Yesterday I finally went to an English SLAA meeting, after months of denials, rationalizations, and excuses. I am glad I went. I may even go again some time :-)

There were two other men present besides myself. Both had been sober for quite some time (five years for one) and left a profound impression on me. What struck me about them both was their strong self-confidence, which I utterly lacked, coupled with an equally compelling humility and almost childlike aura, which I also utterly lacked.

It may seem contradictory to say that these men exuded both confidence and humility. Yet they did. They made no attempt to hide their emotions. They talked with an air of utter sincerity. They spoke of their pasts, every bid as sordid as my present, not with shame and despair but with acceptance and calmness.

This was the first time I had heard, verbally, the story of another sex addict. Their experiences were not identical to mine but were similar enough that I could believe, perhaps for the first time, that some time of healing might be possible.

And I found myself, strangely, able to confess my own story openly. Everything; the early experimentation with masturbation, the gradual escalation to pornography, then to lap dancers; the hypocrisy, the double life, the loneliness, the isolation, the anorexia, the self-abuse. Everything spilled out, in what was for me a remarkably well-delivered speech, in fact.

I even dared to ask their phone numbers in case I was faced with a slip, a difficult thing for me to ask. They gave them without a moment of hesitation. The next step is to actually make a call when the urge returns, which is easier said than done.

This is not to say one meeting transformed me. I am still a sex addict; I am still capable of acting out, even right now. I made it to this meeting but it is still far from certain whether I will make it there again. No matter. For a moment, even a brief one, I saw a glimpse of something that might be better.

ARAS, May 7, 1996.