My name is Ted L., and I’m a gratefully recovering sexaholic. They say that God works in mysterious ways, and for me it’s been a doozy! I was 38 years old, and had lived a life of slavery to lust, sex, and myself. I’d been in prison for six years for rape, and was finally beginning to come to terms with the evil I had done in my life. I thought that it would help my parole chances if I could get some kind of program set up at my facility. (The White Book concedes that many of us don’t have pure motives for becoming involved with SA — and I’m a case in point there.)

I received a letter and the book from Keith S., indicating a willingness to help us set up an SA meeting here. “Great!” I remember thinking to myself, “This will look good on my record. Who knows? Maybe some of these other guys around here can get some help because, boy, do they need it.” I began reading it. I felt as if I could have written whole sections of it from my own life experience. “Me, a sex addict?” I thought to myself. Sure I’d raped a woman; sure I’d masturbated five or six times a day; sure I’d seemingly kept the pornography business afloat single-handedly — but a sex addict? I didn’t like the idea, but still clung to the hope that I could “benefit” from helping start a program here, so I worked with some surprisingly helpful and compassionate people within the system, and our first SA meeting took place in May of 2001.

I began working the Steps with my fellows here, and I came to realize that I’d lived almost entirely in my head for most of my conscious life. I’d objectified and sexualized almost every woman I’d ever met. I used lust as a drug, sex as a sedative, and denial as the catalyst for it all.

I dabbled with the concept of sobriety for a while, sometimes stringing a day or week or two together. Even though I felt I was a lost cause, the volunteers who came into our meeting gave me hope. There was hope for everyone — even me. I began to see that there were others who struggled with similar problems to my own. The healing began.

I asked Keith S. for a sponsor through the mail. Because we had all started at Step 1 together here, it was difficult for anyone here to be a sponsor. Keith matched me up with a tremendously gifted man who helped me as I falteringly made my first pass through the Steps over the course of a year and a half. I know that I could not have made it through Step 4 without my sponsor. He listened, and he cared, and it was a pretty new experience for me. I found that I could, through God’s help, make changes in my life. I learned that sobriety was a real possibility, and recently marked my first anniversary of sobriety. For a guy who couldn’t go 12 hours before, 12 months is a blessing that I never expected to receive.

My life’s not perfect. I’m not perfect. I’ve got a lot of amends to make. Some amends can never be fully made, but I believe in God’s healing power. I believe that the Twelve Steps have been a gateway for me to a life where the pursuit of God’s will is my number one goal. If you’d shown me this letter five years ago, I’d have guaranteed it was a forgery. I hardly believed in God, and definitely spent zero time pursuing or trying to do His will. I’ve been blessed beyond my ability to list. I still have a marriage, in spite of my best attempts to destroy it, to the woman I love more than anyone on earth. I have a son who’s grown into a young man that any father could be proud of. I’ve got family, friends, and fellow SA members who support me in ways that are as varied as they are appreciated. To quote Lou Gehrig: “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

I can claim credit for none of this. It is the work of God in my life, manifested in my life through (among other means) SA and the Twelve Steps, that has created this miracle. I am now lucky enough to be able to sponsor others, including other prisoners through the Sponsor-by-Mail program.

If I can close with but one request, it would be that every person reading this today take the time to realistically consider becoming a Sponsor-by-Mail to a prisoner somewhere. The impact of my own sponsor is too great to be described. If I can have but 1% of the impact on the lives of those that I sponsor, as he had on me, I will consider myself lucky. There are always more prisoners who need sponsors than there are SA members willing to be sponsors. It has made all the difference in my life, and it can be that way for countless others. May God continue to bless all of us who trudge the Road of Happy Destiny.

Peace,