IN THE CURRENT MAGAZINE

In my mid-forties I found myself full of fear, uncertainty, and loneliness—not knowing why my life did not have the shades of color I saw in nature, the sunsets, the immensity of the flowers. I felt that I did not belong—that perhaps my Higher Power had made a mistake. Lust had always been there, but at a very high cost.

I’m a sexaholic from Luxembourg, sober since May 31, 2004. My first SA meeting was at a convention in Germany in 1995. I was in a lot of pain and went after one of the meetings to one of the women and asked her to be my sponsor. She agreed.

I found out when I started to sober up and get into recovery that part of not lusting required keeping physical boundaries. In my active addiction, I did not pay attention to this and had no idea that there are healthy boundaries. For me, this means no intimate hugging with men and women and making sure I have enough space around me to stand or sit.

A lust drunk was stranded on a desert island with no lust hits or any other way of escaping his loneliness. One day he saw an old brown bottle washed up on the strand. He picked it up, dusted it off and at once, a genie appeared. “For joy, you have freed me!” cried the genie. “Ten thousand years I have spent in that bottle. For your pains, young man, I will gladly grant you three wishes for freeing me.”

I am a gratefully recovering sexaholic living in California. My sobriety date is November 26, 2009. At my first SA meeting, there was one other woman in the room who had joined SA four months before. She became my first SA sponsor.

I am a female lust addict, my home group is in Munich, and I am grateful for 11 years and 4 month sobriety. I am grateful for the pioneers of the 12 step groups and proud to be part of it. I am especially grateful for Roy and his wife Iris, who recently passed away.

Hello, my name is Ilona and I am a sexaholic. My sobriety date is January 14, 2016. When I walked into SA I was the only female in the room. This was expected, if at first, unsettling. I discussed this with my sponsor. She told me “What better way for your recovery being in a room of recovering men and learning to relate to them non-sexually?”

Practicing healthy interactions in SA has been a passion of mine. I have known near my entire life that I am not good at relationships. My longing to find how to be relationally “normal” has been a lifelong seeking.

I started in SA as a young, widowed, single mom in June 2005. At that time there were three other women in my homegroup. Within a year, they were gone. My sponsor was one of them. She decided to go back out and try some more controlled lusting, my grand-sponsor moved, and the other woman quit coming because of health reasons.

It was hard to have fun because I was so sensitive. When I came in, I didn’t know I was sensitive. I thought everyone else had problems and they were bothering me. I also thought everyone else should figure out in advance what would bother me (in order to avoid doing so). I was like a crab without shell, or an animal without skin ... just “walking sensitivity.”