I Needed to Change

At the beginning of my plunge to the bottom, everything looked perfect on the outside. I was well educated, successful in business, had a lovely family, traveled frequently on business. It seemed like life was going well. My inner reality was somewhat different. Business travel presented an ideal opportunity to act out of my lustful fantasies. Little did my wife, my children, my parents, or my colleagues know how out of control my life really was. On one trip, after a successful day’s business, I spent the evening in a sex cinema acting out with a street prostitute. I was overwhelmed with guilt and shame. When I returned from my trip, I decided to reveal my double life to my wife. That ended our eleven-year marriage. For the next ten months, my life was out of control, bouncing between denial, hope, and despair.

It was very difficult to find help for my disease pre-internet days. I sought desperately to discover what was wrong, finally finding a newspaper article that referred to sexual addiction. In 1995 I went to my first SA meeting in West Yorkshire, United Kingdom.

Going Nowhere Successfully

During the next twenty years I attended SA meetings regularly, changed my job, got promoted, moved several times, remarried, and relocated to Germany for my job. During this time I slipped on many occasions, had a chain of sponsors in different countries, went to conventions, and occasionally even had a sponsee. I managed to surrender my worst acting out behaviors, but not masturbation, fantasy and pornography. My many relapses had a lot to do with my work, alcohol, traveling, and missing SA meetings — not to mention high pressure professional commitments.

Despite all my efforts I was returning to some of the acting out behaviors I thought I had successfully quit years earlier. My sponsor told me that after twenty years of slipping, I needed to change something significant in my life if I was ever to get into true recovery.

My Decision to Go to Nashville

I prayed regularly for God’s guidance and to accept His difficult advice. He showed me that I should leave my job. It was scary leaving the financial security of twenty years with the same company, but my SA group friends affirmed that this was the correct course for me. I somehow knew that I needed to go to Nashville after I finished my job to help me to get sober and to get through the withdrawal from work.

I called a long-time sober member of the Nashville fellowship, expecting suggestions for a U.S. sponsor who would help me plan my trip. He told me just to come, that the group would help me get a sponsor when I arrived. He also said, “It will work better if you’re sober when you get here.”

90 Days in Nashville

I was removed from my job, my wife, and the stresses of daily life. I literally had no distractions at all. For the previous twenty years I had switched my hope from religious-based solutions to SA-based solutions, back and forth. Now I gave the SA fellowship my undivided commitment. At my second meeting, I asked the speaker to sponsor me. I completely identified with his story and his reluctance to reach out to his sponsor and to other members.

I started the Steps from the beginning as if I had never worked them. SA became my life. I knew that if I could not find recovery in Nashville, there was no hope. The alternative was a life of addiction leading to total despair.

For many weeks I attended three meetings daily. I NEVER did more than two meetings in a week back home. My prerequisite for sobriety was to try NOT to lust. What I discovered was that CONNECTION was my basis for sobriety. It came through my bum being on a seat in meetings. It also came through relationship and fellowship with other members and through laughter. If I worked on CONNECTION, God would take care of sobriety.

I called my sponsor and two other members daily, although I didn’t want to. Despite my fear of reaching out, it was more manageable to realize that I only needed five or six sober people to call to stay connected. I blamed my isolation on being in a German-speaking group; I learned that reluctance was part of me.

I had felt more and more like a bad person with each slip in the last 20 years. Now, I was somehow different. The Doctor’s Opinion tells me that I have a disease. I am not a bad person trying to be good; I am a sick person trying to get well.

I shared my written First Step with the group in a breakout meeting; I gave myself fully to the Fellowship. I found new meaning in the phrase, “We hung onto our old ideas and the result was nil, until we let go absolutely.” I thought my old ideas referred to acting out, but I discovered that I was burdened with all sorts of old ideas that hindered me. Step Two revealed some especially unhelpful ideas about God. Willingness to give these up proved particularly helpful to work the remainder of the Twelve Steps. Two months later I was working Step Eight, beginning to sense my connection to God and others. As a result, I began experiencing more freedom from lustful thoughts and memories on a daily basis.

I suffered fear and trepidation leaving the nurturing environment of SA Nashville. I faced the prospect of “normal life” and unemployment. My wife, my Annonyme Sexaholiker group, and my church family all welcomed me home. I am now an active part of our two weekly local Bremen meetings plus a daily SA Telephone meeting. These are my lifelines as I begin the process of making my Ninth Step amends. God as I understand Him continues to be with me as I “trudge the road of happy destiny.”