IN THE CURRENT MAGAZINE

I’m Harvey A., a sexaholic from Nashville, TN. My sobriety date is March 8, 1984. I can hardly believe that I’m now 75 years old and have been sexually sober for more than 31 years. When I began the SA recovery program at age 44, I had a full head of hair that had not yet turned grey. At 75, what hair I have is completely grey. My outward appearance has changed over the past 31 years. But it’s the change in my inner self that I want to share with the fellowship today.

In May 2014, while out of the country on a business trip with my husband, I met a man who disclosed to me that he was a sexaholic. I told him that I thought I might also be a sexaholic, but I was shocked by the sobriety definition. I asked him, “You will never masturbate again?!” I was astounded. I didn’t think that was possible. He told me about his Higher Power, and that there is hope.

I was on a slippery slope. For the past few months I had begun indulging in lust, as well as resentment, anger, and self-pity. I was yelling at my kids, demanding things from my husband and family, and wallowing in self-pity. I was spending more time in my head, in fantasy about past sexual encounters.

When I came into SA in 2009, I balked at the part of the sobriety definition that says “no form of sex with self or with persons other than the spouse” (SA 191-192). I had come from a secular upbringing, and I lived through three divorces of my parents. First they divorced each other, then each of them married someone else, and then each divorced again. Marriage was not for me.

My wife and I recently celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary, and I can honestly say that the last 13 ½ years have been better than the first 36 ½ years, for two reasons. The first reason is that I’ve been sober for 13 ½ years, and the second is that in the last 13 ½ years we have experienced honesty, respect, unity, and love—love that is expressed in so many different ways in our relationship.

When I first came into recovery in January 2004, my counselor recommended that I attend a Twelve Step group. The only group in Columbia at the time was another “S” fellowship, so that’s where I went. Then the wife of one of our members founded an S-Anon group when they moved here from North Carolina.

I’ve been sober in SA for four and one-half years, and I believe that my sobriety can be attributed in no small part to sponsorship. The SA program continues to bless me with valuable lessons from the process of both having a sponsor and being a sponsor, and I’m grateful to my Higher Power for putting my sponsees in my life.

When a young bird is hatched, all it knows is the insatiable urge to be fed, crying out for its next meal. As the chick grows, the time comes when he is finally able to look outside the nest and see all the mature birds soaring through the air.

I’ve been sober in SA for seven years now, and today I’m grateful to be a sexaholic. Because of SA, I have a life worth living, tools to help me live that life, and the ability to help others live a life worth living by working the Twelve Steps. But it wasn’t always this way; I had a lot of resistance at first. So I decided to write a few things about my early resistance to working this program of recovery, in case my experience might benefit others.

I came to SA in September 2005, when I realized I was hooked on Internet pornography, and I’ve been sober since that day. Before then, I thought I could stop on my own. I actually could stop for several days on my own willpower, but then I would binge on lust for days afterward and my obsession would increase.