I’m Mark, a sexaholic, and I’ve been sexually sober since April 27, 2002. I would like to share about the disease of sexaholism in my life—but mostly I would like to share about the solution I’ve found in SA. And I would like to tell my story by walking through the Steps.

I’ll begin by sharing some of my Step One experiences. Most of my acting out has been of a solitary type. My acting out behaviors included fantasy, masturbation, viewing pornography, and using non-pornographic materials for pornographic purposes. The last item issue became quite common for me.

I began acting out with myself sexually as a young teen. In the early stages, I was a periodic. I would try to be good and I’d stop my behavior for days or weeks at a time. But by the time I went through my last binge, I was approaching what AA calls “the chronic state.” I was losing control.

In 1994, I worked through the Steps for the first time in another Twelve Step fellowship. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my first Step Eight list (besides a few relatives) consisted primarily of ex-girlfriends. After coming to SA I realized that my first Eighth and Ninth Step had been the result of my sexaholic behaviors for the previous 20 to 35 years.

After another round of Step work in 1996, again in another fellowship, I found more sexaholic behavior prior to finding these rooms. I felt better after I got those things on paper and shared them with a sponsor. I knew that I needed to deal with my sexual behaviors. But just doing Step work on the side in another fellowship wasn’t enough, because I could not stay sober. Today I understand that sexaholism is my main problem and not a side issue. This is the reason that I need to continue to participate fully in SA—regardless of the length of my SA sobriety.

My last acting out binge—which involved computer use and sex with myself—lasted from October 2001 to April 2002. On April 28, 2002, my then-wife found my Internet porn trail on our home computer, and she confronted me. Prior to that day, no one knew what I was doing on the Internet. But when my wife found evidence, this was a new low point for our marriage.

My wife confronted me on a weekend, and I started attending meetings of another S-fellowship the very next day. I attended my first SA meeting on May 4, 2002. It was the Friday men’s SA meeting at a local hospital, and that quickly became my home group. In the first few years of my SA recovery, I also attended a Wednesday Step-writing meeting and a Tuesday night topic meeting. Attending multiple meetings per week helped me then, and I still feel that attending two to three meetings a week works much better for me than just one.

When I got sober, my wife and I had been married for seven years, and we had adopted children two years before. After my wife discovered my acting out—even though I got sober right away—she was traumatized, and I knew that our marriage was in trouble. I also knew that I could keep going to meetings and could be sober for myself. I liked the way that that felt, so I kept going to meetings.

My earliest recollection of lust was when I was about 10 years old. My mom dropped me off at my grandmother’s house one morning, and I sat on the couch with her all morning while we watched TV. I remember a particular commercial that repeated four or five times.

Every time I watched the commercial, I experienced strong feelings toward the actress in it. I was transported into an overwhelming sexual fantasy experience. Today I know that those “feelings” were the obsession to lust, but I did not know that at the time. I had not yet discovered masturbation—this was just something that happened in my brain. But I’ll never forget how I felt at that moment; it changed my whole perception of life.

I’m a native of San Diego and the oldest of five children. I grew up with a caring mother and did fairly well in school. My father died of lung cancer just before I turned 10. As a result, I have some father issues, and it was difficult for me to ask a man to sponsor me at first. I was in the rooms of SA for 10 months before I asked a man to sponsor me.

I survived at first by using my sponsor from another Twelve Step program to hear my SA Steps. I also used the men’s meeting and Step-study meeting to work my SA Steps. In the Step meeting, we would share our Steps during the meeting. At the men’s meeting, we would read Steps afterward. So I was basically sponsored by committee in those days.

I also met many long-timers in those meetings. At my first SA meeting, I met two men who each had over 10 years of SA sobriety. I was ready for what they had to share, and they helped me a lot. I got lots of feedback from them and from other members, and that made a difference in my early recovery.

In my first years of sobriety, I clung to the message that “sex was indeed optional” (SA 61). Before SA, I had never gotten that message. Instead, I heard messages that sex was mandatory; that my manhood was at stake if sexuality was not part of my life. Today, I’m still digesting the message that sex is optional.

Two years into sobriety, my wife and I bought a house, and—after being a stay-at-home-dad for eight years—I began working part time in 2008. At the time, our kids were finishing middle school and going into high school. In January 2009 (my seventh year of sobriety), my wife informed me that the marriage was over. She moved out six weeks later, leaving the boys with me.

I was blessed with SA sobriety for the last six-and-a-half years of our marriage. Through all of the divorce process (from early 2009 until September 2010), I was able to remain sober as a single SA. Today I know that I was able to survive the divorce largely because I went through it sexually sober.

The divorce was particularly hard on our children. When my oldest son was 15, he was put on probation for breaking the law. He’s 18 now, and he recently got off of probation. He also got his GED, a driver’s license, and a job—and he moved out. He’s beginning to move in the right direction and I have a lot of joy about that. My younger son is 17 and a senior in high school, and he still has similar struggles.

SA sobriety has been a lifesaver for me as a single SA member. I believe that being sexually sober has given me the strength to deal with my sons, my own program of recovery, and life on life’s terms. For me, this has meant raising two boys and dealing with therapists, probation officers, and juvenile court judges; getting unpleasant calls from teachers and principals; and having numerous contacts with law enforcement. This has not been easy. But in the midst of it all, I’m grateful for SA. SA enabled me to get through the extremely difficult divorce experience, which could have been magnitudes worse without my own sexual sobriety.

Step Two was a bit of a struggle for me at first, but my sense of trust in a Higher Power has progressed over time. I can’t tell you much about my experience of God, but I know that trusting the SA program and working the Twelve Steps works. I’ve found that praying for guidance is an action that changes my attitude, and change yields benefits. Additionally, praying and “coming to believe” that a Power greater than myself can restore me to sanity does lead to much greater degrees of sanity and serenity.

Step Three has also been a process for me. I was raised in a religious home, and I thought I could manage my life based on the quest for virtue. I tried to be good, and in some ways I always was good. But today I know that I’m a pretty good guy who has a terrible problem: the problem of sexaholism.

I cannot lust like a gentleman. I like the way it’s put in “A Personal Story”: “What was it like? I hope I never forget, for if I do I’m liable to go right back out there and think I can lust like a gentleman again. You see I’m a sexaholic, a recovering sex drunk. That’s like an alcoholic, only the drug is sexual lust instead of booze” (SA 9). That was me—guilty as charged. Today, I’m grateful for those words. I didn’t know when I walked into SA that I really had no option but to stop, for my own sanity.

Another crucial White Book passage for me regarding Step Three is “The Third Option”: “Before finally giving up, we had tried one or the other of two options: On the one hand, we expressed our obsession by acting it out. On the other hand, we tried suppressing it by drinking, drugging, eating, or by fighting it with white-knuckle willpower.… We never knew there was another option—surrender. What a beautiful liberating word it has become to those of us who do it!” (SA 84)

In spite of my religious upbringing, I really had just bounced back and forth between suppressing my lust and indulging in it. There was no third option. There had been times when I abstained, but that was all based on self-will. I was “white-knuckling” it. The phrase “surrender was killing the obsession” (SA 204) still rings true for me today.

Some of my surrenders are still quite imperfect, but at times my surrenders feel clean, and I feel free. Surrendering is a skill; I just have to practice it—over and over again. That means that I must surrender lust daily, or sometimes more than once a day. Sometimes this works, and it’s magnificent. Other times, there’s still too much self-will in my surrender—my surrender is half-hearted—and I have to go back and surrender again. That’s okay, I just I have to keep at it.

Turning my will and my life over to God means turning over the right to lust. One shorthand Step Three prayer that works for me in the moment of temptation is this: “God bless her and God help me. I’m a sexaholic and I need help right now.”

Another thing that has helped is something I’ve heard from other program members: When I’m tempted to objectify a woman for my own sexual gratification—for the sake of fantasy or obsession to lust—I try to remember that she’s someone’s daughter, and maybe someone’s wife or mother—a person with other family ties, talents and feelings, a mind of her own, and an entire history. She is not an object.

I’ve done many Fourth Step inventories, but the one that stands out for me is the inventory I did on my marriage. We’d been married almost 15 years when it ended. The divorce was quite painful for me, but I realize today that the inventory was crucial to my staying sober and moving forward in SA recovery.

I realized at the time that I was grieving. I experienced a profound sense of loss. I used some other, non-SA materials to do even more writing. There were just a lot of feelings and I had to get them out. I’ve done a dozen inventories in SA, but I’ve never taken as much time to do an inventory as this one, mostly because it was so emotionally heavy. Later on I made direct amends to my wife based on the inventory.

Regarding Steps Six and Seven, in my early days of SA, I heard an SA speaker on a cassette tape share something that helped me immensely. He said that when he checked in with his sponsor, he would say, “I’m fine,” but his cats and dogs knew different. As it says in SA, “the … emotional state of my wife, children, cats, and doorways are the truest indicators of the real me” (154).

When my wife left us, my 17-year-old son was really struggling, so we adopted a dog. I cannot overestimate the therapeutic value of that dog—for all of us but mostly for my younger son. He’s a great dog, but he’s really sensitive. He’s like a conduit—he picks up the emotions of people in the room. So if I hang up the phone after a check-in call and stomp into the living room—and the dog runs out of the living room—then I must ask myself, “Was I stomping my feet? Was I talking to myself in anger again?” My dog makes me aware of my behavior.

I have a long list of defects. I’ve worked on that list, but anger and resentment are still at the top. If this were “Resentaholics Anonymous,” I don’t think I’d be sober for more than one day at a time. This is a weak spot for me, but I’m consoled by the thought in the White Book that “Recovery is a slow process” (SA 66). As a person who tends to be impatient, I need to remember that recovery is a long, slow process—and I’m making progress with the character defect of resentment.

I’ve worked Steps Eight, Nine, and Ten many times. In 2003, one year after becoming sober in SA, I made a formal Ninth Step amends to my wife. She received my amends, and I’m grateful for that. In 2011, based on my emotional inventory of my part in the marriage, I made additional amends to her. I was quite nervous about making these amends. However, my wife had worked her own inventory and previously made formal Step Nine amends to me, and that helped me feel calmer. In the end, my amends were almost anti-climactic; they took all of two minutes.

I continue to use Step Ten to make amends as necessary. I need to admit when I’m wrong. Some of those things have made their way back up to Steps Eight and Nine, and I’m grateful today that Steps Eight, Nine, and Ten had worked in the marriage before it ended. For a 15-year marriage that was not entirely manageable, I’m grateful that I got to the end of the amends list.

In my Step Eleven practice, I put as much focus as I can on the second half of the Step: “…praying only for the knowledge of God’s will for me and the power to carry that out.” One of the best ways to keep facing the right direction is to ask my Higher Power for His will for me daily. The way this makes sense to me is this: If I’ve admitted that my life is unmanageable, then I really need to ask God for help. It doesn’t make sense for me not to ask for help. Sometimes I just break it down to, “What do you want me to do today? Show me how to proceed with Your will for me.”

I would like to end by sharing a Twelfth Step story. I call it my “personal freedom” story. I had applied for a job with an agency, and I interviewed with the director the same day. I didn’t disclose my SA identity on the application, but I identified two of my references as Twelve Step Sponsors. I know that the employer called at least one of them.

For my second interview, I met with the director and two managers of the agency. One of the managers asked me, “Some of our clients are registered sex offenders. How would you feel about working with registered sex offenders?” For a moment, time slowed down in my brain. I had a decision to make: I could answer this safely and diplomatically, or I could admit who I am. I realized that, because of the freedom I’ve experienced from being sexually sober in SA, my Higher Power was calling for me to share with these people.

I knew there was a risk; I had not been hired to do anything yet. But I said, “You know I stated on my application that I’m part of a Twelve Step program? It’s called Sexaholics Anonymous. I had a terrible problem with pornography and I needed help, so in 2002, I started attending meetings, and I’ve been sober ever since. This program works very well for me, and what I understand my problem to be is an obsession to lust. In that sense, I’m no different from a registered sex offender. The only difference is that those people got arrested for their acting out and I didn’t.”

I knew I was taking a risk, but deep down, I knew in an instant that this was an appropriate disclosure—and in the end I was offered a job.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my story with the fellowship today. I believe that telling my story enhances my chances for continued sobriety for this 24 hours. I’m also grateful for the freedom from the obsession to lust. I’m even beginning to feel “happy, and joyous, and free” (AA 133). Being sexually sober gives me the confidence to be more available to others and more useful to my Higher Power. The paradox is that by admitting my powerlessness over lust, I’ve been blessed with the power to live a full life.