Well, sorta.

It’s no longer really “news” when an actor checks into rehab. Something about the lifestyle and the people it attracts leads to an unusually high concentration of hard addicts in the Hollywood Hills, and luckily, most of them love their lives too much to let the demon take them down.

It’s all old hat by now - or it should be. But good old David Duchovny, star of The X-Files and all subsequent films, including the most recent disappointment, has just made an announcement that has turned some heads.

He is entering treatment for his addiction. To sex.

The actor “ask[s] for respect and privacy for my wife and children as we deal with this situation as a family,” which makes me wonder:

1. Is sexual addiction really something that is appropriate to deal with “as a family?” His youngest is six. How do you explain that, really, beyond “daddy has to go away for a while?”

2. How many people are going to joke about him being in the show “Californication?”

Seriously though, folks.

David is not the kind of celebrity whose daily exploits end up in the tabloids, so we have no way to really know what led him to seek treatment. Typically, sexual addiction is diagnosed after repeated and uncontrollable infidelity. If this has been the case, will all those involved keep their mouths shut? Or will they blab to the press now that the cat is out of the bag, like Jude Law’s nanny? (Speaking of sex addicts.)

Of course, it could also be that his addiction is more…self-contained, as it were. But either way, if it’s interfering with his life and he really needs help, then I’m proud of him for seeking it. And I really don’t intend to add to his humiliation, although it’s kind of difficult to even talk about it without feeling a little tawdry.

I am oddly comforted that this is the first we’ve heard about it. Because, in a way, it means that the media isn’t nearly as nosy or as exploitative as they’ve been portrayed. No doubt they’ll chase blood in the water like sharks, but they don’t really go digging for scandal - if they had, they would have turned something up long before this.

In the past, I’d never been inclined to believe that people end up in front of the paparazzi because they want to be there. But maybe it’s a little bit true.

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