I started sex-addiction recovery in 1994 in another sex-addiction fellowship, and spent the next eight years in a state of chronic relapse. Sometimes I couldn’t even get one day of sobriety, although a couple of times I reached six months. But five years ago something changed, and I have been able to stay sober.
All my life, all I wanted was to fit in, to be accepted, and to feel okay about myself. I grew up in a family of multiple addictions, and I was a loner. From very early on I hated myself. I felt trapped, always wishing and waiting to grow up so I could do what I wanted to and have the freedom to get away from it all.
If you are in a painful and seemingly endless cycle of relapse, unable to scrape together a few weeks or just a few days of sobriety AND you are willing to do whatever it takes, then read on.
Many people lose their sobriety or relapse back into lust and sexual addiction. Most of us have learned that relapse is a process that happens over a period of time. Slowly we let our priority of sober and lust-free thinking and acting be replaced by other things. Then we become ripe for relapse.
This line comes from an old Simon and Garfunkel song and it describes what happens to me whenever I have a slip in the program. Each time I slip, I slide further away from my Higher Power. I do believe it is possible to have a program without slips. That was the theme of the Colorado Evergreen conference this year: “Recovery without Relapse.”
My addiction came visiting today, I didn’t let him in the door; I knew what to say!
As I sit here on the New York City subway, I have seven years in the program and one day of sexual sobriety. Triggers of every kind surround me and it seems impossible for me not to lust. Add this all up, and it equals just one thought in my mind — FAILURE!!! And that is exactly what my disease (my addict, the devil, whatever I call it) wants me to believe.
I’m Paul H., a grateful sexaholic, sober since December 1996. The nature of my disease is lusting, wanting to be lusted after, compulsive masturbation, use of pornography, dependency relationships, and anonymous encounters.
Two years into the program and growing more and more cocky about my power over myself, during my first major crisis I slipped into my old patterns. Caught by the trance leading up to masturbation, I ended two years of what I would now call abstinence. In the carelessness brought on by thinking I was in control, I acted out.
[The following ideas resulted from a group inventory done on the problem of continued slipping. These ideas are put forward simply to stimulate discussion and action. Please feed back from your experience.]
