My name is K. and I am a sexaholic. My story began in a small suburban town, a wealthy suburb of New York City. We were a large Christian family and my father was a Marine Corps Captain in World War II. My father grew up on the “wrong side of the tracks” and he was determined that all his children would succeed in the professional world.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free…” (Emma Lazarus)
I sought for thirty years for relief from my addiction through my church. My guilt and shame were too great. I felt that no one at church would ever understand, much less accept me.

Many people lose their sobriety or relapse back into lust and sexual addiction. Most of us have learned that relapse is a process that happens over a period of time. Slowly we let our priority of sober and lust-free thinking and acting be replaced by other things. Then we become ripe for relapse.

“I am not affected by other people’s criticism because I am not affected by other people’s praise.”
Praise is wonderful. There are few greater joys than the affirmation and applause of my fellows. But what happens when the cheering stops? Where do I find my sense of self-worth when others fail to notice my good deeds?

Hi, my name is Mike, and I’m a sexaholic. I can still remember the first time I said that at an SA meeting. My palms were sweaty, my heart was pounding, my throat had a lump in it, and I could hardly speak—pretty much the same reaction I used to get each time I approached a prostitute, or did any of my addictive sexual behaviors.

Dear ESSAY Reader,
We keep working on improving our “meeting in print” with your help. Subscriptions to the ESSAY are now available through the SAICO website store, Publications page, at (www.sa.org) Our intention is to make copies of the ESSAY available on-line soon for reproduction in other formats such as the international A4 paper size. Check the SAICO on-line store for availability.

Currently there are a number of prisons across the country that have SA meetings. However, we do not have information on all of them.

This I need to learn.

As so often happens, some of my most profound revelations originate in the most insignificant things—that is, if I listen to that gentle voice of intuition and wisdom.

Have you been in recovery for a while and find you’re facing new, baffling difficulties that your current program isn’t adequately addressing? Or do you feel like your recovery has slowed down and you can’t shift out of first gear? If so, perhaps it’s time to revisit the Fourth Step.

My name is ____________________ (fill in the blank). I have a disease/disorder/dysfunction/addiction/mental illness (whatever you want to call it) where my brain tells me I should:

Having a sponsor and working the Steps are good; but, for me an accountability circle seems to work the best. I need people who are like me, who I can check in with hourly, daily, and weekly to keep current in my recovery. This helps me through the highs and lows of life.

We are people who have a problem with our sexual thoughts or behaviors. Our experience is that we are addicted to lust and to compulsive sexual acts. For this reason we call ourselves Sexaholics. Practically none of us accepted at first that we were addicted. However, as we listened to others who said they were sexaholics, we came to believe that we do have a common problem and that we have a solution.

This line comes from an old Simon and Garfunkel song and it describes what happens to me whenever I have a slip in the program. Each time I slip, I slide further away from my Higher Power. I do believe it is possible to have a program without slips. That was the theme of the Colorado Evergreen conference this year: “Recovery without Relapse.”

This is the best day of my life! Not because I am here sharing my story with you, not because of any anniversary or birthday. It is the best day of my life, because this is all I have… TODAY.

What has stuck in my mind and simply won’t let go since our last phone call is the term “sexual nurturing” as something being supplied by your spouse. I’d like to share my thoughts and maybe learn some things when we talk further on the subject.

My top three surrenders today are self-neglect, care-taking of others, and spiritual misconnections.

“In a difficult struggle, people have to have victories. Even if they are not major.” (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
I can meet hardship and sorrow with prayer and the willingness to feel the pain while in recovery. In this way, God can emphasize the needed growth in my life today.

When I meditated on the word “guidance,” I kept seeing “dance” at the end of the word. I remember reading that doing God’s will is a lot like dancing. When two people try to lead, nothing feels right. The movement doesn’t flow with the music, and everything is quite uncomfortable and jerky. When one person realizes this and lets the other lead, both bodies begin to flow with the music.

From my earliest recollections at age four, I obsessed over nude women. Any woman I encountered was automatically visualized in the nude. This was true for strangers, relatives, and even the nuns who taught me in elementary school.