I have been a sexaholic since early childhood. Since that time I have used sexual stimulation to mask the emptiness in my life. From the very outset it became an addiction - compulsive and progressive. My brain is wired now to expect sexual stimulation.
Four of us get together every Tuesday morning for an SA meeting. We are from four different ethnic backgrounds, working near the US-Mexico border.
Flanders (the northern part of Belgium) and the Netherlands share the same language: Dutch. The difference is like the difference between UK and US English. Same language, but a different pronunciation and some words are different, but well understood by the others.
I was 17 years old when I moved to the US. I was already a sexaholic back then, I just didn’t know it. I was one of the lucky kids who had parents that granted me the opportunity to study abroad. After only 3 years of zero limits, I ended up hitting rock bottom.
A few months back the opportunity came up to help to translate and diffuse our daily reading from ‘The Real Connection’ via WhatsApp into French. My mother tongue is English and I live in Nice in the south of France. I am seven and a half months sober, although I’ve known SA for between 25 and 30 years.
Over three sober decades in SA there have been quite a few pieces of “bad news” for me as a recovering sexaholic. They all arise, like my entire program, from my experience, strength, and hope:
One of the most effective Practical Tools is HUMOR. Recently a sexaholic had a severe car accident. He had followed his sponsor’s suggestion to always look at his feet when he saw something that might trigger him.
I had many friends, a loving family and a caring wife. But all this was not enough. I wanted others to see that I was confident and knowledgeable. Wanting people to only see what I wanted them to see. Yet in the quiet moments I felt alone. My thoughts and actions of lust separated me from those relationships.
I’ve physically acted out in my sleep. An old-timer who had the same problem suggested that I wear pants under my pajama pants. Acting on this suggestion has helped me avoid touching myself, providing as it does, an extra layer between myself and lust.
Not long ago, I did it: I put a Desire chip in my mouth. And no, it didn’t melt.
