I had just turned 21 when I entered the SA fellowship. I immediately knew SA was the program for me but I didn’t feel comfortable in the local fellowship since everyone else was at least twice my age.
My name is José and I am a recovering sexaholic. I am only 25 years old and I joined SA when I was 19. Many ask me how I joined the fellowship so young and if I was really sure that I was a sexaholic. And my answer is always, “The fact that masturbation and lustful thoughts made me suffer so much and I wasn’t able to get out of it, said enough about my condition.”
My first memories are of fear, resentment and separation. Lust first came on the scene when I was four, my mother moved with us to a foreign country without my father. During my first few months in this new place I was sexually abused by kids several years older than myself. I was terrified anybody would find out, I was sure it was my fault and I felt guilty for enjoying the physical aspect and attention.
I went back to my home group and shared what had happened. I had slipped and now it was time to face the dreaded walk back into the rooms and face the fellows I had been lying to for many years. The group was welcoming and supportive, I heard supportive and encouraging words like “It’s OK, it’s progressive victory” and “Keep coming back.”
Lust and acting out had poisoned my soul from early teenhood. A double track had developed in me: On the one hand, a deep desire for a true love, a loving union, for family life, house and kids; on the other hand, an ill and poisoned desire to right away have sex with women, without any sense for personal relation, love or respect.
Like most people in SA, I have had to make adjustments in the way I practice my program routine. I had been a regular at the noon meeting near where I worked. With four meetings a week, it offered me a safe haven where I could finally face myself and what better way to break up the work day. I have to admit, I really depended on going there.
Happy and joyous freedom for me began nearly 13 years ago when the lust obsession was removed from my life. I had become a slave to uncontrollable urges, beginning about 25 years earlier and slowly worsening. Somewhere along the way, I crossed an invisible line into insane thinking and behavior.
It works if you work it! It’s a simple quote. We repeat it at every meeting. Just as simple is the requirement for membership: a desire to stop lusting and become sexually sober. But while these are simple truisms, living them is not easy. To stay sober in the face of day to day challenges and to deepen my recovery means I have to work the Steps, practice the tools of recovery, do service for others and take regular guidance from my sponsor.
Below is what I shared with a lady in the fellowship who felt attracted to a man in a mixed meeting:
Five old-timers shared their tools of using their body to overcome their lust temptations:
