All my life, all I wanted was to fit in, to be accepted, and to feel okay about myself. I grew up in a family of multiple addictions, and I was a loner. From very early on I hated myself. I felt trapped, always wishing and waiting to grow up so I could do what I wanted to and have the freedom to get away from it all.

I soon found a way to escape from the pain, fear, and sadness that were much of my early life. I discovered fantasy. Fantasy began with daydreaming about how I was a superhero and could bring justice to all. I would fantasize about being praised for all the good things I did and for saving the world. In fantasy I felt alive, powerful, and good about myself for the first time.

One day, while in bed fantasizing, I began fondling myself and had an ejaculation. Not knowing anything about sex, I panicked. I thought I had somehow injured myself. I kept it a secret. The next day I realized that I wasn’t injured, and remembered the good sensation I had felt. I returned to my bedroom and did it again. I was hooked. From this moment on, I began looking for more and more opportunities to masturbate. It was all I thought about. Like fantasy, masturbation made me feel powerful. There seemed to be something magical about it.

I began showing my younger cousins and siblings how I could masturbate. Look what I could do! I would feel special as they watched me and envied me. Soon I started walking down the street and exposing myself to others—still a youngster, yet feeling like a man! I knew I could get in trouble for such behavior, so I always kept enough distance not to be recognized.

Once I was old enough to drive, I bought a used car and sought to get away, to the freedom I always wanted. I still wanted desperately to fit in, so in spite of my childhood promises to myself to refrain from alcohol and other drugs, I began drinking and soon graduated to many other drugs. I also began dealing drugs, and for the first time in my life I had what I called “friends.” My parents couldn’t believe how many phone calls I was getting. I felt special—I had friends.

I then discovered that getting high and masturbating was more thrilling than just getting high or only having sex. With this discovery, my addiction really took off. I began cruising and masturbating in my car. I would spend hours driving around, lusting after people and searching for the most attractive ones. I desperately wanted a sexual encounter with someone, anyone.

Soon I began to expose myself from my car. I would get high first, because I was afraid to act out this way, but under the influence, I took many risks. At this point I didn’t see anything wrong with my behavior. I was young and had a powerful sex drive, and I really didn’t see myself as hurting anybody.

In a couple of years I became obsessed with thoughts about sex with strangers. I did little dating because I feared rejection by women. I only dated women who made it clear that they were interested in me first. I could not keep a relationship for more than six months. I feared sex with the women I dated because I believed I would be rejected for not being muscular and macho.

While cruising one day, I picked up a male hitchhiker and we got high together. One thing led to another and I propositioned him. He accepted and I crossed into another level of my addiction. After this experience, I felt ashamed and afraid, wondering what my friends would say if they found out what I did. I also questioned my sexuality. I was attracted to women, yet I found sex with men satisfying as well. I rationalized that nobody would find it out, returned to the area where I had picked up the guy, and discovered it was a cruising area for men. I began picking up men on a regular basis. I was now hooked on this new way of acting out—I couldn’t stop.

My life and thinking were becoming more and more centered around sex; how many partners I could get, how often I could have sex, and how I could keep this secret life of mine from being noticed. I began spending more and more time cruising, started building a pornography collection, and kept a log of how many sexual encounters I had. I would leave my house to go to a family function or a party and never make it there, in spite of having every intention of attending. I was losing more and more control over my behavior, and I couldn’t stop.

Around this time I was arrested for the first time for exposing myself in public. I couldn’t believe this happened to me. I was so afraid, ashamed, and depressed. My parents bailed me out and found out about my secret life. I could hardly face them. However, they said little about it. The police blotter in the community newspaper included some minor details of my arrest, and I was devastated. This was it. No more acting out. I swore off all this behavior, began Twelve Step meetings for my drug addiction, and really thought that was going to be the end of my sexual acting out. No way was I going to allow it to happen to me again.

Within a month I returned to acting out on the streets, rationalizing that as long as I avoided the area where I was arrested, I would be okay. About a year later, I was arrested again. Once again I couldn’t believe it happened. I really wasn’t a criminal. I wasn’t violent. Why were they doing this to me? I was so far into my addiction that I could not see the wrong or the dangers of my behavior. I became suicidal and tried to kill myself.

Needless to say, about two weeks later I was back on the streets again. I managed to stay away from exposing myself and limited myself to picking up willing partners off the street. Herpes was becoming a big scare at that time and it became harder to find street partners. I became more desperate. I had sworn to myself that I would never pay for sex because that would mean something was really wrong, if I needed it that badly. However, I began picking up prostitutes and paying for sex. Soon after descending to this new level of acting out, I was arrested for solicitation.

In the course of my addiction I was arrested seven or eight times, each time promising myself and my family that this was it—no more, only to return to it almost immediately. I also got sexually transmitted diseases four times. Fortunately they were curable. Each time I swore I would stop acting out. What I failed to see was that I couldn’t stop. On two occasions I even had guns put to my head for approaching people who I mistakenly thought were cruising. After talking myself out of being shot, I resumed soliciting a block away. That’s how insane I had become. Despite being in Twelve Step recovery for drug addiction, I had no idea that I could be addicted to sex as well. I thought I had become the evil person my parents said I would. In utter despair, I was again suicidal.

I was ordered to get counseling for sexually dysfunctional behavior, and I was referred to an “expert” therapist. This counselor knew very little about addiction, and proclaimed that I should find a nice girl and settle down, and my sexual needs would be met in this relationship. I liked this idea, because after all this is what I really wanted as well. So I agreed to weekly counseling and continued to work with her for the next three years. I found a nice girl in the Twelve Step program I was attending and we began a relationship. I thought I finally had the solution. I was feeling better about life and my acting out diminished to masturbating with pornography at home only.

I also entered seminary. I thought if I gave myself to God, the strong urge for sex would diminish. For a while everything seemed to be going well. I thought I had found the answer.

The girl I was dating lived about 45 minutes away, and after several months it began taking me longer and longer to get home. I began to cruise again, but at first only to look. Before long, I was picking up street partners again, and I soon returned to all my old behaviors. This time the police came to the seminary to arrest me, and the shame I felt was unbearable. I lost the girl I was dating. My therapist didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I left the seminary and was once again suicidal.

During this same week, information on sex addiction was presented both on television and in the newspaper. I immediately sent for the information and read it. They were talking about me! I couldn’t believe that there were others like me and that there was a place for help. I was used to reading that there was no cure for sex offenders, and I had felt hopeless up to this point.

The information included readings from Sexaholics Anonymous. I saw that SA used the same Twelve Steps as the program I was going to for my drug addiction. I thought that I really didn’t need to go to SA, that I could just modify my own program of recovery to include my sexual behavior. Actually, I was afraid to go to SA, because I thought I might see someone I knew there, and what would they think? Of course I never worried about who knew me at bookstores, parks, and jail!

I got rid of all the pornography and all my drugs, and stopped cruising and picking up street partners. However, I really believed that I had to have sex in some form, so I limited myself to masturbation two or three times a week for no more than ten minutes at a time. I continued to attend Twelve Step meetings for drugs, but was too ashamed to tell them about my sex addiction. For about three months I was able to keep to this plan. Then, one day while masturbating for my ten-minute limit, the urge for more grew so intense that I stopped what I was doing, dressed, and went cruising. Within a couple of weeks I had returned to all my past sexual behaviors, to using drugs, and was arrested again. I finally came to see that my way was not working; I needed SA. That was fifteen years ago.

I was scared to death when I attended my first SA meeting. I didn’t know what to expect. I listened, and when it was my turn to share, all I could do was cry. In fact, for the first six meetings I attended, I was in so much pain that I would break down and cry before my first sentence ended. I had thought I was the only one who did a lot of what I did, so it was reassuring to hear that I was not alone. It took quite some time before I could name all the behaviors I engaged in, because I was too ashamed to admit to them. But hearing others talk openly about their past and how they were achieving progressive victory over lust gave me real hope.

When I heard the sobriety definition of no sex with self or anyone but the spouse, I panicked. Being fairly young and still single, I didn’t think this would be possible. Most of those attending SA meetings in my area who were sober were either older or married. I rationalized that either they were too old for sex or they were having sex regularly with their spouses, and that’s why they could be sober. This diseased thinking led to many slips in my first several years of the program. I became a chronic slipper. I knew I needed SA, yet I was still rebelling, still doing things my way, still thinking I would die if I didn’t have some kind of sex. I did “half measures”—going to two or three meetings a week, making phone calls (after a slip, not before), and reading program literature. I even prayed. Yet I didn’t really want to give up my “best friend.” I would engage in fantasy or objectify while driving. I would push myself so close to the limit that when I did slip I felt like a victim, that I really wasn’t responsible for my acting out. It was way too powerful. How could I be expected to resist it?

This pattern lasted for seven years. Sponsors fired me. I was even arrested once while in the program. I was losing the hope I received early in SA. Yet somehow I remembered what someone said at my first meeting: “Keep coming back.” That was perhaps the only thing I did right during this time. I felt caught in the middle. I really didn’t want to give up acting out altogether, but I was so afraid of what would happen to me if I left the program and returned to active addiction. So I would fool myself into thinking that at least I had made some progress in SA. So what if I slipped on occasion?

Then, I relapsed. I went on a several-day binge that included all my past behaviors, even substance abuse after having several years of drug sobriety. I did not get arrested this time, but I woke up spiritually, physically, and emotionally exhausted. Once again I was suicidal. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. I had been in SA for years, and I still couldn’t get it right. I cannot begin to describe the utter pain and desperation I felt. For the first time I began to see myself for who I really was, no excuses. I was out of control and would soon end up in jail, in an institution, or dead. The realization came to me that I could be one of those who aren’t lucky enough to return after a slip. I wanted out of this insanity, and for the first time I was actually willing to do whatever I had to do to get better.

I got out Sexaholics Anonymous, read the section “How I Overcame My Obsession With Lust,” and prayed for strength. I pondered what I needed to do to make the program my life, not just something to spend some time on between episodes of acting out. The time I had in the program helped at this point. I knew what to do; I had heard it said so many times before but never really understood—or maybe I really didn’t want to understand. I needed to attend more meetings; two or three per week were not enough. I was attending a night course at college for work, which I really enjoyed, but it was preventing me from attending more meetings. I went to school that night and dropped out. I cried all the way home. I finally saw that I had a life-threatening condition, and if I didn’t accept the limitations I needed to have in my life, I wouldn’t survive. While driving home and crying, I did my first prayer of surrender to God. I remembered the line from “How it Works” which states, “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.” No more doing the Twelve Step program my way.

I was on my fourth sponsor. I met with him and made a commitment to do daily phone calls, a minimum of five meetings per week, daily SA readings, prayer throughout the day, writing my First Step. I made a list of boundaries I needed to maintain, and reported each day to my sponsor and to the meeting how I was doing with my boundaries. I avoided people, places, and things that could lead to acting out, and I “stuck with the winners.”

I am happy to report that through the grace of God and the fellowship of SA, I have been sober for eight years. It has not been easy, but it has certainly been worth it! The program works, even for me, a former chronic slipper! I’m in awe at the change in my life today. Now when I get tempted, instead of resorting to the old “stinking thinking,” I am able to look beyond to the despair, remorse, and consequences that always result. Instead of seeing recovery as not being able to have sex, I see my recovery as being free from the imprisonment of lust. My whole life and thinking is continuously being changed day by day.

This program has given me more than I ever dreamed. Besides sobriety today, I have friends in the program who know me for who I really am, and support me. I have a job where I am given promotions and leadership roles. I have hobbies and interests. In the past, my time was spent acting out; I had no other interests. Now I have a genuine self-respect. I can look myself in the mirror and be proud of who I see. Today, I want to live.

One of the most treasured gifts I have received from this program is my girlfriend of over five years. Before, I never had a relationship of more than six months; now we are planning for marriage. After about two years of dating and seeing that we were becoming committed to each other, I took the risk and told her I was a sexaholic. I wanted to be loved for who I am, not for who I pretended to be. I knew I might lose her if I was honest, yet I was willing to risk it. She was accepting and now attends S-Anon meetings regularly. We attend couples meetings together, and have a relationship based upon honesty and open communication—for the first time in my life.

SA has saved my life. Better yet, SA has given me a new life. For all of this, and for all the people who have made this possible, I am truly grateful. Thank you SA for showing me that recovery is possible for me, too! I now believe that whether young or old, single or married, sex is indeed optional. As long as I follow the Steps each day to the best of my ability, I know there is nothing to fear. I can finally see that it does get better; we do recover.