I started attending SA meetings regularly in October 2006, when I was 21. I didn’t know very much about recovery or the Twelve Steps, but I knew I needed help for my sexual thinking and behavior. I had known for some years that I had a problem with sex. I had been in a relationship in high school and became uncomfortable with the things my girlfriend and I were doing sexually. My conscious mind told me that what I was doing was wrong. I told my girlfriend that I was uncomfortable and that I wanted to stop. She said okay. About a week later I initiated sex with her. Confused, but determined, I told her once again that I was not comfortable with our sexual behavior and wanted to stop. Again, she said okay, and again I initiated sexual contact within a short period. After a third round of this I became baffled by my inability to stop doing something that made me feel bad about myself and that I truly wanted to stop doing. Unable to stop, I told myself it wasn’t really a big deal and continued with the behavior, though I still experienced guilt every time. I was relieved when the relationship ended, because I thought I would be able to start my next relationship on the right foot.

No such luck. The old patterns reappeared almost immediately with the next person I met (the woman who would become my wife). While for a time I was able to keep from crossing an arbitrary physical boundary around sex, I was still driven by lust and still experienced the consequences of my lust-based behavior. This included having to take painkillers on a regular basis to numb the physical discomfort of becoming very aroused without ever having an orgasm. Talk about insanity!

After my wife and I had been married for a few months, I became overwhelmed with guilt over my lust. I had never realized that lust was a problem. I always thought it was just my sexual behavior that bothered me. But when I found myself continuing to lust after other women after committing myself to my wife, I couldn’t take it. I did what the White Book specifically tells us not to do (SA 3)—I spilled my guts to my wife about my problem. She was angry and hurt, and I knew I needed to find help.

The first meetings I attended were in another S-fellowship, where members did not talk about surrendering lust or working the Steps. So although I was not acting out, I did not have recovery. After a few months of going to meetings, I started to get depressed. I experienced several brief but very painful depressions over a period of about six months. I was in bad shape. I was angry at my wife, and was convinced that leaving her would fix me. I hated myself, though I didn’t realize it at the time. At one point I had thoughts of suicide, something I never thought I would experience. One afternoon, in August of 2007, I sat in my kitchen crying, in the grips of another depression. I said to my wife, “I don’t know what to do anymore. Something’s wrong with me and I don’t know how to fix it.”

Even though I had hit bottom and was attending meetings regularly, I still struggled to accept that I was a sexaholic. The others I met in the program (most of whom were twice my age) had suffered a lot more it seemed and had experienced much greater consequences than I had. A couple of people openly questioned whether I belonged in the program. After all, I was still married, still had my job, and had never been arrested. I had even maintained a modicum of sobriety while dating my wife. Didn’t this prove I wasn’t truly sexaholic? All I knew was that I couldn’t control my sexual thinking and behavior. I also knew the misery I experienced when I did stop for a time. I needed help, and SA was there.

After hitting my bottom in August, I started working the Twelve Steps in earnest. I went to a few regional SA conferences and met many recovering sexaholics who had what I wanted: sobriety and peace of mind. I got their phone numbers and began calling them, learning how they worked the program. One of these people told me to pray whenever I started to obsess about something. “Just repeat the prayer over and over in your head,” he told me. That was a very useful tool early in my recovery, and I still use it today when I start to get crazy. More than anything though, it was working the Steps that changed my life from the inside out. The Steps, by connecting me with a Power greater than myself, have brought peace of mind, healing in my relationships (especially with my wife), and a way of life that really works.

I used to resent it when people told me I was lucky to be in the program at my age, because it reminded me that I was different and didn’t belong (or so I thought). Today, I am incredibly grateful to have found SA as a young person. I have the opportunity to raise my future children in a healthy environment, to build loving relationships with my parents (and even my grandparents), and to pursue worthy goals that otherwise would have been obscured or distorted by sexaholism. What a gift SA has given me!