One morning in the spring of 2000, my mother threatened to throw me out of the house when I arrived home at 5:00 a.m. I ran away that night so I could continue acting out. I was 21. I had been attending college full-time and had two part-time jobs, but I dropped out of school and didn’t show up at work so I could act out.

I felt a lot of shame about my behavior so I convinced my boyfriend to marry me. We married in April 2000. But we were both sex addicts and we raged at each other daily. In our marriage we acted out in lust and remained isolated people. My husband downloaded porn on our computer. He sometimes showed it to me. At times we acted out by watching it. When we were together we would criticize how crazy these people were, but when my husband wasn’t home I would look at what he had downloaded and act out in secret. Once he caught me and got angry and we had another yelling fight. Lust killed our relationship.

In July 2003, I separated from my husband and moved back to my parents’ house. In the separation I got the computer, which I set up in my parents’ living room. I would sit there viewing the porn my husband had downloaded, acting out while watching it. I was disgusted with my behavior but couldn’t stop.

In October I acted out with a former college teacher. When I called him, he said he didn’t remember who I was or what I looked like but that it didn’t matter. For me, all I cared about was that he said yes. We acted out together once and I became obsessed with him but he was done with me. I stalked him online, called him at work, and went to his work looking for him. He told me to stop trying to contact him.

In my despair over losing this “connection,” I became involved in Internet chatting. I stayed up late at night chatting about sex on the computer. Over time I stayed up later and longer, seeking out more to lust after. I started out in Christian chat rooms, then progressed to singles chat rooms, then to married-and-still-looking chat rooms. I tried to live out fantasies with others who were looking for sexual conversations. I tried to stop but could not.

Sometimes while I was acting out, I would hear my parents turn over in their beds and would jump and close everything down and cover up fast. My mother sometimes came out to the living room and told me angrily that it was too late to be up. As I shut down the computer, my hands would shake from the scare of getting caught. I thought to myself, “I need to stop this or she’ll see what I’m doing.”

In November I installed a camera on my parents’ computer. I started using the camera while chatting. One day while chatting with some people, I acted out in front of the camera. The reaction of these people did not fit my fantasy. When reality hit, I felt less than human. But I could not stop this behavior.

I was feeling crushed by the weight of the shame of acting out with strangers online. I was obsessed with thoughts of acting out with my ex-teacher. I was still trying to live out the perfect fantasy. I was obsessed with the forbidden.

I began to wonder if I might be a sex addict. At the time, I counted six for-sure acting out partners in my history. I thought, “That is not a lot to call myself a sex addict”—but I felt so much pain. I thought, “I’ll just stop having sex with others and only masturbate.”

But one day—after exposing myself in cyberspace and acting out—I searched for help online. I felt sick to my stomach. I found a number for an S-fellowship and called a member. At the suggestion of the person who answered the phone, I decided to try six S-meetings to see if I might be a sex addict.

In my first meeting, I was the only woman with about eight men. That was too stressful. The guys tried to reassure me by giving me a phone list and pointing to another woman who sometimes came to the meeting, but after attending only a couple of those meetings, I searched the Internet again for a meeting that might have women in it. I found a women-only SA meeting.

That women’s meeting was my first SA meeting. I started attending in November 2003. I went to a couple of meetings that month and a few the following year, but I was not committed to the group. I heard women share that they struggled with masturbation. I remember thinking, “Yuk! I can’t call myself a sexaholic. That’s not me. That would mean I’m a sicko.”

I masturbated often, but my masturbation was healthy! I wasn’t hurting anybody. I would go into fantasy when acting out with myself and would purposely “forget” what I was doing. I believed I wasn’t doing anything disgusting because my reasons for acting out were good ones: to go to sleep, to wake up, to feel better, or to feel alive. But if I was not in fantasy acting out, I felt alone, afraid, and unworthy to be alive.

Eventually I left the meetings. I was too busy. My family complained that they wanted me to spend more time with them. So I quit SA. I thought, “I’m not like other SA women, I can stop having sex with others and myself. I can stop on my own. I can share my progress with my mother.” But I was soon back to my same behaviors and took more risks.

I installed a new chat program on my computer to see who might chat with me. A friend from college came back home after serving in Iraq. In December, he contacted me using my chat program and invited me to lunch. I was triggered. I asked my mom for advice. She said, “Go have fun with your friend.” So I went. We had a nice time eating and talking. But when he brought me home I felt let down that “nothing happened.”

He then invited me to watch a movie and I agreed. During the movie, a switch turned on in my head. I went on auto pilot. My mind was filled with fantasy. When I came back to reality, I had already acted out with him. The next thing I remember was feeling like the scum of the earth and walking back up my driveway to my parents’ house feeling disgusted. I didn’t understand what had happened. The addict personality in me was getting stronger and I was lost and confused about what I was doing.

In February 2004, I started going to night clubs with my cousin. In the next couple of months, I acted out with others in the nightclubs. I thought my cousin was a drag because she kept pulling my partners away and telling them to get away from me. She pulled me to other areas of the club so we could have fun “in peace.”

I felt like two different people. The addict in me was becoming more dominant than the part that hated the addict. My addiction was spinning out of control. I was acting out online again in the living room. I began doing Internet searches for porn. I told myself I was just browsing.

I was acting out at work during my breaks. I acted out again with the man I was divorcing even though he was emotionally abusive and had physically harmed me when we were living together. I began thinking of finding a job in the sex industry as a waitress so I could work at lusting full-time.

I thought I could make a lot of money in the sex industry, yet I was terrified to work there. I called myself a Christian and believed that God would break my legs if I worked in that industry. However, I carried around the phone number of a place offering a job as a waitress for a “Gentlemen’s Club.” I called once to get the address and find out what to bring. I knew that if something didn’t stop me I would work there. My family would be upset and I would lose what little self-respect I had left.

I wanted to kill myself because I felt that was the only way to stop myself from working at the club and to stop acting out. I thought I had to act out or I would die, yet I felt that acting out was killing me. Acting out was killing my spirit, my creativity, my personality, and all joy. In January 2005, I hit bottom again.

Shocked that the lusting and acting out were rapidly getting worse, I came back to SA. After about 14 months of “research” deciding whether or not I was a sex addict, I swallowed my pride and forced myself to go back to an SA meeting. I went to the women’s-only meeting first. They did not yell at me or ask me what I had been doing since I left. I began announcing myself as a sexaholic. I struggled in the program, regularly losing my sobriety before I could get a 30-day chip. I kept going to meetings but could not figure out how to stay sober.

In my spiritual life, I had started going back to church. One day I responded to an invitation for people to walk up to the front of the church for prayer to be healed of illnesses. This was my Step Three experience: I walked up and actively turned my will and my life over to my Higher Power. I told a man doing the healing service that I suffered from an addiction that was not of a chemical nature and asked for prayer to be healed from it. He asked me if the church leaders could pray for me and I agreed. I was willing to do whatever it took to be healed.

After they prayed for me, I walked back to my seat tired and broken. I surrendered my life over to the care of God as I understood Him. I promised God in my heart that I would continue going to SA meetings.

Shortly after this experience I dreamt that I was released from the obsession of lust. The people who had prayed for me were in my dream. They covered me with a white blanket and told me I had been set free from shame and obsession. This dream was an important part of my recovery experience, but I wondered, “How does one live a free life?” Since that experience—in spite of my very slow and imperfect recovery—I’ve felt a freedom to be able to work the program that I hadn’t felt before.

I continued attending the women’s SA meetings. But as a free person and feeling high on God, I wondered whether I was free to lust again. Then I found that if I chose to lust, the consequences of lust quickly followed.

My counselor said I needed to treat the meetings as if they were a job; something that I have to go to and plan my life around. The meetings became required in my mind. I went to the women’s-only meetings once a week for a while. I did not trust myself to go to the mixed meetings. I was scared to be in a room full of SA men.

My triggers became more frequent and I began to desire sex with myself and others again. The once-a-week meetings were no longer enough. I broke down again and became willing to do whatever it took to stay sober and grow in recovery. In April 2005, I started attending 7:00 a.m. mixed meetings.

Before I went to the mixed meetings, I prayed that I would be shielded from being lusted after and from lusting after others (I learned this from a woman SA member). I kept my head down and listened. To my surprise, I heard my story told over and over again. I heard: my fear, my anxiety, my loneliness, my rage, my resentment, my lusting, my confusion, and my hope for freedom. I began to feel alive again. My sponsor encouraged me to continue going to the mixed meetings. She also kept saying that the large evening mixed meeting she attended was awesome. She would share that at every women’s SA meeting I went to.

I took another chance and went to that large Tuesday mixed meeting. I was amazed to meet people who had ten or more years of sobriety! I hadn’t known that was possible. I shared at the meeting and did not die. I led a meeting and was thanked by many. I was welcomed to the meeting as one of them. But I still felt shame calling myself a sexaholic; I felt worthless quite often.

My sponsor shared that she had attended the SA/S-Anon convention in July 2007, and that it was amazing to see so much sobriety. Driven to learn more about staying sober, I saved up my money and paid for the trip to attend the Akron convention in 2008. The convention was healing and wonderful. The male and female SAs had good boundaries and were respectful. I cried many tears of gratitude in my hotel room and in meetings.

While there, I went to a morning meeting on Shame. The closing share was by the leader of the meeting. He said he is proud to call himself a sexaholic because that means he has to turn his will and his life over to the care of God as he understands Him. He has to pray, work on purity, be honest, and surrender resentment and lust. Because of his illness, he has serenity from working the SA Twelve Step recovery program. He has to work the program or he dies. Just like me. I have to work the program or I die.

Today, I’m happy to say that I am a recovering sexaholic who loves going to SA meetings, and I’m supported by hundreds of people in the SA fellowship. I’m not alone anymore. Sometimes when I feel scared or overwhelmed, I recall the time when I led my large home group meeting and afterward they thanked me for leading. I saw them smiling at me with acceptance in their eyes, and I felt in my heart that I was home.

I feel close to my sponsor and love her very much. Also, I respect her husband and I feel supported and have been helped by him too. I call my sponsor often. She has helped me more than she will ever know. I am grateful to my sponsor and her husband for taking the time to be with me at the convention last July. I am blessed that they were able to celebrate a graduation with my friends and family in the home I grew up in. I love them.

Sometimes I go ballroom dancing. I enjoy it. I go home without giving my spirit away to acting out or lusting. I’m on speaking terms with my family even though I had forgotten and ignored them for about three years before I came to SA. I accept that I may never marry again and most days I feel a peace about living single. I hope to marry someday, but it is not the destructive lust for marriage that I used to feel. Whatever happens, happens. I accept life on God’s terms and not my own. I can see the miracles of SA in other members’ lives. I hope that newcomers experience the miracles also.

Life in SA is awesome. The promises are coming true for me. I love you people!