Below are excerpts from the SA pamphlet called "Why Stop Lusting" from www.sa.org. Rabbi Avraham J. Twerski believes that joining a 12-Step SA group is the most powerful and sure way to break free of this addiction. However, even Rabbi Twerski agrees that it is not for everyone. It is for people who have decided that they can no longer live this way. They have come to the conclusion that even death itself would be better than continuing to be a slave to these destructive behaviors. For such people, the SA groups and 12-Steps are the most sure way to success.
However, regardless of whether the groups are for you or not, much of what is written below can be helpful for anyone trying to understand the nature of the addiction and how to break free. We have pasted the pamphlet below.
Many of us came to Sexaholics Anonymous (SA) driven to total despair by our destructive sexual thoughts and behaviors. Within the meeting rooms of SA we discovered, to our surprise, that lust was the driving force behind our acting out. Sexual lust is an inordinate thought or feeling that drives us to use ourselves, others, or things for self-centered destructive purposes. The spiritual sickness of lust wants sexual stimulation at that moment instead of what a Higher Power or God is offering us. Later we come to see that lust wants anything other than what is offered us each moment. At first it was hard to believe. As we began to accept this fact, we wondered how we could live without lust. It became clear that we had to give it up, yet we doubted that life without lust was possible. In this fellowship of SA, we met people who had found a way to stop their destructive sexual behaviors. That too was unbelievable. Yet, by their honesty and shining faces, we knew it was true. They had the answer we desperately wanted.
From the earliest days of our disease, we thought lust was our friend. We used it for many reasons: entertainment, as a refuge from pain, or to escape dealing with problems. Somewhere along the way we realized that lust had become a bigger problem than the problems we were trying to avoid. The medicine became our poison. Our "solution" became the problem. We were out of control. Lusting, for us, is like riding a roller coaster. Once started, it is nearly impossible to stop. Therefore, lust must be stopped where it begins, with the first drink. Getting out from under the influence of lust, therefore, would require us to avoid getting on board in the first place. That meant forsaking the thrill and the risk-taking. But how could we turn our backs on something that we had allowed to dominate our lives for so many years? How could we succeed now where we had failed a thousand times before? Our addiction to lust is like the alcoholic's problem with alcohol. Just as the alcoholic cannot tolerate one drink of alcohol, we sexaholics cannot tolerate even the smallest drink of lust. Lust always leads to more lust, eventually making us drunk with it. Once drunk, the urge to act out sexually is impossible to resist. Even worse, lust keeps taking us deeper and deeper into behaviors we promised ourselves we would never do. The shame that these behaviors caused us required more and more lust to mask it. Just a little lusting simply doesn't work for sexaholics like us.