Originally published in ESSAY, 2001, Issue One

John C. of Rochester, NY—an SA member long active in service—passed away at his home on March 13, 2014. His sobriety date was October 13, 1996.

John began serving on SA’s Correctional Facilities Committee (SACFC) in 1999, and he served as Chair of that committee from 2003-2008. From 2006-2010, he served as an SA Trustee, and he was elected Trustee Chair for 2009-2010. He also served on SA’s Regional Alignment Committee, from 2007-2010.

In response to the news of John’s death, we received an outpouring of loving remembrances from SA members around the world.

In his memory, we thought it fitting to reprint his story, “No More Excuses,” which was first published in ESSAY in March 2001.

I woke up this morning thanking God. Then I prayed this simple prayer: “God grant that I may love Thee always and follow Thy will. Do with me according to Thy will.” Then I did my daily readings. It wasn’t always that way. Today I’m enjoying over three years of sexual sobriety. But again, it wasn’t always that way….

My name is John and I’m a sexaholic. And this is the way it used to be: “Oh God, please get me out of this one and I promise I’ll never do it again.” “Oh God, if only I had $50,000, I could pay off my debts, make a down payment on a second car for my wife, and buy new clothes for our children. Then everything would be ΟΚ.”

Today I call this stinking thinking. Today I know these prayers are called “jailhouse prayers.” How do I know? Well, my name wasn’t always John…. I used to be called 9999.

Like many of us, I was abused as a child. I can go back to 1944. I was six years old at the time. A great-aunt was abusing me. It was the month of May and my first communion. I knew then what I know now—that “No” means “No.” But my “No’s” were ignored. Between that time and 1954, a Boy Scout leader and a Catholic priest abused me. These experiences became my EXCUSE to act out sexually in a reckless, dangerous, and criminal manner.

I was fourteen years old when I first abused an eleven-year-old girl. She was a victim because she said, “No.” And I ignored her “No.” Therefore I classify her as a victim. I was a very high-bottom person at that time but it was still wrong. To me, as I look back in retrospect, that was a low bottom. That was a low thing to do not to respect someone else’s privacy, not to respect someone else’s “No.” Between my first victim and the last there were many others. I was approximately age fifty-five when I engaged in my last improper sexual contact. It was with an eleven-year-old boy and resulted in my prison sentence.

After the charges were filed, I spent six days prior to Christmas in the county lockup. My sisters, who have never stopped loving me and have stood by me through this whole process even to this day, posted ten thousand dollars bail so that I could be with them for the holidays and continue working. But that didn’t stop me from acting out on New Year’s Eve.

Earth-shattering fear and panic set in as I made my first court appearance on January 2nd, 1993. It was a very cold day both outside and inside me. I was scared to death. I didn’t want to go to prison. So on my lawyer’s advice, I began “walking the straight and narrow.” “Don’t get caught doing anything now,” he said. Out of fear, my first period of sexual sobriety began the following day.

Because of lengthy delays and legal ploys by my $3,500 lawyer, I was able to plea bargain with the court system. Finally, on October 2nd, 1993, I was found guilty of sodomy and child abuse. I was sentenced to one and one-half to four years in a maximum-security prison in a non-jury trial.

God blessed me that day because I could have received up to six to eighteen years of prison in a jury trial.

In the crazy three years in prison that followed much happened to the man who had become a sex-crazed predator; the man who wallowed in self-pity, denial, self-justification, rationalization and all the other EXCUSES for not getting sexually sober. Sobriety was a word familiar to me when I went to prison as I then already had eleven years of A.A. sobriety. But sexual sobriety was as alien to me as life on Mars. I didn’t have a clue. My heart wasn’t in it.

I survived a meaningless prison existence by becoming a law clerk. When I was turned down for my first parole board, I realized I had to do something to help myself. There were men in prison secretly reading SA material, so I obtained an address from that literature. I wrote and received a free SA handbook and brochure from Nashville, Tennessee.

Along with this information came a list of Intergroups. I wrote to one of them. A member of SA from that area answered my letter, and I believe, saved me from a continually unfulfilled life, the mental ward (again), life in prison, or death. This member wrote to me in the early part of July 1995. His letter was frightfully candid and lacking in fear. In that initial letter, he wrote on company stationery containing not only the company address and phone number, but his home phone number as well. “Wow,” I said to myself, “where did all this courage come from?”

This SA member never questioned my behavior, my being in prison, or the circumstances that brought me there. He only talked about himself and this wonderful program called Sexaholics Anonymous. I was intrigued not only about what kind of man was this, but even more, about what kind of program this was! For the first time in my life I was willing to listen (miracle #1). And I was also willing to follow directions (miracle #2). In the fifteen months that followed, I wrote out my Twelve Steps for the first time. A loving God had started to express himself through me. As the axiom goes, “When the student is READY the teacher will appear!”

During the months of writing this SA member, I gained many insights into my affliction. I wanted what I saw in him and I was ready to go to any lengths to get it. At first I was positive my years in AA would be a big asset in SA. Wrong! I had to relearn the Steps and endorse a new application as it specifically addressed my LUST addiction. Between 1981 and 1985 I had quit—one day at a time—drinking, cigarette smoking, overeating, and gambling. But they were outside of me. My lust was a part of me. So I worked hard on trying to work a program of sobriety in prison. I tried to look at myself objectively.

I got out of prison October 2nd, 1996, fully convinced that Sexaholics Anonymous was the way to go—that I needed this fellowship and its sobriety definition. I thought I was ready for freedom…. I had so much YET to learn. Church friends arrived at the appointed time to drive me home and give me shelter in their homes. Prior to my release, the SA member I had been writing mailed me a list of meetings. By then I also had both his work and home phone numbers.

The relief of being out of prison—and only those who have been there can understand what that relief is—was enough. I was in a safe home with some church friends. I didn’t have people banging on my cell at three o’clock in the morning, and saying, “Move so I can see you move,” and shining a flashlight in my eyes. I didn’t have to go through all the rules and regulations and all the formations and standing at my gate to be counted. So I didn’t feel like I needed a meeting or phone calls to SA members.

On October 12th, a group of friends invited me to join them on a trip to the mall. I did not know what a grievous mistake that would be so I said, “Yes.” The sights, sounds, aromas, etc., etc., took their toll. That night alone in my room I acted out. Within seconds I began to weep. What I knew before that act became all the more poignant now—I could not do this ALONE and I needed MEETINGS. Yet it still would be several days before I came to a meeting.

On October 17th, I finally went to my first meeting. I had been in the church where the meeting was being held a hundred times before for AA meetings. So I knew where the parking lot was and where the meetings rooms were. When I got there, I peered through the window. I wanted to see what the weirdos in this program called Sexaholics Anonymous looked like. When I spotted a man inside the room, I said to myself, “Well, he doesn’t look too bad. He’s kind of an old coot like me. He can’t be all that bad.” So I went on into the meeting. I was fully intending to lie about my sobriety date. I was intending to say that it was January 3rd, 1993, because none of them would have really known the truth.

But the first man to speak in that meeting said, “My name is Bob and I’ve been sexually sober for two days.” And I said, “Son of a gun, these guys are going to be honest. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it!” So I found myself admitting that my sobriety date was really October 13th, 1996. This new God of my understanding had compelled me to speak the truth. I soon chose one of the members to be my sponsor and only mildly balked when he asked me to write out the Steps again, even though I had written them out in prison!

Since getting sober, I have held service positions at local meetings and in our Intergroup. But my heart belongs to the service work of the Sexaholics Anonymous Corrections Facilities Committee (SACFC). For a little over two years I’ve attended meetings in two state prisons plus visited inmates in three others. I’ve also attended prison meetings in two other states. Corresponding with over twenty inmates keeps me busy. My involvement with the SACFC has been very fruitful and rewarding. It helps keep me sober. For this I have much gratitude.

I’m not proud of what I did before I got sober. But that’s me. That is who I am. It’s difficult at best to lead with my weakness and tell everyone just how low of a bottom I hit. I am telling you my story because I hope it might help you to see below the bottom you may have already created to the level where you might continue to fall. Or if you are already at the level that I’m at, perhaps you will see that there is hope. Perhaps you will see that this fellowship can do great things—if you surrender, if you allow it to work in you.

I used to hate the entire Catholic Church. I hated the Pope, the Cardinals, and every member that was ever a Catholic—for the actions of one man. Now the scared little child that was once abused by a scout leader and a priest…has a priest as a sponsor. God has also blessed me with two sponsees, one of whom was a priest before being sent to prison. He was the “old coot” I saw when I peered through the window to see what sexaholics really looked like!

Today I have nothing but compassion and love for all my brothers and sisters regardless of their religious background, color, creed—or whatever. I can’t judge anybody else. I can’t say that, “Well, because he’s done this or he’s done that, or she’s done this or she’s done that, we have to exclude them from our fellowship.

God’s healing and forgiving love is boundless. Thanks to what the God of my understanding and SA have done for me, I am now able to visit with my daughter and have lunch with my grandkids. This is the same little girl that I abused when she was twelve years old. The God of my conscience has healed our relationship.

When I entered Sexaholics Anonymous, God did not ask me what my bottom was. He only asked me, “Do you want to be sober?” “Do you want to be restored to sanity?” “Are you willing to come to this fellowship and admit that you are powerless over lust and that your life is unmanageable?” And I said, “Yes.” And I have been delivered.

I tell you all this because God and SA have taken me, a low-bottom pedophile, and returned me to some sort of sanity by reinforcing in me that every time I come to a meeting and don’t act out, I’ve done the right thing. I hope that the God who allows my presence in SA will be seen as a hope for all who want to stop lusting and become sexually sober—no matter what they have done.

We probably are all familiar with the three pertinent ideas:

(a) That we were sexaholics and could not manage our own lives.
(b) That probably no human power could have relieved our sexaholism.
(c) That God could and would if He were sought.

In my life, God has given me three pertinent concepts—SERENITY, COURAGE, and WISDOM. God has given me the wisdom to follow him, the courage to forgive myself and others, and the serenity of living sober in SA.

I pray God never allows me to forget these words: “This is the beginning of a new day. God has given me this day to use, as I will. I can waste it or use it for good. What I do today is important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, leaving in its place something I have traded for it. I want it to be gain, not loss; good not evil; success not failure—in order that I shall not regret the price I paid for it.”

Be well and God bless!