A resource for the health & helping professional
SA can be a useful resource in counselling someone experiencing an unmanageable life due to sexually destructive thinking and behavior.
How to stop sex and porn addiction?
This is the problem that brought us to desperation - we wanted to stop our sexual compulsivity, but we could not. We tried to stop, but it never lasted. Sexaholics Anonymous presented us with a solution that we never knew about; a proven, reliable means of staying sexually sober one day at a time.
Welcome to the Europe and Middle East Region of Sexaholics Anonymous! We are glad you are here.
Below are a selection of stories from members, all now sober, recovering from sex or porn addiction. They will describe what it was like for them under the "lash" of sexaholism. What brought them to Sexaholics Anonymous (SA). And what happened since. We hope their stories will be an inspiration to you and to all.
Please remember that these stories are the individual experiences of SA members, they are not official SA literature. Their stories are here to offer hope to the still suffering sex and/or porn addict.
Porn Free
Celebrating One Year Porn Free Through Sexahlics Anonymous
I am grateful today for Sexaholics Anonymous, and for my one year porn free. That is a miracle! I attended my first SA meeting in June 2011, but this is the first time I have celebrated one year. God willing I will stay sober and porn free for the rest of my life.
I think that what is different today is that I now understand that I am addicted to lust, and if I want to continue to be porn free, I must surrender every lust temptation, of whatever kind, the moment it appears. I learned this from listening to the tapes of a long-term SA member. Some days I do this diligently, and other days I don’t. I am far from perfect. So it's only by God's grace that I am sober today.
At times I still find myself enjoying a second look or going briefly into the porn store in my head. But now when this happens, I immediately call one of my Sexaholics Anonymous friends to surrender my lust. I also have morning and evening check-in/accountability partners, so it is never long before I surrender any lust incidents. If I indulge in a prolonged fantasy or recalling of pornography in my head, for me that would be a form of sex with self, and I would have to reset my sobriety date.
Reading the article “What is Sex With Self” on page 13 of the book “Practical Recovery Tools” has helped me to understand this.
Tools That Have Helped Me Become Porn Free
The tools that have been the most useful for me are:
- Praying “God help me,” when I ever I am tempted to look at a woman
- Taking the 12 Steps
- Calling my sponsor regularly, especially when triggered or emotionally disturbed
- Calling others if I don't get hold of my sponsor
- Asking my sponsor for suggestions and trying to follow them
- Working my AA and Al-Anon programmes as well as SA
- Attending meetings regularly and punctually, and taking a service position
- Volunteering for other small service tasks in SA and in other areas of my life
- Calling fellows to see how they are doing and to get to know them better
- Practicing Step Eleven prayer and meditation
- Trying to stick to regular daily calls with my morning and evening check-in partners and sharing honestly with them
- Remembering to lighten up, to not take myself or my life too seriously, and to laugh whenever possible!
- Accepting my physical, mental, and emotional limits
- Reading approved literature
- Writing gratitude lists
- Engaging in a dialogue throughout the day with my Higher Power, and getting to know and trust Him. Praying for faith, trust, willingness. and guidance.
- Seeking and accepting outside help (doctor, psychiatrist, medication, psychotherapist) for my anxiety. I have talked with educated and experienced members in this area during this process.
Thank you to the fellowship of Sexaholics Anonymous for my one year porn free!
Allergic to Pornography
With pornography addicts, especially newcomers, I always mention both physical and mental powerlessness. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous reminds us we have a physical disease.
“..the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as his mind......But we are sure that our bodies were sickened as well. In our belief, any picture of the alcoholic which leaves out this physical factor is incomplete....” The Doctor’s Opinion- xxvii
This doctor then explains that an alcoholic has developed a bodily allergy for alcohol.. As soon as he takes a drink, this allergy is triggered. It will manifest itself as a craving for more and more alcohol. Quite destructive, one might say, as with most allergies.
Pornography Addiction - A Physical Allergy
If we translate this situation to lust, sex and pornography addiction, the situation is quite the same, or maybe even more obvious. When a person starts viewing pornography, lusting or acting out sexually, the body releases all kinds of chemicals. The exact composition of the chemistry may vary depending on whether I'm stealing a look on the street, flirting with a coworker, consuming hard-core pornography with my eyes or recalling sexual memories in my mind. But in any case, my body has developed an abnormal reaction to those chemicals released whenever I start using sex or porn as a drug.
Trembling, Shivering and Nausea
For me, it had become so bad, that the moment I took the decision to act out, my body would start trembling and shivering, my back muscles would get stressed, and I would feel cold sweats. As soon as my acting out had started, I told myself: “How could I have ever have lived without this?” The phenomenon of craving had started, and I wanted more and more, until I got sick to the point of nausea, vomiting or auto-mutilation. I understand today that I have a rather abnormal physical reaction to sex and pornography, I would say.
Surrendering the Temptation
Today, in order to recover, I just have to accept my allergy to lust, sex and pornography as a matter of fact. If I have an allergy to strawberries for example, I can try to eat strawberries again and again, every time trying not to get an allergic reaction with all my willpower – and always ‘failing’. It makes no sense, because willpower is useless against an allergy! So every time there is a temptation for me to start lusting or acting out sexually, I try to remember immediately my powerlessness over lust, pornography and sexual acting out – both over the obsession of the mind and over the allergy of the body. It helps me to remember that I am powerless over it. Then I can let the temptation go, without having to take a drink from it, my sanity is momentarily restored. And I am still free.
Try SA's Four Sided Solution:
Go to an SA meeting Get an SA sponsor Work the SA 12 Steps Do Service in SA
Recovering from gay porn sex addiction
Heading for a fall
When the Internet arrived in our home, it became my main activity. I quickly got into gay porn videos. I developed more rituals to enhance my acting out. I stayed up all hours of the night getting my fix from male same-sex sites, personal sites, chat rooms, and video sex. It was never enough. In 1997, I had an affair with a guy living in our home. I admitted this to my wife. My behavior was destroying our marriage. She was in the major career position of her life, and I was creating hell for her. One night I was online setting up a date with a man, thinking my wife was asleep. I was lost in the haze of acting out and didn’t realize she was looking over my shoulder. We argued, and that argument led me to see that I had a problem.
I made the call and got to my first meeting. I got a sponsor, went to meetings, and began working the Steps. I found a good job and got involved in Sexaholics Anonymous service. But I had only embraced physical sobriety, not lust sobriety. My character defects were still at work. Things were better, but I was not happy, joyous, or free. One month shy of my fifth sober anniversary, I lost my sobriety.
Getting back on the program
After a period of time, I got back into the program and once again achieved one year and five months of sobriety. My wife said I had finally become the man she always hoped I would become. I could almost hear the rubber stamp that screamed, “Fixed”. I decided that the rules of Sexaholics Anonymous no longer applied. I lost interest in meetings, went back to gay porn on the Internet, and began masturbating again. I went on Internet dating sites, male clothing sites, and more. I crossed the boundary of not viewing this at work. I went right back to where I had left off years before, but worse. I was hopeless but still going to meetings.
The filters on my work computer had to be removed because they interfered with my job. Once they were gone, I was looking for hard core gay porn again. I acted out again and had to admit it to my wife. I began to get some relief from lust. I increased my meeting attendance and started praying. When we were getting ready to move, I masturbated and chose not to tell my wife. I lied to my groups. I acted out once more—and suddenly I clearly saw the extent of my sickness. I’d been engineering resentment toward my wife, which gave me a reason to act out.
Hitting Bottom
For once, facing my sickness head-on brought me to despair. It was the beginning of freedom for me. The past three years of my recovery have been significantly better because I’ve learned to forgive myself and allow myself to be an integrated person, a whole and loving child of God. I have come to accept all of me, especially the part I had tried so hard to suppress—my same-sex attraction. The support and friendship of a wonderful man with a similar attraction in our fellowship has helped me to see my life as choices. I know now that love is commitment. Commitment has become a beautiful word in my life. Today I love being used by God to do His will.
More About SA Recovery
The SA Solution Is SA for women too? Some Questions to Consider
Recovering married porn addict - Found the life preserver
Our family had recently moved to a new city. My wife was pregnant with our second child. I had engaged in compulsive sexual behaviors for twenty-eight years. Slowly but surely lust had increased its stranglehold on my life. Once again I hoped that a change of location and career might stop my acting out, only to find it was increasing in frequency and severity. There was so little time in the day to act out that I began to get up in the middle of the night to go through my rituals––while the family slept. A new boundary crossed.
I was spending increasing amounts of time during the day fantasizing about what I was going to do that night. My lustful thoughts were turning increasingly dark and destructive. I had the definite feeling I would not live to see my wife give birth. My life looked great to most people. No one would have guessed how unmanageable it really was. I was working very hard to keep that fact hidden from everyone, especially myself. In fact, I was leading a dual life that was putting everything I cherished in danger.
My obsession with lust had led to my crossing one boundary after another. For example, I’d promised myself I would never act out at work. Yet that’s precisely what I did, and had been doing for months, since being promoted. My boss had even walked into a room adjacent to the one where I was acting out and called my name. A few more steps and I would have lost my job and faced legal consequences and public exposure. I would have been separated from the family I loved.
Reading Sexaholics Anonymous helped me see that I was a sexaholic and could not stay sober by myself. SA helped me understand that lust was the driving force behind all of my acting out, and progressive victory over lust was the only way to freedom. I had been trying to stop my compulsive behaviors, but they were only symptoms of my real problem—lust! Finally, SA taught me that I could not live in the snake pit of resentment.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions made it clear to me that I must begin my recovery by accepting my “devastating weakness and all its consequences.” It helped me see that if I took hold of the program of Sexaholics Anonymous as a drowning person seizes a “life preserver,” I could get well.
Recovering from online chat sex addiction - High Powered Days
I never fell into a rabbit hole, but I fell hard into the Internet. There, I found a strange world where forbidden things were freely available—even celebrated. At first, I enjoyed this secret place where there was no right or wrong. What I did there, stayed there. So I stayed there longer and longer each day. Soon, my daytime life lacked the intrigue of my secret underworld. Before long, my seemingly harmless online meetings turned into face-to-face infidelities. I cheated frequently, after more than 15 years of faithful marriage.
My wife initially tolerated my online misbehavior, expecting me to outgrow my Internet “phase.” Five years later, I hadn’t outgrown the phase, but she had outgrown marriage to an addict. I soon found myself raising our two kids largely by myself. My new “wife” was the Internet. I crossed all sorts of lines in my online life. Things that at first revolted me eventually had to be tried. Still, I was fiercely proud of one thing: my online life never affected my kids. Or so I thought.
Although my online insanity was not directed at my kids, they surely felt its effects. I remember one Saturday morning when I quickly logged onto the Internet “just to see who is on.” When my kids woke up, they begged me to cook breakfast.
“Just butter yourselves some toast,” I yelled, stalling to prolong an online chat. “We’re still hungry!” they yelled shortly.
“Cook yourself some eggs!” I shouted back, irritated. “But it’s lunchtime, now!” I glanced up and realized four hours had elapsed. “Heat up some pizza; I’ll be right there,” I pleaded, “I’m really busy right now!” Soon they whined, “You said you’d take us to the pool, but now the pool’s closed.” I snapped angrily, “The pool doesn’t close until 6:00!” A glance at the clock told me what I didn’t want to admit. I had lost another entire day to my addiction, and had deprived my kids of another day of normal life. “I’ll make it up to you, kids,” I would swear, “You’ll see. I’ll get caught up with my work soon and things will change.”
I prayed they would believe my non-stop claims of “important work” on the computer. But their bare closets and empty pockets told them my work wasn’t earning any cash. “I’ll make it up to you,” became a familiar and hollow vow.
Until I got into recovery, I couldn’t see the insanity. My online life was no life at all. If I met a new person online, I quickly grew bored and moved on to the next unreal friend. My “real” life became my nights at the computer. My days became pale ghosts of my past. My home, marriage, and business, all slipped away right before my eyes. I would gripe to my online friends about how crazy the offline world was. Anyone who didn’t agree with me was replaced with another friend.
One day, my daughter caught sight of some online chat I had forgotten to erase. It was brief but terrible. I doubt she wanted to believe that those words came from the father she trusted—but they had. She left my life due to her vigilant mother. My sickness destroyed my daughter’s belief that she had a good father. Some people don’t hit bottom until after jail, an asylum, or a divorce court. For me, it came when my secret underworld collided with the fragile reality of someone I loved with all my heart. Like many people in recovery, I have since become grateful for the disaster that brought me here. The worst day of my life turned out to be a life saver.
Ironically, I now work on the Internet nearly every day in my profession. Thanks to my Higher Power, the Internet is not the automatic trigger it used to be. After I found sobriety, one day at a time, I realized that the web was never my real problem. My problem was a physical craving and a mental insanity within myself. The Internet was only a trigger. My real enemy was my addiction. I worked the Steps, came to meetings, and took directions from my sponsor. When I finally worked the program—and worked it every day—the program worked.
Just today, I talked on the phone to my daughter for an hour and she told me all about her move to a bigger city. She attended my recent wedding and I came to her graduation. I don’t know if she’ll ask me to escort her down the aisle at her wedding someday, but I think she might. After some Ninth Step amends, that low point we both went through has been replaced by one High Powered day after another.
