college, the two liked playing practical jokes on each other. One time, Ley purchased an exhaust car whistle and secretly placed it in Aragon’s exhaust pipe. By the time Aragon got to school, he was convinced his car was going to explode until he saw Ley waiting for him and laughing hysterically.
Confronting bias
Ley never planned to make sex addiction his expertise or to become a national speaker on the topic. He was counseling couples who were living what some would consider an alternative sexual lifestyle by either swinging, watching porn together or inviting other people into their relationship. He decided to write a book, “Insatiable Wives: Women Who Stray and the Men Who Love Them.” The book won a Silver Medal in the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year contest for 2009.
“The couples I met were really healthy and I had to confront my own bias,” he said. “In the book I said, I don’t think anything they are doing is wrong or unhealthy and here’s why.”
Ley offhandedly mentioned in the book that he didn’t believe in sex addiction. That comment, although not the focus of the book, touched a nerve and he started getting requests to be a guest speaker on talk shows. He followed that book in 2012 with “The Myth of Sex Addiction.”
Ley said his work has enriched his own relationship with his wife, Roxanne, a science teacher, whom he met in 1996 while walking along Central. The two married in 1999.
“She has always been my best supporter,” he said. “She helped me heal from my own personal scars.”
The couple have two children. Their youngest, Samantha Ley, is a junior in high school. Her parents were always very open with her about sex and her father’s job but she said it’s still a bit awkward that her father goes on television or on stage and talks about sex.
She said as a father he’s incredibly supportive, a good person, very trusting, the king of dad jokes and the two practice martial arts together. She said Ley hasn’t let all the national attention go to his head and still enjoys a good joke, even at his expense.
“In the Brazilian Jujitsu community,” she said, “he is known as the onehanded ninja.”