Looked at from the outside, nothing appears weirder than SA. When I first heard of it, I laughed out loud. When I heard they were against masturbation and sex before marriage, I just felt sorry for them. (Much like the way I felt at the references to God in the AA Big Book three years earlier.)

But when I saw it from the inside, when I realized I was powerless over lust, and that under the spell of lust I was outside the whole context of what was right and wrong, then I saw the sobriety definition in a completely different light. At the time I was in a committed relationship. That meant I had to give up sex. But that was no big deal because sex wasn’t my drug. It was like having to take off your hat when you enter a Church….