Here are some of the things I did to try to cure my own sex addiction before I finally surrendered to the SA programme:
- seven years of therapy (nothing against therapy, it can help, but it is NO cure)
- ten years of another S-program where I tried ‘to control and enjoy’ by making up my own sobriety plan (I tried over ten of them - without any long term success)
- seven years of being a member of a Hindu religion, meditating, learning Sanskrit verses by heart
- trying always harder to try to force God to fix me
- thirteen years of being a strict vegetarian (no meat, fish or eggs)
- dieting or fasting to cure me
- going to India for some months hoping that changing the environment would cure me
- doing two pilgrimages of more than three months by foot
- having a ‘committed’ living-together relationship with a very beautiful woman for three years
- taking antidepressants
- taking food supplements/vitamins
- doing volunteer work (out of feelings of guilt) to purify myself
- giving a quarter of my income to my religion to try to 'buy' my salvation
- working on reducing the guilt or shame feelings while acting out (a dangerous place to be!)
- acting out to the maximum possible in order to become fed up with acting out forever (it doesn't work)
- expressing my suppressed childhood anger towards my parents, including giving them a written list of what THEY did wrong and demanding their amends (the exact opposite of the 9th step)
- having very close 'non-sexual' relationships with women (which failed)
- work harder
- stop working
- allowing other addictions to take over because this would somehow prevent me from acting out (like watching television, movies or overeating)
- bathing in the Ganges and drinking loads of its water
- co-dependently over-serving in the name of religion;
But none of them was THE cure. As I hear time and again in SA meetings, “There is no silver bullet.” Sexaholism is an incurable illness but recovery is possible in SA.
