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Sex addict can be a dirty word (or, I guess technically, words), even among us sex addicts. There are people who admit at meetings that they hate calling themselves that. I don't really blame them for having an aversion to it. People both older and wiser than myself tell about still going to AA or NA meetings and not being able to talk about their sex addiction, even with their sponsor. It's considered too gross or personal or something. I remember several months ago I went into a 12-step chatroom and starting talking with some of the other people there about working the steps (which was all I wanted - some guidance on working the steps) when someone asked me, point blank, what my poison was. I couldn't really lie, and so I said that I was a sex addict. I was then informed, of course, that I should leave. I did so, but it struck me as strange, since the fellowship that I attend (Sex Addicts Anonymous) uses the same 12-steps as AA and NA. Chalk it up to naivety.
But it isn't just among other addicts that we're rebuffed - society-at-large tends to revile most addicts and especially sex addicts. I noticed reading the paper the other day that someone writing a letter to the editor mentioned their battle with alcoholism, noting that they have been sober from drinking for fifteen years. My first thought was "Good for them!" which was quickly followed by musing what if the letter had been written by a sex addict who wrote "And I haven't used pornography/had sex with women I don't care about/hired prostitutes/etc for fifteen years!". I had to stifle a laugh. I even see people who have NA/AA key-chains, but I've yet to see anyone else carry an SAA key-chain (I do). In media or movies, sex addicts are at best portrayed as hapless perverts and, at worst, a bane on society.
It's a shame-based addiction. That much is fairly clear to me. It feeds on shame. We act out, and then we are so ashamed of ourselves that we have to act out again to numb the pain, and so on and so forth - creating nothing but pain and suffering for ourselves and others. "Society" generally doesn't want to help us - they'd rather see us incarcerated or worse. We're defective. Undesirable. Dangerous. Pathetic. Hell, some people don't even think there is such a thing as sex addiction. Maybe I even thought some of the same things, but that was before total strangers were able to relate to me the things that I thought in the deepest, darkest corners of my mind. Things that I had told no one were spilling out of the mouths of these...sex addicts. Since my first meeting, I knew I was home.
In the end, though, I think addictions are generally the same problem - they just have different manifestations. For whatever reason, sex was my escape route when it could of just as easily been alcohol or drugs. It's that reason that I'm thankful to have found a little niche right here - because I learn a lot just listening to you all, even though our problems are different, the addiction is the same.
So I will continue to wear my SAA key-chain and carry my sobriety medallion in the business card/picture holder in my wallet. I'm working on being less obtuse about my problems, but will remember that not everyone needs honesty from me (in other words, it's not as though I need to go shout "I am a sex addict!" on the street-corner...perish the thought). I figure that, generally speaking, I should be accepted or rejected by people on the basis of who I am - not someone I pretend to be. I've done enough pretending in my life.
And it might not go without saying, so everything here is not to denigrate the plight of alcoholics or drug addicts. Some of my very best friends are drug addicts, and I've seen some of the things that they've gone through - including pill sickness. I've grown up with an alcoholic father (who, coincidentally, might also be a sex addict) and I've seen what that does.
So thank you for reading, and thank you for the support and the kind regard that many of you have afforded me.
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