I believe I was a sexaholic at ten years old. I remember at that age undressing the girls in my classroom with my eyes. In my mind the girls were nothing more than robots.

I was thirteen years old when I masturbated for the first time, while fantasizing about the girls in my classroom. That was the ultimate in pleasure for me, which I tried to do again as often as possible.

In my early teens, I put on my mother’s or sister’s clothes a few times. I felt that I was hurting or getting even with them. The thought of putting on their clothes drove me crazy, but when I did it I felt like a fool and took them off immediately. When I took off their clothes, I urinated and defecated and otherwise desecrated them.

I was a quiet, shy boy with very few friends. I felt that I was not as good as the other kids because I had no father and we were very poor (we were on welfare). I did not go out on dates with girls in my teens. That contributed to my feelings of being less adequate than other boys. All I did was fantasize and masturbate. To this day I have never had sex with anyone except myself.

When I was twenty years old, I started going to porno movies. When the other men at work would talk about their sex relations with their girlfriends, I was able to be part of the conversation by talking about porno movies. I usually stayed in the porno movie about thirty minutes. I would become angry and leave because I knew that real women are not like that. I did not approve of the men who were in the movies. They were doing what I wanted to do with women. Since I thought of myself as dirt, I considered the men in the porno movies as dirt also. As angry as I was about being in the theater, a week or two later I would go back to see another movie. I did not realize that I was addicted.

At this point I started buying cheap porno newspapers. I would buy one, take it home, look through the pages, masturbate, rip up the paper, and throw it away. A few days later I would buy another paper. I did this for about two months, never understanding why I was buying a paper only to rip it up and throw it away.

Eventually I found a paper that kept my interest. It was about transvestites. I decided, “This is what I want to do.” I bought women’s clothing and other items I felt I needed to make the fantasy real. I waited until my family went away on vacation. I told them that I had to work and could not join them. When they were gone from the house, I took out the women’s clothes from the closet. Pulling some items out of the bag, I looked at them, called myself an idiot, and threw it all away. The very next day I wished I still had the women’s clothing. I did not understand—why did I still want it?

When I finally went to my first SA meeting, I heard a piece of myself in the other people who shared. I could hardly believe that there were other people who thought like I did.

The next year I gave my First Step inventory. After I gave my inventory, people came up to me to share their similarities with my story. I did not get a sponsor and I rarely called anyone. After meetings I felt that I did not belong and did not join in any fellowship. I did not become sober. I continued to fantasize and masturbate daily. While I preferred to fantasize about women, I also fantasized about men, children, and animals.

A few days before Memorial Day, I was at a meeting and someone asked me how I was doing. Usually I would answer that everything was okay, but this time I said I wasn’t doing so well. I told him a little bit about my problems. For me, that was my real First Step. I became sober over that weekend. In the beginning I was only physically sober. I was not fantasizing or masturbating.

After a few weeks of sobriety, I wondered why I was not acting out. I still wanted to act out, but I was not doing it. My opinion was that my Higher Power was stopping me, and that I was listening to my Higher Power. That was my Second Step. When I saw an attractive woman, my head would immediately turn in the opposite direction. I believed that my Higher Power was turning my head away, because I still wanted to look. At that point I adopted the phrase “Higher Power Is Keeping Me Sexually Sober.”

I was sober about two months when I became very angry. I argued that I just wanted to look at the women, nothing else. I started pounding my fist against my knee saying, “Why can’t I just look?” I heard God’s voice, “You just can’t.” I accepted that answer and remained sober. That was my Third Step.

I was sober about one year before I summoned enough nerve to ask someone to be my sponsor. He was really busy but he accepted me as a sponsee because he realized that it took a lot of effort on my part to ask. I called him on the phone about once a month. He never asked me to do anything—like work the Steps.

I was sober about two and a half years when someone offered to find a Step sponsor for me. My new sponsor was like a drill sergeant. He pushed me to work the Steps. He gave me one week to do my Fourth Step. It took me two weeks to do it and then I gave him my Fifth Step. He asked me to make three program phone calls a day, which I did. I experienced a great deal of growth with that sponsor.

At a meeting when I shared, no one could question me. When I called people on the phone, they would ask me questions. When they questioned me, it forced me to think. I started to understand what was wrong with me.

As I started to understand myself, I started to become emotionally sober. At that point I started to work the Steps in my daily routine. I hardly ever talked to my cousins, because I felt ashamed of my life. Making program phone calls made it easier to call my cousins. When I wasn’t sober, I ran away or avoided problems and responsibility. When I started to grow, I grudgingly accepted my shortcomings and started to deal with them more positively.

I became involved with my intergroup and would accept responsibilities such as planning a holiday party or the one-day conference. I needed people to help; I needed them to help me. It took a lot of crying to my sponsor for me to accept that the help will come, but not necessarily at the moment I want it.

Doing service in SA has enabled me to volunteer at work when we have our annual holiday party. Where I attend religious services, I help out by handing out books, and preparing meals for some of the ceremonies.

One of the nicest gifts of the program is that I can finally accept a compliment. In the past if someone in my neighborhood mentioned that I was a nice man and would make a good husband, I would wonder how she could possibly see anything good in me. I would become angry and depressed about what she had said to me. All I would think about was all the little things I do wrong.

I answered a personal ad and it was someone I had gone on a date with once. She was in another Twelve-Step program and knew I was in SA. She was not interested in me. She was looking for someone who could meet her exact specifications. When I told my sister that this woman was not interested in me, my sister answered, “She’s passing up someone good.” I could accept what she said as a compliment and agree that I have changed for the better.