An Easy Burden

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

There was a difference between what I thought I had to do and what I ended up doing to find sobriety, recovery, and freedom.

What I thought I had to do was to find a few key ideas that I could implement in my life to take care of this one problem that I had of sexual acting out. What I actually had to do was to give my life to God (surrender it) and allow him to change whatever he wanted to about it. That process is still ongoing and progressive.

I started out wanting to maintain my position as the lord of my own life, but I perceived that I had this one glaring problem, my sexual acting out, and to that I was seemed to be a slave. I wanted to become strong enough to master my own impulses, to be able to fight a battle and win it myself, to be able to lust without consequence.

What I had to do was to admit defeat, admit that I could never become strong enough to master myself. I had to find a true Lord of my life who was Master over all, a Power that could and would do for me what I could not do for myself. The program of the 12 Steps gave me a path to follow to connect rightly with that Lord and Master, to be open to the work of his Power in me to do the impossible in me.

What I had wanted was a few simple actions I could take that required no serious commitment on my part to real change. I feared real change, because I perceived it would require me to give up things I didn't want to let go of and to do other things I really didn't want to do. (About that I was correct.)  The program people said, "We beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start."  When someone starts with that as the intro, you might want to pay attention to what comes next!

What changed for me that finally pushed me off the top, that finally broke me and my will, that finally made the idea of Someone else running my life look truly appealing? For me it was the internal, spiritual pain of loneliness and self-loathing, the demoralization that the program people talk about. It was the recognition that I was completely in bondage to lust with no way out in my own strength.

It turned out to be a sweet defeat. That's where I found God waiting for me.

The path to defeat was easy. All I had to do was to run my own life, my way, do whatever I thought was right and best for me, and follow after the pleasures of lust. Easy; anyone can do that! But the consequences were devastating.

The path to recovery turned out to be far easier than I had feared it would be. Yes, it was hard work to be "fearless and thorough" from the very start. Yes, there were times of painful recognition of who I had become and what I had done. Yes, there was the admission of wrongs and the humbling of making amends. Yes, "clearing away the wreckage" of my past took effort. Yes, I no longer had an "easy" drug to temporarily dull the pain that reality brought to me when I stopped living in the illusion. But it has been far, far easier to live life this way than the constant pain and fear and harm that my old way of life was loading me down with, a burden I could never bear.

Through following the SA road to recovery, Someone lifted that unbearable burden from me. His "burden" of living rightly connected to God and others is light. I am never sufficiently grateful.

It's Not Self-help

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

When I started out attending SA meetings, I was still thinking for myself and not ready to listen. I was looking for some ideas that I could pick from others to give me a set of tools that I could use to solve my own problem in my own way. I wanted to "help myself" to just as much of the program as I thought I wanted. I was still being my own god.

Sure, I've heard the 12 Step program (AA/SA) referred to as a "self-help" program plenty of times. It's not.

What the program is for me is a "God will" program. My part in this is to surrender to his will for me, moment by moment, and let him do whatever he wants with my life. Step 3 says that I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to care of God. The rest of the Steps are about keeping me in that attitude of surrender to God as a pattern for life. And as I've experienced how to stay connected rightly with God by working through all of those Steps, I know I can trust that "God will" continue to do for me what I cannot do, and to do with me whatever he thinks best.

The "self" in all of this is simply that which I must surrender to God. Sure, we will say it's "progress not perfection". But it's pretty hard to make good progress when you start out headed in the wrong direction. The 12 Steps, worked under the direction of a sponsor and not just my own sick thinking, are in the right direction.

The Humanly Impossible

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

On page 50, the Alcoholics Anonymous book has this to say about "the humanly impossible" (emph. mine).

   On one proposition, however, these [recovered] men and women are strikingly agreed. Every one of them has gained access to, and believe in, a Power greater than himself. This Power has in each case accomplished the miraculous, the humanly impossible. As a celebrated American statesman put it, “Let’s look at the record.”
   Here are thousands of men and women, worldly indeed. They flatly declare that since they have come to believe in a Power greater than themselves, to take a certain attitude toward that Power, and to do certain simple things, there has been a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking. In the face of collapse and despair, in the face of the total failure of their human resources, they found that a new power, peace, happiness, and sense of direction flowed into them. This happened soon after they wholeheartedly met a few simple requirements.  

What I like about that quote is that it goes beyond simple "believe-ism" and gets at the core of my problem. The core of my problem wasn't that I didn't believe in a Power greater than myself (God), it was that I was unwilling to "take a certain attitude toward that Power, and do certain simple things" that the sexaholics with real recovery, freedom from lust, and a changed life had done. But when I finally had been completely defeated by lust and fully experienced Step 1 (admitted and accepted powerlessness), I became willing to change my attitude toward God and do those certain simple things. And having connected rightly with God, he took care of the rest.

It works if you work it!

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

As they say at the close of a whole lot of SA meetings: "It works if you work it!" And then at some they add, "It won't if you don't!"

Yep, my story too. I spent a lot of years working "my program". My program wasn't the SA/AA program of the whole 12 Steps, and I certainly wasn't "fearless and thorough from the very start." (AABB Chapter 5)

Turns out that the SA program is simply the 12 Steps. The AA book makes it so simply clear when it says, "Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery," and then promptly list the 12 Steps.

So I finally admitted defeat and worked the 12 Steps as my sponsor told me to work them. And by the time I had gotten to Step 12, I had had what the SAWB talks about as a result of working the first eleven Steps.

"If a person is experiencing the reality of Steps One through Eleven, he or she is manifesting the truth of that new life."
"Staying sober is our initial objective; a spiritual awakening is the unintended result. If our experience tells us anything, it is that there is no healing without such an awakening. And the difference between merely not acting out our addiction (being "dry") and healing is the new life. If we want the old life intact, simply minus the habit, we don't really want healing, for our sickness is the old way of life." (SAWB p. 143)

At this time in my working of the Steps, I'm continuing to work Steps 10-12. Some people refer to these Steps as the maintenance Steps. You just never stop working them, since they become a new way of life for someone in recovery.

My Step 12 action last night was to meet with a new member who has asked me to sponsor him. We worked on Step One together. Then before going to bed, there was time for meditation through literature reading, and this morning there was more time for reading literature and prayer (Step 11), before my breakfast meeting with my spiritual growth partner. The ongoing program is still about working the 12 Steps, "to practice these principles in all our affairs." This is "that new life."

It works if you work it! It really does.

Does SA really work?

(the following is a post from one of our group members)

Does SA really work? The clear answer from my own life is yes. I know it works, because it has worked for me.

But does it work for everyone? The more nuanced answer is no. Our own literature makes it clear that SA is not for everyone. And as I read the SA literature, there are quite a number of "ifs" in there that make it very clear that there are plenty of reasons why it won't work for some people. "If" they won't work the program as it was designed, "if" they won't surrender to God, then I certainly don't expect "SA" to work for them.

It didn't work for me for a lot of years. But if I'm honest about that, that was really because I refused to work the SA program as it was designed to be worked. I was prideful, and I refused to turn my will and life over to the care of God. And without God, I had no hope in fighting and battling against the power of lust. But when I finally surrendered to God and worked the program as my sponsor told me to do it, I found freedom from the obsessions and compulsions. It worked!

And as the classic line we repeat at every meeting reminds me, "It works if you work it!"

Does it get any easier?

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

Someone asked me if it gets any easier as time passes. I have to think about what that question really means to me. I have to think about what it is I'm actually measuring and comparing between my past and my present.  

If the question is, "Does it get easier to fight against lust and temptations?", then the answer I must give is, "I really don't know, but I don't think so." Honestly I'm not trying to be a smart aleck. I don't try to fight against lust today like I used to. I surrender lust instead, because I sincerely believe that if I start fighting against lust again, if I start to try to control it myself again using my own strength, I will be back to acting out again. I am powerless over lust. It's that plain and simple for me. I believe I can honestly say that I have entirely accepted Step One as true for me. So for these sober years I've been in SA recovery, I really don't know how hard it is to fight lust. I just don't fight it, but I don't give into it either.

If the question I ask myself is, "Does it get easier to surrender lust to God and as a result be set free from the obsessions and compulsions?", then the answer is an unequivocal, "Yes!" That's what Steps Two through Twelve have opened the door to. That is what God has done because He "could and would if He were sought."

Has it been hard work on my part? Certainly! They don't say "play around with the Steps." No, as the saying goes, it only "works if you work it." But the positive results of working the Steps of the program and increasingly being connected rightly with God and others have extended well beyond the problem of lust. And it certainly has been worth it!

Recovery From the Internet - A personal story

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

I can relate to the impact of the advent of the internet on my sexual acting out. Yes, it wasn't easy for me to get any form of porn when I was a teenager. Not impossible, but really hard and always with a risk involved. Most of my lusting was creating the fantasy in my mind based on real people I saw or other "non-pornographic" images. But when the internet came on the scene and all of those blatantly pornographic images and video became easily available "in the privacy of my own home", the amount of time I began to spend and the range of my visual experimentation went right out the roof! It simply became easy to feed my addiction, and feed it I did!

As others have mentioned, I am also required to make use of the internet in my work life. And it is an important tool for me to use in many positive ways in my life. I would not have been able to work the SA steps with a sponsor without the use of at least Skype and email, since at that time I had no local way to connect to another SA member with sobriety that could sponsor me. I haven't used filter software in years, since I am knowledgeable and devious enough to have worked around this kind of software in the past.

Instead, today I surrender the Internet in the same way that I have and do continue to surrender my will and life to God. If I am online for the right reasons (i.e. if I can honestly answer to God for my being online), I have the freedom to use the Internet as a proper tool in my life for good purposes. When I'm online, it is with a purpose, and I continue to be aware of why I am where I am doing what I am doing there. I always think about what I am about to click on, including links sent to me by others in email and the like. The vast majority of what is going on in the rest of the world is of no importance to me today and doesn't need my attention or to be allowed to rent space in my head. Simply put, most of the time I don't need to know, so I just don't click. And I spend a lot less time on the Internet today than I did in my past acting out.

Surrender is what works for me, God running my life instead of me trying (failing) to run it on my own.