'Sex and the City' Fiend: Show Turned Me Into Samantha

May 21, 2008 — -- You can only watch Samantha Jones bed so many gorgeous guys before wondering if 4-inch heels and sky-high confidence would allow you to do the same.

At least that's what happened to "Lisa" (not her real name). She got hooked on "Sex and the City" when she was a 14-year-old growing up on Long Island, N.Y. It was the same year she lost her virginity. She soon graduated to ordering cosmopolitans at bars she snuck into and cheating on her boyfriend with up to seven other guys -- in one week.

"When you're that age you try to emulate people on TV. Carrie smoked, so I smoked, Samantha looked at hooking up with random people as not a big deal, so that's what I did too," said Lisa, now 22. "It wasn't 'Sex and the City's' fault. I love the show, but I think it made it a little easier to justify my behavior."

It's a twisted version of monkey see, monkey do. For some 20-something women, "Sex and the City," which hits theaters in feature film form May 30, served as Dating 101 -- lessons in how to hook up, go out and live the fabulous lives of Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), no strings attached.

Lisa remembers re-enacting one particular Samantha scene in her own life: Season 3, episode 39, in which the bachelorette-for-life scrunches her face up at her latest suitor and tells him she doesn't like the way he … tastes.

"That was something that happened to me. I used her exact words: 'You have funky spunk,'" she said. "I knew from watching the show that it had to do with something he was eating," so she took a cue from the script and took an ax to a certain item in his diet.

Lisa left her "Samantha" ways behind at 19, when she moved to Utah, became a Mormon, married a man within the church and gave birth to two children. For the first year of her marriage, her husband forbade her to watch "Sex and the City" for fear that it would lure her back to her habits of sex, drugs and one-too-many cosmos.

"I had to sell my DVDs on eBay," she said. "But now it's OK. It took a while to get here."

To be clear: "Sex and the City" can't be blamed for creating a generation of sluts. No one's attempted to quantify how the landmark HBO series changed the way people date and hook up, and both the network and series executive producer/movie producer Michael Patrick King declined to comment for this story on how they believe the show affected women.

But according to psychiatrists, relationship experts and fans, "Sex and the City" changed the way women view hooking up, if not their hooking up habits.