A recovering sex addict has narrated how her addiction almost drove her to suicide as her pursuit of random hookups became almost too much to bear.
Jace Downey, 30, from Austin, Texas, claimed that the sex was hardly ever fun for her and was becoming risky and painful.
According to her; “The worse it was, or the less I wanted to be there, the more I would numb out,” she continued.
“I would be driving out to meet someone and would just be like, ‘Turn around, I don’t wish to be around this person’, and yet I would show up and go through with it.”
Jace’s addiction affected every aspect of her life.
She said: “I was meeting strangers in all sorts of different places, and of course not telling anyone where I was going, because then I would have to tell them what I was doing.
“I was watching porn at work and my office had windows everywhere.
“How would I have explained that to anyone had they walked by my office and saw that?
“It’s just madness to me now, it seems insane…loss of job, loss of income, loss of health.
“I’ve realised now, for me, the biggest danger that I put myself in was that I had no spiritual connection of any kind. I lost my soul in addiction.”
On how it almost led her to suicide she said; “I thought, ‘If I make it look like I just died, okay, that might look unfortunate, but nobody is left with any of the guilt or burden’.
“So I was honestly checking off a to-do list when it was like a voice outside of me said, ‘If sex interacts with brain chemicals like drugs do, can it be addictive and damaging?
“I looked it up, and holy heck! A world popped up where, yes, absolutely – there is no sex addiction, food addiction, gambling addiction, there is just addiction, and it shows up in different forms.”
She started her road to recovery by showing up at a local recovery meeting where with the help of meditation and counselling she was able to uncover repressed memories that she’d kept locked away.
She had been molested as a child and that had left her damaged. She stayed off sex for a while, “I had started seeing sex as a bad thing and I was like, ‘Oh nope, that’s not healthy either’ – our sexuality is part of who we are as people.”
Jace now works as a self-development coach, helping people looking for assistance with addiction and other personal struggles.