How Neil Strauss gave up his sex-addicted life to win back his one true love

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Neil Strauss, shared his encounters as pick-up artist known as 'Style' in his 2005 book The Game
Now, in The Truth, he reveals the spicy details of his debauchery and road to recovery
'I'm in a f***ing mental hospital because I couldn't say no to sex,' Neil Strauss writes
Serial sex partners, BDSM, swinging... you name it, Strauss tried it
'I've signed my soul to Joan [his sex therapist] and turned my d**k into an appendage, doomed to dangle desolately between my legs'
The conflicted sex addict is now married to 26-year-old Ingrid Deleo and they have a son

Published: 09:45 EST, 16 October 2015 | Updated: 15:27 EST, 16 October 2015

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In 2001 New York Times journalist Neil Strauss left the newspaper and ventured into the world of pick-up artists, calling himself 'Style.' A few years later the master of seduction, voted the best pick-up artist in the world, chronicled his exploits in the 2005 bestseller The Game,

Strauss finally confronted his swaggering playboy lifestyle - after losing the one woman he truly loved - and in The Truth, An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships, published by Dey St (an imprint of Harper Collins), he details his debauchery and road to recovery.

Strauss says he joined the seduction community in his attempt to overcome his low self-esteem and bad luck with women, Strauss, now 45, was transformed from a pale, skinny, bald guy – a hapless schmuck -- into a Hollywood alpha-stud.

He mastered unfaithfulness and dishonesty while chasing his sexual addiction that drew him to every woman within a 50-yard radius. But his inability to sustain an intimate love relationship and start a family finally sent Strauss into rehab in a psychiatric hospital.

'I'm in a f**king mental hospital because I couldn't say no to a new sex partner', Strauss writes in his compelling new book.

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And baby makes three: Pale...check. Skinny...check. Bald....double check. But Neil Strauss was still considered the master pick up artist and, in fact, wrote the book on the subject. But after years of giving free reign to his libido Strauss has finally settled down and become a family man with the love of his life

'All I did was cheat on my girlfriend,' writes Strauss. His girlfriend - now wife - Ingrid, 26, was born in Mexico to a German father, 'and somehow ended up living in America and looking like a petite Russian blonde'

'There are people who need to go to this Level One psychiatric hospital because without it they are going to die,' writes Strauss. 'They're going to drink or snort or inject themselves to death.

'All I did was cheat on my girlfriend'.

His girlfriend, model Ingrid Deleo, 26, was born in Mexico to a German father, 'and somehow ended up living in America and looking like a petite Russian blonde'.

'It's a miracle I can function in society at all', Strauss writes in his new book

'And so she embodies all the elements: the intensity of fire, the strength of earth, the playfulness of water, the delicacy of air'.

Looking into her eyes he saw love, happiness, innocence, peace but he questioned how much he can really love someone 'if you just f**ked one of her friends in the parking lot of a church, and now you're lying to her about it'.

'My mind is so clouded with guilt, I don't know anymore', he writes.

Despite his 'success', he had dug a hole for himself and confesses that hole is relationships.

Describing himself as the king of ambivalence, when single, he craves a relationship and, when in a relationship, he wants to be single. When the relationship ends, he regrets everything and doesn't even know what he wants anymore.

At this rate, he realized he'll grow old with no family, no wife or kids and he'll commit suicide by turning on the gas.

But then marriage confounded him because he doesn't have any married friends who don't feel frustrated.

At this turning point, when he finally hit rock bottom, he decided to admit himself into a psychiatric hospital in search of an answer.

'As I walk through a drab yellow hallway to the cafeteria, I feel a pain in my groin, a psychologically induced ache.

'I've signed my soul to Joan [his sex therapist] and turned my d**k into an appendage, doomed to dangle desolately between my legs and just p*** occasionally'.

Strauss finally committed and married Ingrid, on the beach at Malibu in August 2013 after having a funeral-themed bachelor party to bury his old playboy persona

The couple had a baby and blissfully began the family in the suburbs routine he tried to escape for so many years

According to Strauss's psychiatric evaluation, he had 'Axis I sexual disorder, generalized anxiety syndrome, and depressive disorder'.

It all went back to discovering his father's secret life when he was a kid.

'Every family has a skeleton in the closet. I found the right closet door…in my father's room,' reveals the author.

A teenage virgin, he went in search of pornography when his parents were out.

'I'd found a Playboy and a Penthouse in my father's magazine stack before, so it stood to reason that in a deeper recess of his room, there existed a superior form of pornography: that kind that moves. Real porn.'

Every family has a skeleton in the closet. I found the right closet door…in my father's room

And there it was there in the back of the closet -- three brown grocery bags filled with VHS tapes.

'I felt like I was about to explode.'

The first few tapes were movies – The Philadelphia Story, an episode of the TV show Newhart, a Masterpiece Theatre show—'spectacularly unmasturbatory'.

The next videotape – 'images I didn't even know existed in this world' – his father's secret life was exposed.

'The first thing on it was a tennis game with people in wheelchairs. Then there was a clip from a movie with a woman in a wheelchair begging in the streets for change. Then a swimming race with these people with no limbs just wriggling in the water. And at the end were all these old film clips of amputees.

'My father's got a thing for cripples. And my mother's a f**king cripple.

'She had no idea he had this obsession when she married him. That's why she hates him so much. She thinks she's the prize of his collection.'

His mother made him promise he would never reveal what he found. But 'that secret became an acid, corroding my relationships'.

And that secret landed him in a mental hospital where he was told he needed to reveal the contents of the tape for his own sanity.

Party boy: No one partied harder than Neil Strauss and he wrote the boy bible on picking up women: The 2005 bestseller The Game

He went to see Ingrid at her brother's wedding. 'Emerging from the back porch of the house, all white and all blond…she is pale like a ghost but radiant like a goddess. As she comes closer, I don't detect anger or fear or disappointment or disgust or any of the emotions I was afraid she'd have. She too is smiling'. 'I've been so stupid. This is the one, I tell myself. This is the woman I'm going to marry. I just hope I've truly changed'

'Maybe your dad is living a double life. Maybe your mom is. But somewhere, there is a skeleton. And that skeleton has a penis. And it will f**k your life'.

In what is called an exorcism of childhood demons, he addressed the cover-up by his mother who drew him into the family secret and said she was living only for him, and his father who never protected him as a kid because he was busy with his secret life.

Against medical advice, Neil walked out of the asylum after ten months - diagnosed as having generalized anxiety syndrome, depressive disorder, socialization problems, brain damage, ADD, sex addiction, eroticized rage, developmental trauma disorder, emotional incest syndrome, Axis V impairment…'

'It's a miracle I can function in society at all,' he writes.

He broke up with Ingrid thinking back to when he once interviewed Dave Navarro, the rock guitarist who sabotaged his marriage to Carmen Electra. 'It's like living with my best friend,' Navarro told him. 'When you live with your best friend, your d**k gets lonely,' Strauss concluded.

'So goodbye sex addiction group, hello group sex'.

His first stop in his search for alternatives to monogamy was the online polyamory ('many loves') community, where one needs to confirm they won't have monogamous relationships.

The World Polyamory Association Conference coming up looked like it would be just the ticket to networking.

It began in a latter-day-hippie nudist resort, Harbin Hot Springs in Northern California - which is now closed - with happy naked people dancing around and moving into a conference room at night.

'Three dozen men and women with body parts falling out of colorful sarongs, shawls, togas, and wraps' – a roomful of fornicators, staring lovingly at one another's crotches.

'"Appreciate the beauty of her sacred cathedral", their leader advised'.

Kicked out for eating popcorn during the alternative feast, Neil moved onto the BDSM scene - bondage & discipline, dominance & submission, and sadism & masochism.

Three dozen men and women with body parts falling out of colorful sarongs, shawls, togas, and wraps' – a roomful of fornicators, staring lovingly at one another's crotches.

Most of these people were over forty and wearing vinyl and leather. They were masters and mistresses instead of goddesses and priestesses in the polyamory world that worshiped the light.

Here it was the darkness with restraints, rules and punishments while hog-tying people, whipping them and walking them on a collar and leash.

Swinging was the next scene with its apocryphal depiction of being for old, out-of-shape, tasteless attired, dull suburban couples in the Lifestyle.

Champagne and lingerie were integral to the scene as well as Viagra and some GHB, the date rape drug.

It was in this scene he met up with the host wearing a red bathrobe and white mask, Corey Feldman, teen actor in Stand by Me and The Lost Boys.

Corey had set up the party with a round table where couples could have sex around other couples having sex – an atmosphere of total sexual decadence.

'I don't do drugs, but I make up for it with sex', Feldman told Neil. 'Last night I had sex with six different women'.

Neil moved on to a swing club in Montmartre, Paris, where naked women lie on mega-beds and the men still wearing shirts and ties but their pants are unzipped or lowered 'and their junk is hanging out. D**ks are everywhere.

'The scene on the beds is basically what Muslim martyrs are promised in the afterlife, except with virgins. But paradise is here. Now'.

Neil thinks he's finally found his tribe and can now build not only sex with multiple partners but intimate relationships with them as well.

He left Paris with plans to live with three lovers but 'what we find will never be anything like what we expect'.

Maybe your dad is living a double life. Maybe your mom is. But somewhere, there is a skeleton. And that skeleton has a penis. And it will f**k your life'

The three women joined him back home in Los Angeles but his free-love harem wasn't anything like he imagined.

'It turned out to be the worst orgy of my life'.

Tina Jordan, a friend of Neil's, who used to date Hugh Hefner, told Neil that Hef courted women with champagne and strawberries in his bedroom on the first date while his other girlfriends pounded on the door in a jealous rage, yelling at the couple.

'Even though Hef was technically polyamorous, he often snuck around, cheated, broke the rules—and was almost always caught by his girlfriends. He seemed to enjoy the drama. Having women fight over him made him feel wanted'.

Neil woke up to the realization that where he once felt trapped by the desires of one woman, Ingrid, now he had three women with desires and needs that were choking him.

He had broken up with Ingrid because he believed one person should not own another person's body. Now he had to go cold turkey from all of his habitual sexual explorations.

A friend helped him block all pornography, social networking and dating sites on his computer. He was locked out of his old email account and given a new one.

No old lovers from around the world could connect and talk about sex.

A friend helped reformed Strauss block all pornography, social networking and dating sites on his computer. He was locked out of his old email account and given a new one. He and Ingrid now have a beautiful baby boy named Tenn

He was finally moving closer to what was psychological: fear of loving, the terror of being loved, the compulsion to cheat, the cowardice of lying, the weak sense of self – and all the defense mechanisms that kept this system in place.

Now he felt it was time to visit Ingrid. He went to see her at her brother's wedding.

'Emerging from the back porch of the house, all white and all blond…she is pale like a ghost but radiant like a goddess'.

'As she comes closer, I don't detect anger or fear or disappointment or disgust or any of the emotions I was afraid she'd have. She too is smiling'.

'I've been so stupid. This is the one, I tell myself. This is the woman I'm going to marry. I just hope I've truly changed'.

He shared with her all the sexual fantasies he had pursued and learned that as a couple they had developed the relationship he'd been looking for the whole time, only he didn't know what it was: a relationship without fear – fear of intimacy, suffocation, loss, speaking the truth, fear of being hurt, boredom, change, fear of the future, of conflict and even fear of other people.

He finally committed and married Ingrid, on the beach at Malibu in August 2013 after having a funeral-themed bachelor party to bury his old playboy persona.

In March they had baby Tenn and blissfully began the family in the suburbs routine he tried to escape for so many years.

The Truth, An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships, published by Dey St (an imprint of Harper Collins) is available on Amazon