I was always a lonely, shy kid growing up. My dad and mum had some health issues, so they were not available to take care of me and my sister. My father was struggling to balance responsibilities of children and family, so he thought it to be best for me to stay away from home for a while, until their health got better. He placed me in the care of an uncle who was a friend of my father. My uncle, being unmarried, put me into a nearby missionary school and checked on me once in a while. The missionary school was a residential boys school.

Separated from my family, I felt very lonely and afraid. I just wanted to connect with the boys in my school and be friends with them. I had that feeling of not belonging anywhere, so I just wanted to be included. I wanted to be part of other people’s lives in my school because I was apart from my family. I found some good friends in school, but some boys started taking advantage of my shy nature. They began emotionally bullying me, making fun of me for their own entertainment. I now realise they were also trying to suppress their loneliness by asserting superiority over others.

I was not able to stand up for myself, and they took advantage of that. Teachers had many students to deal with, so they rarely got involved in individual matters unless the issue turned into a big fight. Nobody was there to help, and everybody was fighting for survival. I used to feel afraid and was unable to share my problems, struggles, and challenges with anybody. My parents were away, and I didn’t want to trouble my uncle because he was doing the best he could to help me.

This created a lot of fear, loneliness, and a sense of inferiority. I began comparing myself with others and developed black-and-white thinking, which created a lot of stress. I looked for something that could help me forget all the problems and challenges in my life. I was restless, irritable, and discontented with life as it was. I sought refuge in lust-based actions after I first encountered a nude magazine in sixth class. When I saw those pictures, I got sucked in and forgot everything else in my life for some time. After a while, I learned how to masturbate and used that as an outlet for dealing with difficult emotions.

As SA literature mentions, lust is an attitude demanding that natural instinct serve unnatural desire. I started using the natural instinct of sex to satisfy the unnatural desire of dealing with boredom, stress, tension, pain, sadness, loneliness, inferiority complex, comparison with others, black-and-white thinking, feeling less than, and people pleasing.

As I grew up, I needed more and more of that dopamine hit from lust-based actions like watching pictures, images, movie scenes, and pornography to deal with negative emotions. Initially, it worked because it disconnected me from the world, but slowly it started losing its effect. I needed more content to consume and more masturbation to get the same high I used to get easily earlier. I started wasting a lot of time on this. Initially, it was a few minutes, which stretched to a few hours.

I began wasting my precious time and energy on this, which led to self-pity, self-loathing, guilt, shame, remorse, and loneliness because I knew I could not share this issue with anybody else. To deal with this, I again turned to porn and masturbation, which increased negative attitudes. This became a cycle that was very difficult to escape, and it continued for many years, leading to suffering and pain from within. I was wasting days altogether on porn and masturbation and getting more and more depressed.

Over time, I tried many solutions: self-help, counselling, stopping through willpower, nofap challenges, and religion. All these solutions were temporary. They helped for some time but could not provide a long-term solution because my core problem was the defective attitudes and trauma I had faced in childhood, which led to resentments, fears, and negative attitudes.

I needed a new way of living, a personality change from the inside out, and deep work on my resentments, fears, and negative attitudes. I found out about the SA program, which became a blessing for me. The SA program, with the help of tools and fellowship, helped me get sober. Then, with the help of the steps and fellowship, it gave me a safety net and helped me deal with life issues one by one.

This gave me direction on how to deal with problems and challenges in life, which was my basic problem. I did not have anybody to help me with my challenges, problems, pain, and sorrow. The SA program gave me step-by-step direction on how to work on present and past issues with the 12 steps, based on spiritual principles borrowed from many places. It helped me deal with past and present issues.

The SA program has been a life saver for me. It has helped me work on personality change and develop an attitude of service, patience, tolerance, and deal with life issues in a positive way. I have learned to be grateful for whatever God has graced me with today.

Over time, my parents' health got better. I got to stay with them for years, and the feeling of being away from my family also healed slowly. I was able to help them and be a part of their lives, which I had missed in my childhood. I was able to let go of resentments and grudges that I had held for years against some students in my class, and finally felt the load lifted.

I was able to work on bringing my life to a much better state and can feel happy, joyous, and free with whatever I have. Thank God for SA, I never had it so good.