“Some will be willing to term themselves ‘problem drinkers,’ but cannot endure the suggestion that they are in fact mentally ill. They are abetted in this blindness by a world which does not understand the difference between sane drinking and alcoholism.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 33.)

I believe these words apply more to me, the sexaholic, than to me, the alcoholic. I first heard these words in AA—I realized I was an alcoholic before I knew I was a sexaholic—but in sobriety I found it difficult to believe I was mentally ill. I had to clean up my act all right, but mentally ill?

Fortunately, I was not abetted in my blindness by the world at large. When I was ready to quit drinking, I got the help I needed. Thanks largely to 50 years of AA, the alcohol treatment world knows the difference between a sane drinker and an alcoholic.

Before I could begin to mend my life, I was told, I would have to stop drinking. That was the first step. And no one gave me the false hope that I would ever live to drink safely.

With my sexaholism it was different. At first I was reluctantly willing to admit I was a “problem drinker.” I was fantasizing, using pornography and masturbating. I figured I knew everything there was to know about my sexuality and it was up to me to sort it out. Maybe I needed therapy. I certainly didn’t see there were behaviors I would have to quit.

I was abetted in my blindness by a world that didn’t understand the difference between garden variety lusting and sexaholism. And I’m not talking about the world at large. Therapists who had helped me in my recovery from alcoholism told me that “masturbation was just letting off steam.” Even my church had stopped preaching against such varieties of “nice lust” as soft porn, sex before marriage, etc. Prostitution was legal where I lived. In fact, the only group that made me think about stopping, and introduced me to the radical idea of sexual sobriety, was Sexaholics Anonymous. And as it turned out, SA proved to be the right medicine for me, too.

I identified with SA when I realized that SA is no more interested in forms of acting out than AA cares what kinds of alcohol we drank. To get well, we have to let it all go. Nothing happens until we quit. Lust is my drug, my first drink. Under the spell of lust, I take myself out of the whole context of what is right and wrong. With lust acting as a narcotic inside me, I can’t call myself sober. And if I’m drunk on something that won’t show in a blood test—if I’ve lost control of my natural faculties and instincts—what can I call this if not mental illness?

At SA meetings, I was able to admit I was a sexaholic to others who had admitted it. By introducing ourselves as sexaholics at meetings, we are declaring we have both the problem and the solution. As it says in Sexaholics Anonymous, “We were free to see and admit what we really were inside because we were finally free from having to act out what we were” (p. 84). We can talk about our mental illness because we have a solution.

Today I’m over four years sexually sober and I know I still have a long way to go in my recovery. (The power of the addiction only became apparent to me in sobriety.) The SA groups I attend regularly are only two and three years old. We have a long way to go before we can carry our message in a world that doesn’t understand the difference between lusting like a gentleman and sexaholism. But we know that all forms of lust are toxic for us. We meet by God’s grace and we’re there for those who want what we have. We grow by taking one step after another, a day at a time.