Finding the Fellowship I Craved

During high school I was getting more and more confused. I would hitchhike and pick up men for sex in exchange for money to buy drugs or impress my friends. My “friends” were druggies. I was surprised that good looking girls would hang around me. I was an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. I eventually had a girlfriend. She was one of the best looking girls in school (and a sexaholic). I was hanging around the heavy drug users and bikers, and on the other side had close relationships with the gays in school, as well as a “gay lover” and my “girlfriends.” I was also president of the church youth group. I knew how to sell! A man I met hitchhiking set me up with the porno film industry and prostitution. This led me to Hollywood and New York. There, I met very powerful people who gave me a false sense of power and security. Lots of drugs and a very fast indulgence of whatever I wanted. I had a few girlfriends, but not many.

At 19 years old I moved back to the Bay Area, very despondent. I met a man in AA who said he met God. He told me what I needed to hear and I had a spiritual awakening of such magnitude that I was on a cloud for about two years. God’s gift changed me, but I thought God took it all away. During that time, I really did have an experience where I didn’t have sex, do drugs, and no withdrawals. Purely God’s grace. When the bubble popped, so did I and all hell broke loose. I was overcome with all my sexual desire, defects reawakened, and spiritual warfare raging. I thought God had abandoned me.

During that pink cloud phase I had gotten married. We were now getting a divorce, as she was four months pregnant. I felt mis-fitted, very darkly confused. So I went to what I thought was me. I went to a gay bath house every night, but I could not perform. So I began to drink and drug once again. That began to “help.” I quickly met a man that I was to be “married to” for almost seven years — we had rings. I was beginning to embark on a journey of drug and sex addiction like I’ve never known. I became very strung out, and God was beckoning me to stop. I didn’t know how, or if I could. I broke up with this person, very coldly. It was devastating. I moved out and another sex drunk reluctantly became my drug again.

I was living my fantasies, hoping that they were reality, but my reality was becoming more of a nightmare. This new relationship was worse than before. Now I had to have sex with someone every day, to satisfy my jealousy. The more I fed it, the more I wanted. “It” preoccupied everything in my life. The lust was the vacuum without satisfaction, ever seductive but never fulfilling, always seducing me by not fulfilling me. I would fistfight with this person, but I always returned, because “it” was a drug to me, “it” was my lover, “it” was my reality, and I could not stop it.

On a brief trip to Hawaii, I met a man from AA who told me a bit about sexual addiction and the impossibility of me doing the 1st Step, that the 1st Step is a gift of God, that God could restore me to a marriage that was heterosexual. He said I should be patient, but to continue to ask God to make me willing, no matter what I “thought” reality was. I didn’t know that there was a traditional life for a freak like me, and that I had met my future wife, there in Hawaii.

I began attending AA, but I could not stay sober. I didn’t want to give up sex. I had gotten married, in my pursuit of happiness, but I had a boyfriend in Los Angeles, and one in San Francisco. I would go in and out of recovery, because I could not stop the lusting for men. All the while wanting out but having nowhere to go. I began to get this message from God: that I would be happy surrendering everything, or really, just making a decision to do so and trusting God to bring it to pass. Finally I agreed that I was at an impasse; after being beaten, run over, smashed day in and day out, crying all the time, terrified, I wanted to live in surrender, without my drug, “men.” So now I made a decision in AA, that God wanted all of me… guess I got sober, with the drugs and alcohol.

I was able to abstain from homosexuality and the idea of having boyfriends. God was proving to me that marriage was heterosexual, and I would be blessed beyond my dreams if I trusted Him for the truth. However, I did not go to SA, because I was afraid that men would pick me up there or that I would pick up something there. I didn’t know about the sobriety definition, or that I would be safe. I was staying sober from drugs and alcohol, but would slip often into homosexuality because I was not surrendering in a program for sex addiction.

My wife and I moved to Denver, and I was sober from substances, but would slip into my lust often. A situation happened that triggered my control issues. I thought I was losing control, and that fear launched me into a sex binge with strangers, and I was consumed with the intoxifying indulgence. I knew I would die, looked in the phone book, and found a Twelve-Step recovery program for sex addiction. I went to a meeting and there was no sobriety, many guys, and most of them were looking at their feet, filled with lust. I felt hopeless. They were holding on to their homosexual relationships, and filled with lust. So I looked in the phone book again and saw Sexaholics Anonymous. I called, and went to my first meeting. By the grace and power of a very mysterious God, I have been sober going on a year. My prayers from 25 years ago are being answered. And today, one day at a time, I’m learning how to love and give to my wife rather than take. I have never been happier in all my days, change is every day. Thank you, SA, for being clear, and clearly being what I want.

Steve T., Denver, CO

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