[Taken from a talk given at the SA International Conference in Nashville, TN, July 1993]

Hello. I’m Harvey A., a sexaholic. I thought of all kinds of openings, but the one I want to say is how much I love my wife. She’s been having to bathe me, she’s been having to drive me, she had to put my socks on. This is a woman who … no woman should have to go through what she went through from my disease.

And I have so much to tell you all, and I was thinking about my AA sponsor who had about 29 years of recovery. He was just a wonderful man, a wonderful sponsor, and he had about 50 people he would sponsor. He always had time for all of us, but what he did—he was retired—he had the phone by his feet while he watched television, and he would just pick it up, and you’d call him and you’d say “Oh, Cherry, I was really worried, I was thinking about such-and-such, and it’s really bothering me,” and in the middle of the sentence he’d say, “That’s your trouble! You’re thinking again!” And he’d hang up. Another day I called him and told him I had this great thought, and he said to me “Well, Harvey, maybe someday your intelligence will catch up to your education,” and he hung up. Another time I told him, “Cherry, I gave the speaker meeting and people stood up, at AA!” And he said “Well, what do you expect from a group of sick people?” and he hung up. [Laughter]

One day, I started noticing that he’d speak to me for 10 or 15 minutes at a time on the phone. He told me one gem after another, and the phone calls got longer and longer, and I could never understand it. [We soon found out that] … he had a cancer of the stomach. And we watched him die for the next six months. But then I understood what had been happening. He was giving me everything he had. He was passing on everything he could to me before he died. And that’s how I feel tonight. I want to give you everything I’ve got, that I can within a half an hour.

What I want to give you is my 10th Step, but a very different kind of 10th Step. I want to give you my hardest kind of 10th Step. I’m a showoff, and I love to be the best at it, so I’m real good at sharing from my weakness. A guy once said in an SA meeting, “If you ever want to feel better, say the most disgusting, low-down, impossible thing you’ve ever done, and Harvey will tell you how he did it twice.” [Laughter] So for me to lead with my weaknesses is right up my alley. But I’ll tell you what I can’t do well. What the 12 & 12 says about taking an inventory in your 10th Step… how a factory takes its liabilities and its assets. I’m going to tell you the assets that I have received because of you. I’m going to tell you what this program can do.

The day before my surgery—which happened very suddenly; I had 24 hours before I was going to be operated on—I woke up in the morning so frightened. Just so terrified. And all of a sudden I said, “My God! I’ve got 24 hours! I’ve got one whole day!” And that’s all I’ve ever had, in recovery! One day. And I thought, “What’s the big deal?” I said to myself, “Harvey, you’ve been saved already.” I mean the fact that I’m alive to worry about dying is a miracle!

When we began this journey, this 10th Step journey, I had to discover life with other people without sex. As many of you know, my disease took every form, so there were no safe people for me. There were no people, men or women, who I could relate to without sex. And yet, here I was, through this program, learning how to relate, and day by day recovery came in. So there I was at the hospital, with one day to go, and a wonderful realization came, that I could die tomorrow sober. That I can die, and I have nothing to be ashamed of with my Maker. Last night Roy said some very meaningful things about us being warriors. And I called up one of the, if not the, original warrior of our fellowship, and I thanked him for letting God use him so that I could die sober. What a joy! I can’t describe to you that joy!

Everything was encapsulated into that day. Into that 24 hours. And somehow realization came to me midway in the day, that if this were my last day on earth, and my last night, I wanted to spend it with three people who had called me and I had talked to every day for the past 5 to 7 years—three men in my life who I had been sponsoring over the years. And there was another person who happened to be out of town at the time, and I called those three people up, crying to myself and to them. In all my life I had never been able to do this. I called them up and I said “Would you sit with me tonight?” And there they were! I was able to get what I had distorted all my life. I was able to get, and receive, the love. Lately I have been thinking about how this disease makes us take. We lust, and we take, without permission. We take! And how in recovery I’ve learned to give, but it took the operation to do something I could never have done before. To receive. I received love! I can’t tell you the experience.

It was the first time in my life I received love. People came in from outside the program, from inside the program, my family, all over, I received the love. And thank goodness I did, because I got shut off from my Higher Power consciously, during all this, and especially after the surgery. My improved conscious contact with God as I understand Him had to be done through people. I couldn’t read my books, I couldn’t get on my knees, I had difficulty being grateful! “Why did you do this to me? Why couldn’t that defect [in my heart] be somewhere else and I wouldn’t have had to go through this…” And my gratitude left. And the beautiful part of this for me was, I was able to say “God, I know you love me this way too. You understand, God, I can’t do this with you right now.”

Instead of my emphasis on the Third Step prayer, my emphasis started, after surgery, to focus on my Seventh Step prayer. For God to accept me as I am. And I want to share some of those “as I am” things with you, because I’m enjoying some of them. I’m an incorrigible co-dependent with my wife. I have been that way since I’ve been 19 years old. We have been through all kinds of treatment and therapy, and do you know, I don’t want to let that go. I love being attached to her. And who else am I? I’m someone who wants to learn to love, and who is learning to love. My SA sponsor, over and over again through the years, when I’d tell him “Oh, we’re having this problem or that problem,” or “I need to fix this one, and tell this one what to do…” would say to me, “Harvey, all you’ve got to give these people is your love. That’s all you’ve got. You can’t fix ’em.”

And so I want to tell you what I’ve learned about love. Because it had an effect on that day, too. I came in here, and my core was not being a recovering addict, my core was my religion. “Who am I,” was my religion. Then one day my son decided to marry a woman from another religion. I kept trying to control [the situation] and the thought occurred to me, either I’ll have to be disloyal to my religion, or I’ll have to quit AA and SA, because love and tolerance is my code. And how can I do this? I realized that maybe suicide was the only way! [Laughter]

Finally, I said to myself, “Harvey, this is crazy!” And I picked up the phone and I called someone in the fellowship, and I started to tell him, and what did he respond? “Funny you mention this. I’ve had a very similar problem.” And by the time I got off the phone, I had the answer! I always had the answer! Love is what it’s about. It’s not about my religion. I discovered years ago that God was bigger than religion. I found that through this program! It was love! It was loving my daughter-in-law and loving my son and letting God do what He needed to do. And I made that decision. That I was only going to love my daughter-in-law, and accept it.

So before my surgery (when in my histrionic, hysterical way, I was preparing everything for the Big Sleep), I had a talk with my son. According to our religion, you need to be buried in a cemetery only with people of your faith, if you’re expecting to get what you need to get in the world to come. And I told my son “I don’t want to be buried in our regular cemetery, I want us all to be buried together, and have a family plot in a cemetery where we could do that.” And I knew that love was greater for me on that day than even the world to come. And it hurt, and it worried me, but I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

There is transcendence in this program, for all of us. Why stop masturbating? Why stop being promiscuous? Why stop looking at pornography? Lots of people do it. Why stop it? I’ll tell you why stop it. Because if you’re an addict, you can’t get what I’m starting to get, and act out! And why do this? Because it works! It works! It’s worth it. It’s worth it not only to be sexually sober, because that’s not enough, but to have the desire to stop lusting. I did not have to use my drug even if my ass fell off. That’s what they say in AA. You don’t have to drink, even if your backside falls off, excuse the expression. I did not have to go into fantasy the day before my surgery. I did not have to go into fantasy after my surgery. I am powerless over my brain, but I don’t have to go into it. I can let it come up, and then pick up a phone. I had the phone by my bed, and I must have called eight people a day! I don’t know how many.

I’m going to end by telling you what else I’m getting from the program. Nancy was able to call people and say “Will you help us?” One day I needed to go to an SA meeting a couple of days after I got out of the hospital, and she called a friend of mine. I heard the horn beep, and there he is with this big Mercedes, and I look out the window, and he had a chauffeur’s hat on, and a chauffeur’s outfit on, and there he was holding the back door open for me, insisting I sit in the back seat. He drove me to the SA meeting, he stayed with me, he walked with me, but he did something that I’ll never forget. When he saw me, he kissed me on the cheek, and he just held me, and helped me down the stairs. And I said to myself, “Why would he do that?” And then I remembered how, when Cherry was dying, I kissed his forehead and I told him how much I loved him, and I said “Oh my God, this guy loves me! He loves me! My friends love me! My family loves me. My God loves me.”

I’m getting glimpses of feeling love. Bit by bit, I’m learning what this feeling might be. I’m a love cripple. You know how they talk in the AA Big Book about how we are people who have lost our legs and we never grow new ones… I’ve lost the legs, and the more I realize I’ve lost them, the better I’m walking! I’m dancing! Can’t run yet, but I’m walking real fast. And this love cripple is experiencing love through recovery.

I happen to have come across in the SA Big Book, this past week, what was written, that it wasn’t enough not doing it, and not looking, and not this and not that. It had to be a positive sobriety. In the White Book Roy talked about the relapse, that after a year and a half the “don’ts” and the “no’s” were not enough! It had to be more. And what is the more? It’s love! And as I’m saying it to you, I know what I’m saying. I’m saying “It has to be God.” Because that’s the God of my understanding that you all have taught me. Love and Truth, and that’s why I feel God in an SA meeting and an AA meeting, and sometimes I don’t feel God outside of that, but in there, I get the love and the truth, and I get that inch closer to being there.

I guess I’ve said all I need to say. You all saved me, God works through you, and I’m very very appreciative. I love you all so very much. Thank you.