The Key to a Happy and Joyous Freedom

There was a time when I wondered why God brought me into this world. I always felt that my life was meaningless. I had such difficulty fitting in and belonging anywhere. My childhood was very difficult, full of traumas. I could never understand why I had to go through it all or what purpose all that pain served. Lust entered my life at age six when a family member sexually abused me. It was not a single incident; the abuse continued many times by that same person. The experience was very strange. I find it hard to describe; it was full of mixed feelings, but one of the most difficult to understand was the feeling of enjoyment I remember during the abuse. Soon, one of my relatives began to sexually abuse me too, many times. I think that it was about this time that I started confusing love with abuse. Around this same age I came across foreign nude magazines and began watching pornography.

The hardest trauma of all was from my mother. It happened around the age of six. I have no doubt that this particular trauma shaped my life. She told me to my face that she had not wanted to have me; that I was an unwanted child because she had had enough problems between my father and the two children she had already. She said she didn’t have the time to take care of me, and she acted accordingly. Hearing those words from the closest person to me filled me with shame and made me feel inadequate and unworthy of love. I lived life afterwards apologizing to the world for my presence in it, always hating myself. My father was a commercial marine officer, and was absent most of the time. During those short periods when he was home, the house was filled with domestic violence and shouting and screaming.

In the years that followed, I sexually abused other boys and girls of around my age. When I reached puberty I started masturbating, and watching porn took up a huge portion of my life. By age twelve I was sexually abused by one of my older brother’s friends. A year later I had taken my first drug and so began a journey into new darkness. The way my body reacted to drugs felt like what I had been looking for all my life. Three or four years later, I had tried any drugs that were available at the time, including alcohol. I ended up a heroin addict for five years.

In my early twenties God introduced me to a Twelve Steps fellowship which saved my life. I had been lusting too during these years, but the drug addiction was the more obvious, the more chaotic. Soon after I became clean, lust emerged more obviously in my life as pornography and masturbation really took hold. It took another ten years for me to realize that I cannot control my sexual behavior and that I had to find a solution.

A friend of mine from my drug recovery fellowship suggested I give SA a try. I remember those first SA meetings, how I related so much to the shares; they were so much deeper than the shares in my other fellowship, especially when they talked about their relationship with their families.

Of course, my disease began attacking, telling me that I didn’t qualify; began isolating me, telling me that I was different from the other members who were mostly younger and sounded smarter and more educated. I relapsed a lot in those first three months and I crossed many boundaries in those relapses. The key for me, coming from another fellowship, was Step Two. I had to leave my knowledge and pride outside of the doors of SA.

I cannot be sufficiently grateful to SA. I am more than nine months sober today. That is truly a miracle for me, a lust and sex addict for more than twenty-eight years. Slowly, I am beginning to appreciate myself better and to understand my purpose in life. I am so grateful for this. I am grateful also that all my pain and the horrible experiences are not wasted as they help me support other recovering lust addicts.

Thank you SA for returning my soul to me.