May 2025 I arrive back home from my second trip to North Carolina. It had been roughly a year since my impulsive trip down south through both of the Carolinas, Virginia and a one night stay in Georgia. There had been a strip club near my hotel during my visit that I had become aware of upon observing my surroundings as the Uber driver first took me to my hotel. I knew for me it could spell trouble and promised myself I wouldn’t dare wander in, knowing that too much money would be spent. Also knowing that I would start looking to do unclean things in unclean places, as once I start participating in any enticing activity, I tend to take it the extra mile as I know from my own history. So I immediately wrote it off in my head as a possibility. A promise to myself which I would break during the last days of my ten day visit in Charlotte.

There was something about receiving a lapdance from a stripper that reactivated that old lust within me. I never acted inappropriately, but it did remind me how good it felt to receive intimacy even if it was paid. Before I left for my trip I had engaged with a prosititute and I remember the feeling of tasting her cologne in my mouth. The smell and flavor covered my clothes with excitement and shame. What a rush! But it came with a cost. The cost of my own self-respect. I had wanted to do it again and erase itfrom my life all at once, but what could I do? It was already written in stone and committed to memory. No matter how hard I might try I could not forget it and there was a sick side of me that didn’t want to!

Upon returning home from the trip I was still feeling a bit of the lust demon pursuing and driving me. I hungered for more and remembered my history at the gay bath houses back home in Colorado Springs. I happened upon a bath house called Club Philly-another place for gay and bisexual men to meet and have promiscuous sex. I loved being able to rent lockers, rooms, having sex with other men, hanging out in the saunas and best of all, quietly meditating and nearly sleeping on the shower floors which resembled what I imagine a prison shower would look like. Shared with no privacy. The atmosphere was unlike anything; blue and pink strobe lights and electronic dance music playing. It was a paradise on earth like the rest of The Gayborhood, a place in Philidelphia in which the LGBT community is very prevalent with a host of “inclusive” and gay friendly places!

After only a week or two of immersing myself in the culture of The Gayborhood, I realized that I had burnt up excessive amounts of money and worst yet, owed my parents money they had lent me! When I went to visit my therapist, after hearing of my troubles, she told me that I was a sex addict and should seek out help for my issue. Strangely enough it did not take much convincing on my part as I would spend the next twenty-four hours reflecting on the years in and out of bathouses, gay arcades, subscriptions to various dating and hookup sites and the sex seeking I had done spanning at least as far back as a decade ago! Now convinced of my condition, I proceeded to do some problem solving and after doing some searching on “Sex Addiction”, came across a twelve step program called “Sex Addicts Anonymous”.

From an online resource-specifically the official S.A.A website, where I happened across a phone number. I called the number and was greeted by a woman with whom I shared my whoas regarding my promiscuity towards both men and women and how I both regretted the past while still wanting to repeat its mistakes, how I feared what would happen to me if I were to continue down this road. Just as it was with drugs, I knew I could only keep getting lucky for so long. Eventually I would get caught up in something bad and have my life ruined and I knew it! I was running out of time and felt intimidated by not knowing when the hammer of judgment might fall upon me as I desperately searched for a way out of my predicament.