The first good feeling that I can recall in life was when I was five years old and my father had given me a bottle of Rolling Rock beer. I felt the effect of the alcohol as I sat drinking in a corner. Looking across the room at my father, I was just full of love for him. It was a wonderful feeling.
Sexual lust is just one face of the multi-dimensional cube of lust. The word "lust" cannot be confined to a sexual aspect only, as lust is merely a strong urge that governs attitudes. I cannot deny that the concept of lust itself is complex, confusing, and perplexing. How can a limited human encompass what is considered larger and broader? Humans are three-dimensional beings living in a four-dimensional world, while lust is simply a "multi-dimensional" entity.
Three years ago I was in pain. It was the pain of slavery to lust which was causing me deep trouble and threatening to ruin my entire life. The pain brought me into the SA fellowship. Thanks to the SA fellowship, and to my sponsor and through working the SA program, my deep trouble gradually turned into a blessing—into a life that is clean and sober. Sanity returned and I found a true connection with God. I don’t think I would ever have sought God so actively but for the pain and the brokenness that lust had caused me. This amazed me. What had seemed to me my worst misfortune turned out to be my greatest blessing. Isn’t that a miracle?
While participating in a Twelve-Step workshop last weekend, I had the opportunity to share my experience, strength, and hope on the topic of forgiveness. After the workshop, I was asked to write down my share for the ESSAY magazine, which follows here:
Our White Book says, “We saw that our problem was threefold: physical, emotional, and spiritual. Healing had to come about in all three” (SA 204). I have found it helpful to think of four areas: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
Before joining SA I tried so many times to stop acting out but nothing worked for me, so I used to tell myself that there was no recovery when I heard stories about people who were in recovery. I thought of it as nothing!
My sponsor used to say to me, “Why Feed the Wolf? Let It Starve,” referring to the lust residing in my brain. At first, I partially agreed with him. Deep down, though, I believed that this lust was integral to my character, to who I am, even though I knew that it was killing me, killing my soul. I struggled with the idea of letting it starve. I associated hunger with food and believed that, if I were hungry, the only solution was to eat; calling a fellow, attending a meeting, or praying to alleviate the feeling of hunger won’t put food in my belly. Likewise, I projected that only acting out could feed my lust hunger. I eventually realized that this perspective is false, but it took me a couple of years to truly grasp it.
This article is about relapse prevention. However, deep down inside of me, I am uncomfortable writing about this. I feel relapse prevention applies to people who are sober. It is about how to prevent people from relapsing once they get sober. My belief is that many people do not get sober although they think they are sober. How can I make such a statement?
My home group is in St. Petersburg, Russia, but one year ago I moved to Hanoi, Vietnam, where there are few other recovering sexaholics. My recovery started the day I came to an SA meeting. Since that day my life has changed a lot, and it is still changing. I am grateful for everything, past, present, and future. My life is happening exactly as the God of my understanding wants, so I accept everything life brings to me. I want to live this life.
I’ve been a sexaholic my whole life, and it’s the most important fact in my life. I’ve other addictions and other Fellowships also. Sexaholism is not the one which would kill me quickest, as the saying goes, but it is the major focus of my life in recovery, being the most all-encompassing and all-pervasive of them.
