Four years before I came to SA, I sought help with a professional therapist. I was out of control and knew it, acting out in ways that put me in immediate danger of death. There was a titillating news story of a man who accidentally hung himself in a sexual escapade.

That could have been me. The therapist calmed me down, gave me some behavioral control methods, and then helped me to explore my obsession with submissive sexual games. He gave me what was the best wisdom in his toolset: that the world of psychology had little success in changing sexual orientation. Therefore, I should work on becoming comfortable with my desires and “use them appropriately.” He had given me license to spend the next four years continuing to put my life at risk.

I thank God for SA, because I desperately needed someone to define boundaries for me. I could keep no boundaries at all. No matter what promises I made to myself, I always rationalized them away when it came to the crunch. I didn’t consciously choose SA over any other 12-Step program; it just happened to be the one available to me when I hit bottom. Today, I consider that to be God’s hand in my life. Our sobriety definition gave me the boundaries I had always needed, a definition outside myself that was clear enough and rigid enough to stand.

And yet my rationalizations were still ingenious. What did I mean by “sex with self,” anyway? In that world of dominance and submission, much of my acting out wasn’t sexual at all—at least, by most people’s standards. Whipping and bondage are inserted into movies as comedy, they certainly aren’t “sex.” Are they?

The answer for me was clearly “yes.” Regardless of how others saw them, I sought those behaviors because my mind translated them into sex. I had to admit that, for me, many activities—even more normal ones like drinking from a glass—could actually be sexual. I could transgress “sex with self” just by handling ordinary objects, if my mind was in the wrong place.

I spent quite some time in early sobriety pondering the phrase “sex with self” and coming to terms with what it meant for me. I had known for years that, in Freud’s psychology, everything humans do has a sexual component. That was certainly true for me. I solved the conundrum by making a list. (I’m a great list-maker but terrible at following them.) I itemized the activities that I would consider “sex with self” for me, things I had done and treated sexually. That worked for a while, and it helped me stay sober through the initial Step work.

Later, though, I had to get deeper. As I got longer sobriety, and then “accidentally” dabbled in wrong thinking, I realized that I could actually feel lust when it happened. Temptations put themselves into my awareness, but they had no power over me until I took them in. When I focus on a temptation and start enjoying it—someone jogging, an advertising image, a euphoric memory—I feel a physical rush of internal drugs in my body. My heart speeds up, my breathing becomes fast and shallow, a flush rises from my chest into my neck and face, my eyes dilate. Whoa! I learned that THAT was lust: my body’s reaction to my wayward thinking. I also learned it was important for me never to let that happen. After all, I am powerless over lust. When I trigger that whole-body reaction, I have no idea how far I will go. For me, that’s the same as an alcoholic downing that first drink.

I have come to separate the temptation, which is “out there,” from my lust reaction, which is “inside me.” Temptations happen all the time, but I don’t have to take them in. So my definition of sobriety now exactly matches the SA definition. I don’t practice “sex with self” (anything on my list), and I seek progressive victory over that lust reaction. I use the Steps daily in order to maintain my boundaries. I listen to my sponsor, and I stay in fellowship with all of you and with God.