As an active sexaholic, I always wanted to get back to feeling what I referred to as “normal.” I would look at other people and think: “Hey, they’re normal, why can’t I be like them?” Then I’d automatically go after my drug, and soon enough, I’d feel what I fancied was “normal” again. And this worked pretty well for a number of years, except that to continue feeling what I called “normal,” I needed a constant supply, and lost my life in the process.

In sobriety I’m discovering that what I see as “normal” is actually the voice of my addiction talking to me. It’s saying: “Hey, you need some more of your drug so that you can feel ‘normal’ again.” Except that it is never actually that direct. Instead it says things like “Go on… just this once…,” or “She needs you…,” or other similar stuff.

What turns out to have been “normal” for me, as an active sexaholic, was to keep myself so topped up with lust that I never had to feel any real feelings whatsoever. Instead, I felt phony feelings like self-pity, jealousy, depression or revenge.

In sobriety, I find that what is normal for people who are not addicted, either to lust or to anything else (yes, there really are such people), is to feel real feelings, to feel ups and downs that are as changeable as the weather. The point is, they have been used to feeling those feelings almost since the day they were born, and know how to live with them, and act appropriately, irrespective of what they are feeling. As a recovering sexaholic, I’m not like that. All my life I have been used to not feeling the feelings. In fact, I’m so unused to feeling the feelings that other people feel, that either I tend to confuse them with external reality itself, and end up acting inappropriately to whatever situation I am in, or I end up listening to that inner voice (the voice of my addict) which says, ever so sweetly, “Hey, you don’t need to feel like this, it’s time you felt ‘normal’ again.” And even if I don’t end up acting out sexually, I’ll nevertheless find myself acting out in some other way, by spending, speeding, stuffing, scanning, or some other alternative S-activity. It helps me to see that it’s all lust. Because if I fail to see it for what it is, I’ll end up losing my sobriety, as sure as sex is sex!

For me as a sexaholic the search for “normality” is an illusion. Because what I experience as “normal” has turned out to be utterly abnormal according to any commonly accepted standards of behavior. That is why I need the Fellowship of other recovering sexaholics, through whom I discover a Higher Power who brings me a new kind of “normality”—the serenity of sexual sobriety.