I'm sick

(This is a personal story from one of our members.)

I'm a lust addict. I am a sick person. All sorts of odd things can be triggers and temptations to me. I'm not like "normal" people for whom those things would be no big deal. I am that sick.

But I get a daily reprieve from my sickness based on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. For me that means that I stay rightly connected to God by surrendering those triggers and temptations and my insane thinking and my will and my life to Him. I learned how to do that by working the 12 Steps of the SA program under the direction of a sponsor. That is what the literature of SA suggested that I do if I wanted sobriety, recovery, serenity, and freedom from slavery to lust. As far as I've ever been able to figure out, SA actually doesn't offer any solution other than working those 12 Steps under the guidance of a sponsor.

My experience is that the program of working the 12 Steps simply works. And I know a lot of other people for whom it worked just like that as well.  I also know through my experience that everything I came up with on my own as a means of getting rid of my sickness didn't work. So I just accepted that I was sick enough that I had to do what had actually worked for all those other "sick" people who were now living in freedom one day at a time.

It would have done me well to realize how sick I was a long time ago so that I could finally give up, let go, and let God. But I guess I needed more time to experience more pain first. But whatever the reasons are that I refused to really work the 12 Steps way back when I went to me first SA meeting, I'm really happy that I finally did.

Daily reminders

(The following is a personal story from one of our members.)

I'm reminded every day that I am a lust addict. It starts in the morning as I take time to connect with God at the beginning of the day and I remind myself as a habit when I pray that I am an addict. It continues during the day when some random temptation or trigger comes my way and reminds me that I am a lust addict. It also reminds me that I can connect with God in the midst of that trigger or temptation and make good use of what used to drive me to fear and panic. It now drives me to God. And that's a good thing. So it's good to be a recovering addict. I've grown and changed in ways that I don't think I could have if I wasn't an addict.

I used to desperately want to be rid of my addiction. I wanted the addiction gone and to never return. I wanted to be an "ex-addict" for whom sexual temptation no longer held any attraction. I wanted to be rid of "the addict", to cut that part of me out and get rid of it once and for all. I wanted an instant and permanent cure so that I could just be a "normal guy."

I wanted so many things, including wanting my will regarding my addiction to be done.  I told God what I wanted, and when He didn't deliver, I began doubting Him.

But God apparently knew better. He offered a different solution. In this solution, I still am a lust addict. Temptations and triggers are still real. I sometimes have what seems like the most random memories or thoughts pop into my head. (Apparently my brain still holds all those memories and thoughts somewhere.) In the real world there are real temptations for me to face.

But I do not have to live in fear of any of that. I have "a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition."  By working the program of the 12 Steps under the direction of a sponsor, I have become rightly connected with God, the Power greater than myself, who can and will keep me sober as I surrender my will and life and temptations and triggers to Him.

So I have embraced being a lust addict instead of continuing to fight it. It is not a separate part of me that I can be rid of. It is who I am. I am a sexaholic, and I am living free from the power of lust one day at a time because God keeps me sober.