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:
Hi everyone, I’m Flo, a recovering sexaholic, sober since Oct 7, 2015. Sobriety is my priority in life. I want to live a sober life, no matter the kind of garbage I have to face on a given day. No matter what the emotional or physical pain, I keep moving ahead in my sobriety and recovery. Why? Because sobriety is the only thing I really have in life, and everything in my life depends on this.
My relationship with my wife was almost ruined when I read an article in Recovery Continues about abstinence in marriage. That was exactly for me, a real insight! After discussing this with my wife, she accepted my suggestion. We began various non-sexual activities, including walks.
I attended my first SA meeting in 2015. Back then I was a member of another 12-Step fellowship in which I was dealing with my drug addiction. After a couple months of struggling with lust, while being clean in the other fellowship, I found SA. I continued going to SA meetings and was around 4 months sober when I left SA, convinced that I could now handle my lust problem without SA.
My form of fantasy is something that I hadn’t heard from anyone before, therefore I believed it could be something someone could be prejudiced towards me about. I remember in my early days of acting out I would fantasize about what women were enjoying. Being a male I felt my form of acting out wasn’t even “manly” enough to be shared with others.
I am a recovering sexaholic, since May 25, 2019, working the Steps with a sponsor. I thank my Higher Power, as I conceive it, for being a sexaholic and seeing my multitude of character defects that help me stay in Sexaholics Anonymous.
