Crazy for You cover art

Crazy for You

Breaking the Spell of Sex and Love Addiction

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
1 credit a month to buy any audiobook in our entire collection.
Access to thousands of additional audiobooks and Originals from the Plus Catalogue.
Member-only deals & discounts.
Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Crazy for You

By: Kerry Cohen PsyD LPC PsyD LPC
Narrated by: Anna Caputo
Try Premium Plus free

Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $26.99

Buy Now for $26.99

About this listen

A psychologist and bestselling author redefines love and sex addiction as a spectrum disorder, and offers a new approach for healing.

For anyone who has wondered
Why does everyone else seem to be able to make romantic relationships work, and I can’t?
What’s wrong with me?
Why is love so hard?

Psychologist and bestselling memoirist Kerry Cohen is all too familiar with the questions she often hears from her clients—and has asked herself. Even though sex and love are some of the most universal, sought-after experiences we have, many of us lack the tools and understanding to approach them in a healthy way. Without knowing it, many people struggling with sex and love actually fall somewhere on the spectrum of sex and love addiction (SLA).

Sex and love addiction is still wildly misunderstood. It’s shrouded in secrecy and shame, and many counselors lack the training to address it—leaving people who need help without resources. Yet SLA isn’t a binary of you are or you aren’t, rather, it’s a spectrum. Kerry Cohen knows this all too well as both a therapist and someone who identifies on the SLA spectrum. Based on research and her own clinical experience, Crazy for You dives into SLA and provides an inclusive framework for understanding relationships, along with practical exercises and advice for self-assessment, discovery, and healing:
  • Part one explains the sex and love addiction spectrum, helping you determine where you fall on it and how you got there
  • Part two introduces strategies for breaking the spell of sex and love addiction, like behavior modifications and self-awareness techniques
  • Part three teaches you how to navigate healthy, safe, and fulfilling relationships
 Addiction & Recovery Love, Dating & Attraction Relationships

Critic Reviews

"In exploring Sex and Love Addiction as a broad and varied spectrum, Kerry Cohen's Crazy for You seems destined to resonate with just about anyone who has ever been in an unhappy or insecure relationship (in other words: almost everyone). If you fall on the Sex and Love Addiction Spectrum (SLAS), this book is full of practical tools for breaking unhealthy patterns that prevent true intimacy, and provides a language and context for self-sabotaging patterns. But better yet, Cohen illustrates that between all-too-common childhood wounds, the pervasiveness of a patriarchal/racist/classist culture, and media portrayals of 'romance,' it would be virtually impossible for anyone not to recognize some aspect of our lives and the lives of those close to us in these pages. Crazy for You encourages all readers to consider our own relationships--even the happy ones--more mindfully and to move towards self-healing amidst a flawed world." —Gina Frangello, author of Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason
"Sex and love addiction is one of the most challenging addictive habits: it promises us love but leaves us broken hearted and alone. Kerry Cohen offers a compassionate, comprehensive approach to healing.”—Kelly McDaniel, LPC, NCC,, author of Mother Hunger and Ready to Heal
Praise for Loose Girl
"Cohen's brutal honesty about her relentless request for companionship is refreshingly relatable."—Entertainment Weekly
"Cohen recounts her harrowing litany of hookups through clear, poignant, spare-no-details prose."—Marie Claire
Praise for Lush
"Raw, intimate and brave, Lush tears apart the usual advice about drinking and addiction (guess what, AA isn't the only answer), and chronicles Cohen's journey toward a healing that at first she can only image. Gorgeously written and audaciously intelligent, here is a controversial and compelling look at finding your own way back."—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You
"Kerry Cohen applies her legendary wit and sagacity to women's often subtly destructive dance with alcohol. With great vulnerability and dynamic prose, Cohen examines her own descent into the bottle, its ruinous consequences, and her courageous fight to find her footing in her real life again. This is a story you won't soon forget."—Jillian Lauren, New York Times bestselling memoirist of Some Girls: My Life in a Harem and Everything You Ever Wanted
All stars
Most relevant
Somewhere in the first few chapters of this book, the author writes about how SLAA isn't the best because you have to be completely "sober" and that can display a message of you either being "good" or bad". As a SLAA member, at first I giggled, I can see how the program would be perceived this way. But after thinking about it a while and listening to the book further, I've realised that the author has a complete misconception of SLAA. In chapter 5 the author suggests setting guidelines for yourself, like texting only after a 6 hour alarm, or not contacting a person first. In SLAA, these "guidelines" are what we call Bottom-Lines. Although they have the same concept, they are slightly different. Bottom-lines are more so things like don't contact anyone who you are romantically/sexually interested in, or dont allow yourself to seek validation from others. As a severe sex and love addict (going off of the diagnostic criteria in this book), the "guidelines" in from the book would in no world work for me. They leave way too many grey areas and hence way too much space for excuses, which I promise will just lead you straight back down the road of addiction. I appreciate how the author of this book is trying to approach sex and love addiction, and I'm sure many practices she suggests would work, but I can't see how this book would actually be successful with a sex and love addict. If I tried to set a 6 hour alarm before messaging someone I'm interested in, that time would only get shorter and shorter due to the delusional excuses I'd make. I know this because that's exactly what's happened every time I've tried it over the past 10 years. It doesn't work. I'm an addict, not someone whose overly attached or craves excessive attention, a full blown addict, and I promise you a psychology based text book is nowhere near enough to beat my addiction.

Not sure about this one

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.