The first recollections of my addiction are from the summer of 1961. I would be nine in August and I had just moved to a new subdivision. The only other boy in the neighborhood was four years older than I, and he was pretty lonely, since his parents both worked. We began to spend time with one another, and since he had a house all to himself, most of our time together was spent there. It was in the privacy of his house one day that he introduced me to pornography. The pictures were hidden in his father’s dresser drawer and were very tame by today’s standards, but they were very compelling to me; my heart raced and I tingled with excitement. When he suggested that we remove our clothes and smoke cigarettes, the pictures took on a whole new dimension. I was hooked from the first viewing and longed for opportunities to get lost in this exciting new experience.

The escape was a welcome relief from my family life. My father had been given an ultimatum by my mother when I was five to quit drinking or risk losing his family. He had begun to slip into periods of deep depression during which he would retreat to his bedroom and not speak to the family for several days. When he did speak, he would rage at my mother and threaten to leave the family. I developed a sixth sense that allowed me to gauge my father’s moods the instant I walked into the house. I escaped from the tension and abuse at home by turning to the pleasure that the pictures provided. My friend soon explained how to masturbate to increase the sensations, and I would spend countless hours for the next 24 years trying to achieve the ultimate sensory experience. I knew instinctively that I needed to keep my discovery to myself and I began to live in a secret world protected by my ability to lie and deceive. My life began to revolve around the adrenaline rush of finding a way to feed this insatiable hunger. I dreamed of possessing the objects of my lust, even though I wasn’t quite sure what I would do with them when I had them.

Over the years, I required more explicit pornography to maintain or increase the level of excitement. I connected with friends who had porno stashes of their own, who would take me to the R- and X-rated movies that offered the next plateau of excitement. My slow physical development and shame connected with my body prevented me from dating until college, and the pent-up demand for physical contact with a woman was almost overwhelming. My first objective upon entering a relationship was to progress physically as quickly as possible, and when I began having intercourse at age 21, masturbation was still my constant companion. I used it like a medication, when I was restless and wanted to sleep, when I was tired and wanted energy, when I was happy and deserved a treat, and when I was sad and needed a lift.

As I got older, I decided that what I wanted in a relationship was the ultimate private stash. She needed to be intelligent and personable but most importantly she had to have the right type of body and enjoy sex as much as I did. I married her in 1980 and threw away my porno stash because I didn’t think I needed it anymore. After all, we would have sex whenever I wanted it, wouldn’t we? At first, I masturbated only when she was having her period; I needed the release, I told myself. As the frequency of sex in our marriage decreased, I began to fill in the dry periods with masturbation. I looked forward to my private time when I could engage in my addiction at my leisure, usually with the R-rated movies on cable.

My behavior started to change in 1982, when I began my search for God. I became aware of how much time I was wasting with my habit. I tried to change, I had cable removed, I started to go back to church, and I tried to cut back on the masturbation which I still kept secret from my wife. I had limited success. I could go for periods of time, but would always fall back on my old behavior and feel completely defeated by it.

The pieces began to fall into place in the spring of 1984, when by accident, I turned on a TV talk show. I realize now that this accident would be one of the many miracles that my God would work in my life. The program dealt with sexual addiction and featured a man sitting behind a screen describing his addictive behavior. He was telling my story. I felt sick; my worst fears were confirmed; I really was a low-life. I stopped masturbating immediately; I assumed that like the alcoholic, I couldn’t indulge in my drug any longer. What I didn’t know was that I could not do it alone. The next year was a blur that culminated in separation from my wife and near loss of my job. During the stress of these events I had returned to my drug and was convinced that while I needed to stop, I could not.

I learned about SA in July 1985 through another miracle of God and stopped masturbating one day at a time on July 31, 1985, one week before my first meeting. I came to my first meeting scared, alone, embarrassed, and knowing what I needed and wanted to stop doing. I was completely in the dark about how to go about it. I shared my story and heard others share theirs. The relief was indescribable, but the temptation to masturbate didn’t disappear. I needed the Steps, to pray, and to use the telephone when the urge overcame me. As I withdrew from my habit, I learned that every aspect of my life was influenced by my addiction. Slowly, I began to replace the destructive behaviors with healthy ones, as I became aware of them. My sobriety in this program has allowed me to begin to feel my feelings instead of covering them with my drug.

Today, I am a recovering sexaholic and I am reminded daily that I will be for the rest of my life. My addiction is never far from me. It may appear in the form of the flash of some past sexual encounter, but today I have the option of calling upon my God to take this uncomfortable memory away and connect with Him, the source of my life. I am reminded nearly every time I attend a meeting of where I could be today if He had not made Himself known to me. Through the fellowship of this program, I am learning to relate to others and let down the defenses that served me so well in my childhood but have been so destructive in my adult life. I am so grateful to my brothers and sisters in this program who have shared their lives with me that I might be freed from this terrible bondage.

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The previous paragraphs were written ten years ago. I just reread them for the first time in many years. It is hard for me to believe where I was then and where I am now in my recovery. Four years of sobriety seemed like so many then. Now, ten years later, I realize that I have so much more to learn.

Ten years ago I had been divorced for two years and had relocated to a new city because of my job. I had learned in my recovery to that point that my identity as a man needed to be affirmed by other men; not by the women that my lust told me that I needed. I found our fellowship to be a safe haven where I could learn to become emotionally intimate with other recovering men. I learned valuable lessons about seeing friendships with people who wanted the same recovery that I wanted and about letting go of acquaintances that were centered around how they looked on the outside. After some success with my male relationships, the fellowship provided an opportunity to become emotionally intimate with women, again in the safety of our fellowship bond.

After four and one-half years of sobriety, I took the next step in my relationship recovery by asking a woman out on a date for dinner. During that first evening, as my mind contemplated spending a lifetime with this person, I could hear my sponsor’s voice, also in my head, reminding me that this was about dinner! A lifetime relationship is built on the solid foundation of emotional intimacy . . . and that takes a lot of time and patience.

My dating experience ebbed and flowed over the next six years. It was only after I had come to peace with the fact that my life was doing just fine as a single man and that I could live the remainder of my life by myself, that it happened. I met the woman who was to become my wife. My newfound peace gave me the freedom to risk letting her know who I really was. Not about my addiction at first, but about what I thought and what I felt. The honesty was like a clear shining light to her. While my desire to refrain from any physical contact with her was somewhat confusing at first, she felt encouraged enough to continue. Once she learned about my recovery, many questions were answered. New ones replaced them, such as, discussing the appropriate amount of physical contact for an engaged couple. With the support of my sponsor and others in the program who had preceded me in dating and marriage in sobriety, our courtship and engagement were a wonderful time of preparation for, and anticipation of, our new life together. My wife continues to support my recovery and words cannot express the joy that she has brought into my life.

Our marriage has been unbelievably blessed by God. One of the many proofs is our two-month-old son who is lying in a crib in the next room. When I shared the good news of our pregnancy and the discovery that we were going to have a son with my sister, her response was that the cycle was coming full circle. I was being given a chance by God to pass on a new legacy of sobriety and recovery to my son, one that he could pass on to his children. I am deeply humbled by the grace of God that I have found in this fellowship and I plan to keep coming back, one day at a time.