[Excerpts from the sharing at the Saturday evening banquet at the Portland, Oregon SA/S-Anon Conference, July 1994]

My name is Harry, I’m a sexaholic. I’ve been sexually sober since February 3, 1986. Expressing my gratitude to God and the fellowship for my recovery will take the rest of my life, and beyond. Jess promised he would help me with this talk if I volunteered to give one, and so I volunteered, and he also said it might be good to prepare the talk and then have a trial run to see how it went…. I would give the trial talk to the [program] committee, and they would decide if I would speak or not. And for quite a while, it looked like “or not,” [laughter] and as we were delaying here, it began to look like “or not” again. But out of this, we now have in Portland a monthly speaker’s meeting, a spiritual breakfast with featured speaking on the fourth Saturday of every month. And I’m happy to be accepted here to speak.

As a preschooler, I made a fateful discovery—that climbing a rope gave breathtaking pleasure. By the time I was eight, I was fully addicted to acting out by myself, and I found out, I was informed, that masturbation was such a serious sin it deserved the pain of hell. Six months later, I was into peeping in the neighborhood, and acting out. I tried to stop, but the sexual pleasure was too great. I could not stop. Sexual fantasy, lust, masturbation took over my life. I saw a woman preparing for bed, and I was immediately hooked; I have been a voyeur ever since. I found pornography. I acted out with pictures of women. I feared being alone with girls, for if anyone knew my thoughts and desires they would reject me. I knew I was a sex fiend. By the time I was 20 my life was a chaos. Ever deeper sex with self, using pornography, animals, cross-dressing, voyeur in the daylight hours, fantasizing the nights and consciously seeking sex in dreams. I dared not think of having a relationship, let alone getting married and having a family. I called on the God of my childhood religion, and received no help. I could not stop acting out.

When I was 21 I made a big decision. I entered a 10 year program to become a religious bound to celibacy…. That was not the sanest decision of my life. [Laughter] The first night in the seminary I got drunk … and a month later I picked up an ordinary magazine and lusted after the women pictured and acted out, and my disease was back worse than ever. I did all the practices that religion said would lead to a better life, but I felt no improvement. My disease simply progressed. I was ordained and lived 30 years in a religious community. I voyeured and masturbated many hours each day, I lived in pornography, indulged my fetishism with women’s clothing, always acting out alone. Then I began acting out with women. My sexual behavior became known; I bore the stigma of attempted rape, improper behavior with young girls, multiple relationships with women, adultery, abusive sex, incest. I tried dumping my sex addiction on psychiatrists, I tried losing it in a mental hospital, I tried drowning it in alcohol, forgetting it in drugs. Nothing worked. I continued to act out.

When I left the mental hospital, the only job I could get was working in an alcohol and drug center, and I wasn’t clean and sober, but there I was introduced to the 12-Step programs, and was able to control my alcoholism and drug addiction with the 12 Steps of the AA program. I stopped acting out with others, but I could not stop acting out with myself. One day at work I found in my mailbox several copies of the SA brochure. I scored 17 out of 20 of those questions and decided to go to a meeting. In the meeting, I witnessed the recovery miracle of sexaholics equally hooked and hopeless as I, and I came to believe in their recovery and the God that helped them to achieve it. I began to think there was hope, even for me. But just dumping my powerlessness and unmanageability on God and waiting for sobriety was not enough; I continued to act out. Self-pity became my “power greater,” until a member reminded me, “Harry, we’re going to continue to love you until you can learn to love yourself, for God really does love you.” I knew I could never be forgiven by God, or felt I couldn’t. My sponsor informed me, “Poor Harry! The only person in God’s wide world that Almighty God cannot forgive!” And I think my ego began to deflate a little. [Laughter]

I did get sober. I admitted my powerlessness, that was certain. I turned my will and my life over to the care of God, a God that I now knew cared for me. I discovered a “power greater” in service, opening the meeting room, arranging the chairs, making coffee, cleaning up after the meeting, serving as group treasurer and secretary. I was chosen to serve on the less-than-popular advisory IGC, and Central Office Oversight Committee. I discovered God in service. I always discover God when I turn from self to help others. Had good sponsors, spiritual men with God-power, who feared trying to sponsor without God’s help.

Mostly I found my Higher Power in working the Steps to sobriety and recovery. Repeating Steps One, Two and Three established sobriety. A gift I could bring to the meetings and share with others. In my sexual First Step, and in the Fourth and Fifth Steps, I came to accept myself and allow others to see me as I really am, and I admitted to God, to another, and to myself that I was worth something. Listing and surrendering my shortcomings in Steps Six and Seven allowed God to begin healing my defects of character, and there were a few! Those resentments had to be surrendered, for they had triggered much of my acting out. And in Steps Eight and Nine, I made my list and made my amends, and they were many. I continued to take personal inventory, and when I was wrong I admitted it, maybe not so promptly. I have also discovered that I not only have to admit it, I have to admit it to the people involved. And with this, my sobriety, and my better way of life, became more comfortable, talking to God, meditating, and praying.

I say my life is a lot better, and I’m grateful to the program, but almost two years ago, with over six years of sobriety, I forgot to pray only for God’s will for me and the power to carry that out, and started resisting the things that were happening to me—making my own decisions; putting off necessary tasks—and I fell into a very deep depression. I became fearful of going to the New York conference, fearful that I would get entangled in the sobriety definition discussion and disgrace myself. I was afraid to go to the Nashville conference, where I might meet a niece whom I had sexually abused, and who had said she did not wish to see me anymore. I began to fear I might be sued, and I kept most of this to myself. There were a lot of other things that happened. I thought I was losing my sight, hearing, voice, and that aging was coming very rapidly. I was afraid to spend money to go to the doctor, because I might be criticized for wasting money, because I knew that it was self-caused.

I went to the Rochester conference, mostly because my religious superior told me, “I don’t know what’s bugging you, but you better do something about it!” And at the conference some people greeted me and showed their love and concern, and I was simply lifted out of that depression, and got back into working my program. I hadn’t lost my sobriety. I still worked a program—I still sponsored people, even though I was depressed. Once or twice I even shared at a meeting what was happening. It wasn’t very encouraging for the newcomers, who probably thought “If sobriety isn’t any better than Harry’s, I don’t know if I want so much of it!” [Laughter] And I did keep coming back. And I wanted to share that, that years of sobriety and years of recovery in this program are no guarantee that character defects will not return with the old patterns.

I’m going to steal a little time here—I always like to tell at least one story…. I was turning things over to God every day and after a long period I was … helping out one Sunday … and I was a little bit uptight … but I got through the homily and I was saying, “OK, God, I’m going to make it from here on, I know. That [the homily] is the part that they judge.” And of course I was all suited up and I had on that portable microphone. And I went down to greet the people before the communion service…and coming back up to the altar I tripped, and said that “S” word [laughter], and I want you to know that I turned everything over to God that morning. …[Later] an old lady came up and said, “Excuse me, but we couldn’t hear you. I think you forgot to turn on your microphone.” [Laughter] I’m going to keep coming back. Thank you.