My name is Mike and I am a sexaholic. I have been sober now in AA for 25 years and have gone to any length to maintain my sobriety, and yet at times I felt so alone and different from most people. The tears inside that would not come out. The people, places and things that were going to make me whole—they never worked. The hole I felt inside, the despair, never being myself, thinking “This time it will be different. This time it will be OK,” only to fall again, more and more isolated, feeling more resentment, and wanting inside to hurt back.

Through the 12-Step program I have done many Fourth Steps, and did the very best I could at the time. Now looking at this new way of life, I don’t only have to start again, I want to.

SA has changed my life. I share with many people one-to-one and I know my sharing is different today. I am careful about what I share, but I do share about lust and what it has done to me. I found SA through an American. We were both at another 12-Step meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, which is 80 miles from where I live. She upset me with something she said, and I told her she was not on. I had been sober all these years and I knew what I was doing.

We had a meeting a few days later. I said I was sorry and that she was right to confront me. We got talking, and here I was telling this young woman things I would not admit to myself before. I still don’t know where SA came into our sharing, but the relief I felt! Here was someone that really understood. The steel around me started to melt. I believe if I had not gotten the SA program when I did, suicide would have been the next step. I have hurt so many people; there was nowhere to go.

I have been sexually sober for three months now and I am so grateful to SA. I have shared with a few people about this and we hope to start an SA group in Dundee. It will probably be at my home to start with, and they, like me, are excited at this way of life. This is a new ball game and I love it. I need SA literature and I need a sponsor—a male. If you could find someone I could write or tape with I would be very grateful. Some information that may help: I am 51 years old (young) and married.

I filled my head with knowledge but the darkness always came and cheated me again. For years I had been grateful in my head. I now feel grateful in my heart. My marriage was over; my life was over. Now these things are mending. Life is difficult at times, but there is a wonderful change going on inside of me, and I thank God for guiding me to SA.