Sexual Addiction Test

Questions

1. Have you ever thought you needed help for your sexual thinking or behavior?
2. That you’d be better off if you didn’t keep “giving in”?
3. That sex or stimuli are controlling you?
4. Have you ever tried to stop or limit doing what you felt was wrong in your sexual behavior?
5. Do you resort to sex to escape, relieve anxiety, or because you can’t cope?
6. Do you feel guilt, remorse, or depression afterward?
7. Has your pursuit of sex become more compulsive?
8. Does it interfere with relations with your spouse?
9. Do you have to resort to images or memories during sex?
10. Does an irresistible impulse arise when the other party makes the overtures or sex is offered?
11. Do you keep going from one relationship or lover to another?
12. Do you feel the right relationship would help you stop lusting, masturbating, or being so promiscuous?
13. Do you have a destructive need—a desperate sexual or emotional need for someone?
14. Does the pursuit of sex make you careless for yourself or the welfare of your family or others?
15. Has your effectiveness or concentration decreased as sex has become more compulsive?
16. Do you lose time from work for it?
17. Do you turn to a lower environment when pursuing sex?
18. Do you want to get away from the sex partner as soon as possible after the act?
19. Although your spouse is sexually compatible, do you still masturbate or have sex with others?
20. Have you ever been arrested for a sex-related offense?

(SA Literature © 1982, 1984, 1989, 2001.
Reprinted with permission of SA Literature)

Write down your responses. If you have answered yes to many questions, it is likely you have a problem with lust and sexual stuff.

Our solution to the problem

At SA, We saw that our problem was threefold: physical, emotional, and spiritual. Healing had to come about in all three. The crucial change in attitude began when we admitted we were powerless, that our habit had us whipped. We came to meetings and withdrew from our habit. For some, this meant no sex with themselves or others, including not getting into relationships.

For others, it also meant “drying out” and not having sex with the spouse for a time to recover from lust. We discovered that we could stop, that not feeding the hunger didn’t kill us, and that sex was indeed optional. There was hope for freedom, and we began to feel alive. Encouraged to continue, we turned more and more away from our isolating obsession with sex and self and turned to God and others.

All this was scary. We couldn’t see the path ahead, except that others had gone that way before. Each new step of surrender felt like it would be off the edge into oblivion, but we took it. And instead of killing us, surrender was killing the obsession! We had stepped into the light, into a whole new way of life.

The fellowship gave us monitoring and support to keep us from being overwhelmed, a haven where we could finally face ourselves. Instead of covering our feelings with compulsive sex, we began exposing the roots of our spiritual emptiness and hunger. And the healing began. As we faced our defects, we became willing to change; surrendering them broke the power they had over us. We began to be more comfortable with ourselves and others for the first time without our “drug.”

Forgiving all who had injured us, and without injuring others, we tried to right our wrongs. At each amends more of the dreadful load of guilt dropped from our shoulders until we could lift our heads, look the world in the eye, and stand free. We began practicing positive sobriety, taking the actions of love to improve our relations with others. We were learning how to give, and the measure we gave was the measure we got back. We were finding what none of the substitutes had ever supplied. We were making the real Connection. We were home.

(© 1982, 1989, 2001 SA Literature
Reprinted with permission of SA Literature.)