Category: 12 Steps

“Porn-I can stop whenever I want”

Did your use of porn start with the belief: “It’s no big deal, everyone does it. I can stop whenever I want.” But over time you noticed the patterns deepening and attempts to reduce usage fall by the wayside. Guilt and shame may prevent you from even addressing the issue.

Porn usage is usually done in private and is available around the clock. You my start to find yourself planning your day around it. Staying up later than you want to. Having one slip after another. None of this means you are weak. It means you are trying to manage this burden on your own.  At SCA you can find that you are not alone and it’s about not having to navigate everything by yourself. It’s a place where you can take your time and understand what is driving the behavior, but more important it’s a place where you can start building healthier patterns.

Sexual Sobriety

Various definitions

Many people who come to this website are struggling with some aspect of sexual behavior that could be called addictive, compulsive, obsessive, dependent, or otherwise out-of-control (all various ways of saying basically the same thing, which is that a person is powerless over some aspect of his or her sexual behavior and that his or her life has become unmanageable).

Sexual Sobriety Definitions Vary

The definition of what constitutes sexual “sobriety” is not the same among the five different fellowships.  Knowing these differences can be helpful in deciding which fellowship best suits the individual needs of each person seeking sexual recovery. There are at least five different 12-Step fellowships that address a person’s sexual behavior.  They are all based on the original 12-step fellowship, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).  From the time of its founding in the 1930’s. A.A. has been so successful in helping people recover from alcohol dependence that its format has been adapted to many other behaviors.  Several different fellowships for achieving sexual sobriety originated in different parts of the country within a few years of each other.

SCA states that: “Members are encouraged to develop their own sexual recovery plan, and to define sexual sobriety for themselves. We are not here to repress our God-given sexuality, but to learn how to express it in ways that will not make unreasonable demands on our time and energy, place us in legal jeopardy — or endanger our mental, physical or spiritual health.”

Although the SCA fellowship originally sought to address issues of sexual compulsion among gay and bisexual men, it has always been open to all sexual genders and orientations, and there is an increasing number of women and heterosexual men participating.

(posted from the SCA Atlanta’s website: https://atlantasexaddicts.com/gasca)

 

SCA Toronto Celebrates 25 Years

October 1, 2025 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of SCA meetings in Toronto.

The Toronto group has decided to celebrate this occasion by going out for dinner and having a cake for dessert after their regular 6:30 p.m. meeting on Friday, November 7, 2025.

Anyone who has attended an SCA meeting in Toronto in the past is welcome to join this celebration. Please RSVP by October 31st at  scatoronto@hotmail.com  if you plan to attend. We hope to see as many members as possible there!

To mark this occasion, the group will also be publishing an updated summary history of SCA’s presence in Toronto, expanding on the original version that was submitted to ISO and published on the SCAnner in October, 2015.

Happy Anniversary Toronto!

 

Lived Experiences of Recovery from Compulsive Sexual Behavior among Members of a “S” group: A Qualitative Thematic Analysis

By David P. Fernandez , Daria J. Kuss, & Mark D. Griffiths  Published online: 13 Dec 2021

ABSTRACT

Despite the prominence of 12-step recovery as an approach to addressing compulsive sexual behavior (CSB) worldwide, little is known about the phenomenological experiences of recovery from CSB among individuals who participate in 12-step groups for CSB (known as ‘S’ groups). The present qualitative study used in-depth interviews to explore lived experiences of recovery from CSB among 14 members (13 males and one female) of an ‘S’ group. Inductive thematic analysis of the interview data yielded five themes: (i) unmanageability of life as impetus for change, (ii) addiction as a symptom of a deeper problem, (iii) recovery is more than just abstinence, (iv) maintaining a new lifestyle and ongoing work on the self, and (v) the gifts of recovery. Participants typically described their initiation into recovery as being precipitated by the escalating negative consequences of their sexual behavior. Over time in recovery, they came to see their sexual acting out as a manifestation of unresolved underlying issues that would need to be addressed in recovery. They also came to believe that to achieve lasting abstinence from their problematic sexual behaviors, their overarching recovery goal would need to expand beyond just abstinence to the long-term maintenance of the quality of their recovery as a whole. This was achieved primarily through the creation and maintenance of a new lifestyle and engagement in ongoing work on the self. This new way of living was described as resulting in positive changes beyond just the alleviation of CSB symptoms, including personal transformation and improvements in overall quality of life. This qualitative study is the first to analyze recovery experiences of ‘S’ group members using a bottom-up approach and provides insights into how these members describe and make sense of their recovery journeys.

Introduction

Although the clinical phenomenon of compulsive sexual behavior (CSB; also conceptualized as ‘sex addiction’, ‘hypersexuality’, ‘sexual impulsivity’ or ‘out-of-control-sexual-behavior’) has been described and theorized about in the literature for decades (e.g., Barth & Kinder, Citation1987; Carnes, Citation1983; Coleman, Citation1991; Goodman, Citation1992; Grubbs et al., Citation2020; Kafka, Citation2010), it has only recently received formal recognition as a clinical disorder. In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) included the diagnosis of compulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD) as an impulse control disorder in the eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11; World Health Organization [WHO], 2019). A conservative approach was taken for the ICD-11 in categorizing it as an impulse control disorder instead of an addictive disorder because there is (to date) insufficient clinical evidence to determine whether the processes involved in the development and maintenance of the disorder are equivalent to other recognized forms of addiction (Kraus et al., Citation2018).

The prevalence of CSB in the adult population has been estimated to be between 3% and 8.6% (Bőthe et al., Citation2020; Dickenson, Gleason, Coleman, & Miner, Citation2018; Klein, Rettenberger, & Briken, Citation2014; Sussman, Lisha, & Griffiths, Citation2011). According to the ICD-11, CSBD is characterized by “a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges, resulting in repetitive sexual behavior… over an extended period (e.g., six months or more) and causes marked distress or significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning” (World Health Organization, Citation2019, p. 1). CSB encompasses various types of compulsive solo or relational sexual behaviors such as masturbation, pornography use, cybersex, casual sex with multiple partners, use of escort services and sex workers, or frequenting of strip clubs (Karila et al., Citation2014; Reid, Carpenter, & Lloyd, Citation2009). Moreover, individuals with CSB may engage in more than one sexual behavior that is compulsive (Derbyshire & Grant, Citation2015). These compulsive behaviors lead to significant negative consequences for the individual, including (but not limited to) emotional distress, relationship difficulties (e.g., betrayal of trust in romantic relationships), diminished self-esteem and self-respect, unintended pregnancies, and risk of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (McBride, Reece, & Sanders, Citation2008; Muench et al., Citation2007; Reid, Garos, & Fong, Citation2012). While rigorous outcome studies on CSB treatments using gold-standard approaches such as randomized controlled trials are scarce, likely due to CSB only recently receiving formal recognition as a clinical disorder (Grubbs et al., Citation2020), various treatments have nonetheless been delivered to treatment-seekers over the years. Treatment approaches (for reviews, see Briken, Citation2020; Dhuffar & Griffiths, Citation2015a; Efrati & Gola, Citation2018b; Garcia et al., Citation2016; Malandain, Blanc, Ferreri, & Thibaut, Citation2020; Miles, Cooper, Nugent, & Ellis, Citation2016) include individual and/or group psychotherapies, pharmacotherapies, and mutual-help support groups such as 12-step groups, which is the focus of the present study.