I’m a lust drunk from England, sober for 20 years—since April 12, 1995—by the grace of God and the fellowship of SA. But my road to SA was a long one.

I was 42 years old when I first heard of sexual addiction. I had just been through the catastrophic collapse of a second marriage and a second career. In response to this, I had fled to a New Age community in the north of Scotland and was just about to dive headlong into career three and marriage three.

Then I was comprehensively Twelve-stepped by a couple who were visiting from London. They introduced me to the concept of sexual addiction. The impact of these two words on me was profound. My mind went into a spin. I had difficulty standing upright. Walking in a straight line was impossible.

They shared their experience of being “sex and love addicts” and introduced me to a novel concept: sexual sobriety. My sexual history up to this point had involved copious pornography, sex with self, promiscuity, adultery, using prostitutes, voyeurism, exhibitionism, romantic fantasy, sexual intrigue, and emotional affairs. So I identified and reluctantly made the commitment to four self-defined “bottom lines” (things I could not do and still call myself sober): no pornography, no masturbation, no sex outside of a committed relationship, and no relationship for the foreseeable future.

We started a meeting in the north of Scotland, and I began my Step work and went to just about any meeting in any fellowship I could find. In AA I got an AA Step sponsor who was willing to work with me. I uncovered experiences of childhood sexual abuse, went to the U.S. for six weeks of treatment, and participated in loads of therapy. And for four years, by the grace of God, I was sober.

By the end of my fourth year of sobriety, I had become something of an “S” fellowship guru. I knew everything there was to know about my ways of acting out and why I had become a sex addict. My recovery model was “find out who you are and be that person,” so I spent a lot of time in therapy. But in the end I found very little of any real worth. I parted company with my first sponsor and got myself ready for a relapse.

This disease is cunning, so it easily found the chink in my spiritual armor. I came to the conclusion that, after four years, it was time to let go of my fourth bottom line—no relationship for the foreseeable future. This then left me free to engage in a self-defined “committed relationship,” which, of course, I promptly did. Within a few months I was in the grip of an addictive relationship with a violent partner, and I was powerless to stop. 

After several failed attempts to set and maintain the necessary boundaries, I had the unwelcome insight that either I would have to change my sobriety definition to “no sex outside of marriage,” or I would remain in the clutches of my disease. I fought this idea at first, but finally, on April 12, 1995, I surrendered and made the commitment. The impact was immediate. I stepped onto solid ground and was able to set effective boundaries with my partner, end my acting out, and withdraw from the relationship with sobriety and serenity.

I moved from Scotland back to England 11 days later and rented a flat about five miles from where my three children were living with their mother and her new partner. And it was surely no coincidence that, two months later, I met a man who told me he belonged to a fellowship called Sexaholics Anonymous, and I learned that SA had a sobriety definition very like my own new one. I went to an SA convention and got an SA sponsor. 

My new sponsor was very impressed with my experience of “S” recovery and seemed to like the way I used him as an unpaid therapist. But I did not get well. I stayed sober but my physical and spiritual condition began to decline. I began losing weight. I look back on this now as my recovery rock bottom.

After I had shared my arrogant and rebellious mind at a second SA convention in London, a long-time sober SA member confronted me with the fact that I was, in his words, “on a different track.” I felt this much like a physical punch in the stomach. If I really was on a different track, then should I stay on it or jump onto to the SA track? It was at this crisis point that I truly joined the SA fellowship.

After that, a lot of things seemed to change quite rapidly. I switched to a structured plan of eating. I fired my sponsor-therapist and asked my confronter to sponsor me. I rejoined the church that I had abandoned 25 years previously. I came off sickness benefit and got my first job, after six years of unemployment. Finally, a major change occurred in my thoughts and attitudes, especially as these related to my former wife and our family. 

Although I had joined an anonymous fellowship for food addiction about a year after finding “S” recovery, complete surrender of my right to eat the way I wanted to seemed to be the key to my recovery around food. In the same way, I have found that complete surrender of my right to sexual activity on my own terms seems to have brought me into real sexual sobriety.

My new sponsor helped me to understand that his job was not to listen to my harrowing but beautifully presented “stuff.” His job was to share his experience, strength, and hope with me. My job was to listen and try to take the actions that he took, to see if that would also work for me. His model was not “Find out who you are and be that person,” but “Who I am is none of my business. I’m just here to serve.” I tried his model and it worked much better than mine.

I came to see that all my knowledge about sexual addiction and why I became a sex addict was actually unimportant. All I needed to know was that there is a proven reliable method by which I can arrest my addiction. Once I knew that, all I had to do was take the necessary actions, and recovery was assured.

Rejoining the church of my childhood was perhaps my biggest surrender of all. It was certainly my biggest fear but—as ever—such fears are the beacon light of my growth. Eventually, after a spiritual retreat at which I found my mind completely fed but my heart dying of thirst, I made another of those now-familiar surrenders. I decided to go to church the next Sunday—just park my brain at the door and go in. I stood when they stood, kneeled when they kneeled, sang when they sang, and I let God be God. Home at last!

As for the family, when I had abandoned my wife and children in 1990 for a sexually intriguing geographical cure in Scotland, I had no difficulty in blaming the whole business on my wife. She had made it clear that sex with me was off the menu, so I concluded that was the end of our marriage. In my subsequent struggle with the “no sex outside of marriage” issue, I finally saw the depth of my faithlessness and the bankruptcy of my ideas about commitment. For me today, the only true commitment is lifelong marriage, and that commitment does not end just because one partner says no to sexual activity.

Repetitive inventory work showed me how my wife and children had borne the brunt of my disease and that amends were due in full measure. Once again, a surrender was required as I came to realize that “full measure” meant rebuilding the family which I had earlier broken. This has not happened yet and may never happen, but through this particular wound I am being taught patience, forgiveness, constancy, and faithfulness—virtues so sadly lacking in this particular sexaholic.

For my first five years in “S” recovery, I did not have a regular job but I worked part-time in a spiritual community, cleaning floors and lavatories. This gave me time to do my Step work and go to therapy, meetings, treatment, etc. Initially I received a pension from my former business but when that ceased, I was classified as sick and began receiving sickness benefits. This had a slowly corrosive effect on me, and—by the time I had returned to England and found SA—I considered myself unemployable and unlikely ever to work again.

This attitude of helplessness and hopelessness undoubtedly contributed to my recovery rock bottom. Surrender came when I called a sober member of the fellowship who had recently been helped out of a similar hole and asked him to sponsor me back into work. He gave me some simple instructions which I carried out, and within two weeks I had a job. Eventually I found myself in a well-paid job specializing in e-commerce.

I have now been blessed with over 25 years of AA sobriety, 20 years of SA sobriety, and 16 years of abstinence from compulsive eating. I have an active spiritual life, and faithfully hold my family in love. This is a miracle due entirely to the grace of God. All I have done is work a program of recovery to the best of my ability.

I function best when I attend lots of meetings, and I live in an area where there are many, so I normally attend four SA meetings and two meetings of other fellowships every week. I prefer meetings that study fellowship literature, the Steps, and the Traditions because these help me to enlarge my spiritual life. I have also started several new SA meetings. I reckon it is much harder to act out when I’m the founder of a group!

I have an SA sponsor in the U.S. whom I ring every week. I do my best to tell him the things I would rather keep secret, and I act on his suggestions no matter what. I’ve discovered the weird fact that, even when my sponsor suggests something which seems to me to be quite questionable, if I do what he suggests it always works out, and often in an extraordinary way. At the moment he is helping me to make living amends to my former wife.

I have done a lot of hard, repetitive work on the Steps, attended scores of Step study meetings, and learnt several different ways of approaching the Steps. One method I was taught came from one of the original 100 members of AA. It produced the most profound and startling change in me, finally blowing away most of my old ideas.

Service has also helped me to stay sober. I have sponsored many SA members. My sponsorship did not always keep them sober, but it certainly helped me. I am reputed to be a bit of a hard liner, as I’m not anxious to preside over the destruction of human life. So, if I have not heard from a sponsee for a while, I consider myself fired. I’m always delighted to hear from a lost sponsee again, but then I like to know what will be different this time before giving it another try. I’ve held a number of different service positions at group, national, and international levels. I’ve experienced the shift from reluctant to glad server. This took time, but I just needed to practice harder! I hold a service appointment in nearly every meeting that I attend regularly.

I attend any conventions that are held in the UK and have also attended many overseas, including several in the U.S. At first, I disliked conventions. I felt quite self-conscious and uncomfortable. Later I found that getting involved with the organization really helped. Nowadays I really look forward to being with my SA buddies. I particularly enjoy the traditional entertainments on Saturday evening. The fellowship in the UK remains fairly small, but at each convention, we add up our collective years of sobriety. And I thank God that, every year, the total keeps on moving upwards.

So these are some of the things I do, but what really keeps me sober? I believe it is God’s grace. I’ve seen others do as much if not more than I do and still relapse. Somehow God’s grace is reaching me. This is a mystery and a miracle. I often receive phone calls from friends in the fellowship when my head is just beginning to go. Lust has such an immediate, toxic, and devastating effect on me that it now acts like permanent, portable aversion therapy. I have become an expert on street paving stones, and my favorite mantra, “I’m powerless, please God help me,” is now just as automatic as my rubbernecking used to be.

It seems to me that I am in danger of relapse as long as I have an addiction over which I will not admit powerlessness, a secret which I will not declare, a defect that I am unwilling to surrender, or an amend I am unwilling to make. So, in working the Steps, I do my best to overcome my denial and watch for these four pitfalls.

I am a sexaholic who is also powerless over food, nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, work, money, and power. I have done numerous inventories and now I have a growing sense of scraping the barrel to find anything as yet untold. When I got to Step Six, I was shocked to uncover a list of over 100 defects of character. Actually, I now thank God it was so many, otherwise I might have tried to deal with them myself! Today, I realize that this task is completely beyond me. All I can do is become willing to let go of my defects and then humbly ask God to remove them.

My experiences in making amends have been patchy. Things went poorly whenever I had a hidden agenda or when I was temporarily sponsorless and going it alone. On other occasions I’ve been able to make full amends, bring healing into the lives of others, and drop a huge burden of guilt. I sat on my father’s grave and had a talk with him. I pray for those on my grudge list and ask God to bring them all that is good. I’ve made restitution to former employers for theft. Today I’m on good terms with my brothers and sisters. They all came to my 50th belly button birthday in 1999. It was the first time we had been together in 14 years, and there was not one cross word.

Perhaps the biggest gap in my amends-making has been toward the many women who have been harmed by my sexual compulsivity. My usual amends to them is to stay out of their lives. In this area, I shall always need plenty of advice, monitoring, and support from my sponsor, as my disease still has an agenda of its own.

I have an extensive prayer life today. Through reading the spiritual classics, I’ve come to see that sexaholism is not confined to my generation. There are those who have trodden our path before—realizing their powerlessness over lust and finding redeeming power in God. The unfashionable virtue of chastity has become a real treasure in my life.

I retired from work five years ago. On the face of it there was no way that my pension could support this, but in fact it has been one of the most prosperous and rewarding periods of my life. I was able to throw myself into fulltime SA service. This has included representing the Europe and Middle-East Region as a General Assembly Delegate and even a short spell as a Trustee. I have run Step workshops for SAs in over 12 different countries, and helped the fellowship to flourish on four continents. Now, in my sixth year of retirement, I am trying to become more of “a nobody” in SA and attend more to the poor state of my soul (Step Eleven).

The last few lines are the most difficult to put into words. Through mists I am beginning to discern the extraordinary workings of a loving and merciful God, Who has shaped and ordered the life of just one lust addict. He began by giving me a romantic heart, always striving for high ideals. As I turned that nature toward lust, I grew up obsessed, isolated, and insatiable. Now, He has guided me into recovery and into a situation designed to show me His love, His power, and His way of life.

For over 20 years I have remained single, sober, and faithful to the mother of my children. I pray every day that God’s will—whatever that may be—will be done between and among us. There has been no miraculous reconciliation and no rebuilding of our broken marriage and family—yet. But last year my ex-wife separated from her partner, and just this week, she called me! I am glad that she still found me guarding the bridge which, one day, she may desire to cross.

I have also been tempted to remarry—temptations made stronger because I am free both in law and religion to do so. But I know that would not do, that this “good” would be the enemy of “the best.” The heart that God gave me still strives for its ideal and, in it, faith, hope and love live on. I expect that I shall continue living alone, unmarried, on guard and faithful unto death—yet I am strangely content.

Now that is a real miracle.