IN THE CURRENT MAGAZINE

My name is Debbie. I’m a recovering sexaholic, sober since November 1, 2006. Because of the fellowship of SA, I’ve learned to live happy, joyous, and free today, as described in the AA Big Book (AA 133).

My life has been a succession of moments, the next one always building on the results of this one, this one having resulted from the fruits of the last one, good or bad. In the past, I failed to understand the impact my decisions would have on my attitudes, habits, cravings, and expectations.

I’m a sexaholic, married to the man who wrote the previous story. My husband is serving time in prison for crimes he committed while active in his sexaholism. Our story is one of hope. We’ve been told that we will never be a family again because of society’s laws and judgments—but we choose to see our family differently.

Arriving in SA, all my powers spent, I entered a new world: a world where meetings, the White Book, the Twelve Steps of SA, a sponsor, and fellow sexaholics were already there waiting for me. Through these tools I received the gift of sobriety.

My sponsor once suggested that I look up Twelve Step words in a dictionary. That request unleashed my interest in recovery-related words and led me to create several drawings illustrating the Twelve Steps.

In September 2007, I lost 18 years of SA sobriety—or so I thought. Looking back, I see that I was hardly ever sober, not in my mind anyway. I had thought that all I needed to do was to not act out, and I had done that since 1989—a few months before joining SA.

It had been a while since I heard the song “From A Distance” on the radio. After hearing it last week, I can’t get the tune out of my mind!

Ever since I was eight years old, when I began looking though adult magazines, I was hooked. My life was filled with fantasy, masturbation, pornography, TV, videos, and trying to connect with girls. In my college years, alcohol and marijuana seemed to go well with my lust.

Early in my sobriety, I heard a member share that we will never be free from the temptation to lust, but we can gain progressive victory over it. I wasn’t comfortable with that statement for a long time. I wondered, “Can we never be free from the temptation?” Today I believe that, although we will never be cured, we can experience progressive freedom from temptation, just like progressive victory over lust.

Recently, I was challenged to write a gratitude list of 10 things that I am grateful for in my recovery. Among the items I listed was the word “HOPE.” It was the only word on my list that I had written in all caps.