I am a “sober sexoholic.” Thanks to the power of God, I came out of this progressive deadly disease of addiction to lust, which destroys a human being emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
My problem with masturbation began at age 13. A boy at school showed me how to do it and, when I tried it later that day, I was hooked immediately.
I knew deep inside that I shouldn’t do this, yet I had to do it–every night. In fact, I just couldn’t get to sleep without masturbation. I didn’t understand then that I was powerless – that I was addicted to this activity. I tried all kinds of things to stop – going to confession, self-hypnosis, wearing boxing gloves – but nothing worked. The reality was that masturbation changed the way I felt. It allowed me to relax and to get to sleep.
I really wanted to find a way to stop, but I couldn’t. I was terrified of going to communion in a state of mortal sin, which I assumed that I was in. So I created a routine for myself: I would cycle 12 miles (about 15-16 kilometers) every Saturday to go to confession; then I’d try to get through Saturday night without masturbating, so that I could receive Communion on Sunday. But I found myself unable to abstain, even for one night. So then I would try to say “a perfect act of contrition” in the church before going up for Holy Communion. The effort involved, plus my fear that the priest might preach a sermon on sexual sin, gave me sneezing fits.
My addiction became more demanding. I started buying pornography and kept it under the carpet in my bedroom. I came home from school one day to find my pornography collection on the kitchen table. My mother had found it while cleaning my room. I promised to stop and immediately burnt the magazines but within a few days I was buying more pornography. And so it went on – wanting to stop but not being able to. Eventually, I “escaped” from this bind by abandoning my religion and embracing lust. I became part of the sexual revolution of the 1970s and lust became my ruling passion.
Recovery from lust addiction
For 25 years I pursued lustful life. But catastrophies began to happen, which only later I connected with my lust addiction. My disease was progressing. My acting out became more extreme. As the pornography that I used turned hardcore, so the disasters in my life became more traumatic. My first marriage failed and with it my first career. Then my second marriage and second career both ended catastrophically. I was just about to begin my third career and my third marriage when someone mentioned a phrase that I’d never heard of before: sexual addiction. The effect on me was like being hit by a sledge-hummer.
At the same time, I learned about a 12 step programme of recovery called Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. I began attending meetings. In SLAA, we set our own sobriety definitions. Mine were: “no pornography, no masturbation, no sex outside a committed relationship and no relationship for the foreseeable future.”
That might sound a bit like “no sex outside marriage”, but actually I was preparing myself for the day when I would drop the last boundary and have another “committed relationship.” And so it was. After 4 years of abstinence, I decided that I was ready for that “committed relationship”, which I understood as “only sleeping with a one person at a time.” I can laugh at my thinking now, because it had nothing to do with chastity. In those days my focus was on stopping unwanted behavior. I had no idea that my underlying addiction was to lust.
Well my “committed relationship” soon became a problem. The lady concerned was not very well and became violent after sex. I tried to set a boundary, telling her that I would end the relationship if she were violent again. But she was violent again and I couldn’t end the relationship. I was back in my addiction and I was not free to stop.
Slowly I began to realize that I needed to change my sobriety definition to “no sex outside marriage.” I didn’t want to do this, because in my heart I was still a member of the permissive society. I just wanted to control and enjoy my lusting.
For two weeks I wrestled with myself; should I commit myself to “no sex outside marriage” or not? In the end I made the change. Immediately I had a powerful experience of stepping onto solid spiritual rock. On that day my morality became founded on God. Today, I don’t care what others may think is right, I have felt moral truth in every cell of my body. I have not acted out since that day, over 16 years ago.
Not long after this, I found a different recovery fellowship called Sexoholics Anonymous. Unlike SLAA, SA has a fixed sobriety definition – “no sex other than with spouse and progressive victory over lust”. I joined that fellowship and I found myself completely at home.
At this point, a lot of things changed in my life. SA is a fellowship which focusses very hard on the solution. So I stopped discussing my ways of acting out and started learning about how to stop and stay stopped – by accessing the power of the fellowship and the power of the spiritual wakening that comes about as a result of taking the 12 steps. I started to work the 12 steps and I began to experience that spiritual wakening. In the process I became the kind of person who no longer needs lust in his life.
I haven’t lusted for the last 16 years. I have had temptations, but I haven’t entertained them. This is a miracle, because everything about my former life was lust enabling: my clothes, my cars, my careers, my pastimes and my social life. Now my way of life supports chastity and I’m part of an international fellowship of over 10,000 men and women who are seeking recovery from lust.
My greatest joy is knowing that God wants me is to help others who have this problem. There’s plenty to do. Internet pornography is highly addictive – just like cocaine – and there are now over 4 million pornographic websites out there.
The truth about Jesus
Early in recovery, I was blessed with a vision of Jesus dressed as Holman Hunt had depicted him in his famous painting “The Light Of The World”. Jesus looked at me with absolute love and called me his brother. I burst into tears. I was still very anti-catholic at the time, so I just went on with my life, as if nothing much had happened. A few years later, however, I became fascinated by the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). Several years of intensive study ended with me writing a life of Jesus. I set out to write about him as a man – healer, preacher and prophet. When my pen portrait was complete, I rewrote it again in caligraphy. The whole project took me many months. Finally, when it was all done, I saw that my best endeavours to limit Jesus to mere manhood had failed. Jesus was God and he had simply burst the box into which I had tried to nail him.
Shortly after this, all my objections to Catholic teaching collapsed like a house of cards. I had left because I could not be chaste. Now I was chaste, I had no reason to stay away. Today, I love Jesus with all my heart and try to receive him in Holy Communion every day. I go to confession regularly and was able to make a general confession of my whole life recently. Despite my love for the Church, my priority for service remains 12 step recovery. God has blessed me with a progressive fatal illness called lust addiction, which has emotional, physical and spiritual dimensions. He has also blessed me with Sexaholics Anonymous, which has a proven, reliable solution addressing all three. It wonderful to have rediscovered my home in the Church and my life’s work in Sexaholics Anonymous.
Is it possible to prevent the lust addiction?
I am absolutely convinced now, beyond a shade of doubt, that the Catholic Church is the true Church, because it has upheld this morality for two thousand years against all the odds, against everything. It is not an easy teaching, but it’s true. And so, all the Church’s teaching on sexual morality (e.g. Humanae Vitae), everything that Church teaches is absolutely right. “Theology of the body” explains the upside of my disease. To the people who are interested in theology of the body, I would say, if you’re not sexually sober, then you need to start again. You can’t build the superstructure of the house without the foundation. The foundation is chastity.
And that’s a very hard thing to achieve in those days. The way people dress, they appear in the media, all is pushing lust, the whole time. I sympathize with how difficult it is for anybody to practice the chastity, it’s hugely difficult. But it can be done. If I can do it, if by the power of the fellowship and grace of God I’d been able to stay sober for 16 years (when a person like me couldn’t get through a day without acting out sexually), then other people can do it, too.
An anonymous sexoholic, England