If I think about it, life is kind of like walking a tightrope. It’s not easy. It can be dangerous. Still, if I practice, if I use a balance pole, if I have a safety net — it can be done without causing undue harm either to myself or to others.

I was so sure of my abilities that I chose to walk the tightrope of life without the benefit of either balance pole or safety net. As my sexaholism progressed, I took ever greater risks. I convinced myself that I possessed abilities (and needs) that my commoner brethren simply did not have. I congratulated myself on each new success, each new conquest. In my secret world I gloried in my triumphs. Sexual intensity and its consummation was the single scale by which I measured my accomplishments and my satisfaction.

Because my acting out required secrecy and spiritual blindness, I had to supply my own applause. And so I did. Each time I secretly crossed the tightrope from one station to the other, I felt thrilled and excited for having gotten away with an act that I considered “forbidden” — whether it was or not. In this way, I entered into my addiction. I became addicted to my own special kinds of thrills and excitement. These were my drugs. They gave me relief from life’s stresses — from having to face my own imperfections and insecurities. They seemed special to me because they were either explicitly sexual or possessed sexual overtones and they always combined the elements of secrecy and the forbidden.

True, there may have been times when, after having acted out, I felt hung-over or depressed, but by now — it was too late. I had lost the power to control my acting out — it now controlled me! While I may not have completely lost touch with those around me, I was increasingly isolated in my thoughts and deeds. Worse, because I was building a tolerance for my drug, I was adding ever more extreme behaviors to my act in order to supply the thrills and excitement to which I was addicted. My act had become more complicated.

The signs of my impending doom had been there all along. The tightrope across which I scurried was becoming frayed and worn. Each time I managed to catch myself before falling completely. But I was so blinded by my addiction, so in need of my next “fix,” that I ignored these signs. I had entered the last phase of my disease — and time was running out on me.

The inevitable finally became painful, if not devastating, reality. Perhaps I tried to cross that frayed rope one too many times and it simply broke. Whatever the details, the outcome was the same. I did fall!! And there was no safety net beneath me. I simply came crashing down. Now there were real injuries and terrible consequences.

Of course, there had been injuries and consequences all along — it’s just that I had been in denial about them until now. But finally — with this fall — even I who had been the king of denial could no longer deny the reality of my situation. That’s how I came into the program. And when I first came into the program, I probably still didn’t know the true seriousness of my situation. I came into the program as a way to atone for the injuries caused by my fall, but my plan was to stay just long enough to get things quieted down — and then to get back out there and “get on with life.”

That may have been my plan — it just did not turn out that way. Somehow, in my soul’s barren soil, the miracle of the program took root and began to grow. I began to work the Steps and the Steps began to work in me. I got back up on the tightrope of life. But now I had a balance pole — it was my sobriety. Without it, I could not stay balanced. And now there was a safety net below me — it was our fellowship.

In the beginning, I still tried to do things the old way. I thought I could get by without my balance pole — my sobriety. But I found I could not. I kept falling. Thankfully the fellowship was there to catch me — it helped spare my already battered relationships, if they still existed, from receiving the full force of these new falls. In time I came to realize and accept my limitations. I could not stay on the tightrope of life without my sobriety.

I came to another realization as well. I had a purpose — a simple purpose. I was actually meant to be one more part of the safety net of the fellowship into which I had been falling. When someone who was close to me in the fellowship fell, I felt the force of their fall more than others who were not so close. But never did I have to bear the full force of my compatriot’s fall alone.

It is perhaps at this point in my progress that I begin to appreciate more fully one of the truly spiritual aspects of the program. That a person such as I, flawed and broken as I am, can join together and do much good makes me pause and reflect on the fact that I have become a part of something greater than myself. I certainly could not do such good by myself. By myself, I have a frustrating tendency to goof things up. But I am no longer the center of the universe — I no longer want the position. Call it God, call it a Higher Power — whatever it is — it is greater than I am and for that I am thankful. I have come home.