[Excerpts from the sharing at the Sunday morning joint SA/S-Anon Panel on Spirituality, Portland, Oregon International Convention, July 10, 1994]

My name is Gordon and I’m a sexaholic. My whole life was a spiritual program, but I didn’t know it, and I didn’t start growing until I had a spiritual experience, and started learning from my mistakes. In 1960 my Daddy passed away and I figured he died of a broken heart, and I couldn’t handle it, and I ended up three times in the strong room of the Marine Hospital. I was drowning it with alcohol, and the third time they wound up sending me to the nuthouse. The spiritual experience there was that all they had to do was put me in a ward with a bunch of people who didn’t know one end from another, and I could see that I was on a pity pot feeling sorry for myself.

I got into the program, and I can look back on my Daddy’s death and see that he didn’t die of a broken heart, he died because he retired and quit riding his bicycle, so I have a bicycle and I ride it now. It’s a learning experience.

Life is a growing experience. I’m here now, but I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but as long as I can learn to enjoy today, I’m all right. Any time I got into a jam, instead of having a spiritual experience, I wound up changing my attitude. Like I wound up in the strong room, and the psychiatrist told me “find yourself a good girl. You’re not going to find yourself a good girl in a beer joint.” And I said to him “I’m not looking for a good girl, she has to be bad or I won’t have nothing to do with her.” [Laughter] And he said, “Well, you better change your attitude or you’re going to end up right back here.” So I made all the bad girls good and I had a lot of fun doing it, but it was the wrong course. [Laughter] I sobered up July 10, 1978, and they asked me if I would be willing to bury my mother. And that was the most intelligent question anyone ever asked me, because all my core belief systems came from my mother. Come to find out that she was God. That’s why I couldn’t accept God. So I got that out of the way.

In Dec. of ’92 I lost the spirituality of the program. I was at a conference, and I started bawling and I felt like I was on the outside looking in, and I felt miserable. I was scared to drive through Houston. I called the crisis line and I checked into the hospital. The people knew about my celibacy, and the advice I got from some people in another program was to get off the celibacy kick, and I called the crisis line. I told them all my past history, and they put me on anti-depressant drugs. I didn’t want them, but I wanted to stay alive. In March they sent me to have a brain scan, and found out I had a brain tumor the size of a golf ball, and they operated and removed it. But I had to get rid of that before I could get the “Good morning, God” back. But if I had been satisfied with the anti-depressant drugs they gave me, I would be dead now. But I wasn’t happy without that “Good morning, God.” And I kept complaining and kept complaining. But it taught me to never be judgmental of another person, because he might have a brain tumor!

God has removed the lust from my mind. I don’t know how it happened, but if lust comes in now, it’s because I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing.