IN THE CURRENT MAGAZINE

I acted out. I practiced hard at it. I started at a young age. I lived my life in fear and fantasy. I did not know how to live in the real world. I wanted to be any place but “here.” Fantasy would take me over “there.” I acted out to feel better; I liked it, and I pursued it to the gates of insanity and death.

What if you never had to act out sexually again?

I’ve learned in recovery that sexual sobriety is a gift, granted by God as I understand Him. Sobriety is not something I can control, any more than I can control lust.

I was sitting on my front porch yesterday, enjoying the beauty of God’s world around me. There are lots of trees, birds, squirrels, and even an occasional deer to help me focus on the serenity of nature.

Before recovery I would go to any lengths to get my way. I would lie, cheat, steal and manipulate to get what I thought I needed. I was even willing to work hard to get my desired outcome. But once I got what I wanted, I soon began to want something else.

In early recovery I was terrified of my lust. It led me to cause great harm in my life, destroyed my career, nearly destroyed my family, caused a great deal of public shame and embarrassment for my wife and me, and cost a lot of money. I found that when lust came up, my fear made me fight lust, and that made the lust stronger.

Lust is the driving force behind my addiction, and if I allow myself to lust, then I will act out, sooner or later. When I consciously harbor lust, even in small amounts, it’s the same as an alcoholic taking a drink.

The other night I had a dream which stripped my lust of its pastel pink and purple euphemisms. I have avoided the word lust in my litany—preferring to tell myself that I crave “an affair of the heart”—further dressed up by such phrases as “out of my deep loneliness and chronic disconnection from others, I have sought soul mates, persons to join me in (at worst) the warmth of romantic fervor.”

I can now see how my sexaholism isolated me from family, friends, workers, and employers in the past. I found fault with them in my “terminal uniqueness.” Nobody had a story like mine; therefore, I could not relate to anyone else. In the end, all I had was my sexaholism.

Recently I became acquainted with a new sponsee. I realized early on that he had serious problems: unfaithfulness to his spouse, involvement with prostitutes, and other faults which I too had experienced before entering recovery and working the Steps.