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Most celebrities only announce a stint in rehab after undergoing a very public flame-out, so when David Duchovny offered last week (apropos of nothing) that he was being treated for sex addiction, gossip hounds went wild trying to figure out the reasons why. One columnist hot on the case is Fox News gadfly Roger Friedman, last seen trying to put the blame for the Harry Potter delay on star Daniel Radcliffe's magic wand. After a little digging, Friedman got to the bottom of some of the more scurrilous rumors:

One of them was that he’d been caught having an affair with his tennis instructor (a woman) and that he was undergoing rehab to save his marriage.

Alas, it isn’t so, says a close friend [editor's note: "alas"?]. Duchovny did not check in because of an extramarital fling. That much the friend is certain of. Even more so: Duchovny’s problem has been longstanding. His wife, Tea Leoni, was aware of it for some time. It had just reached a point where it had to be treated. I have inferred from my conversation with Duchovny’s friend that this has something to do with an addiction to pornography, probably on the Internet. It’s the sex equivalent of a gambling addiction, where the person is just hopelessly trapped in chat rooms. ...When Duchovny is done with the rehab, I’m also told that he and Tea and their kids will complete their move to Manhattan’s Upper East Side from Hollywood. They will be very welcome here, as Tea is much in demand work-wise. Duchovny will have more "Californication" and plenty of offers. New York doesn’t solve all your problems, but it’s a much more realistic place to live than Los Angeles. The truth is here, not out there.

If you say so, Rodge! Sounds to us like Duchovny's problem could be better served by a DSL downgrade than by a sudden uptick in falafel and population density, but then again, that might just be our non-"realistic," Left Coast point-of-view talking. Duchovny might find it hard to shake his online persona ("HouseOfDP") no matter which city he chooses to land in, but call us optimists: we want to believe.