Sober is Not Well

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

Recently in our local meeting we read through the chapter on Step Ten and shared our own experience with that Step. After taking us through the first nine Steps, the book's explanation of Step 10 takes us back to the reminder that sobriety is not the end goal. Here's what it says:

Sober Is Not Well

....
It is possible that, once relieved of the compulsion to act out our habit, we may feel cured and start coasting along with our tank on EMPTY. But the same personality defects that energized our addiction are still with us and, unattended, will take their toll again, sooner or later. Why are they still with us? Because they are us. Progressive victory over these defects, not their eradication, is the power of God at work in us. What we really do battle against is not other people but our old natures, the negative force within us we can obey anytime we wish, the force that is always willing and able to wrong another. This is why our program must come to fruition in our daily living or there is no recovery. (p. 130-131; final emph. mine)

I started off in SA by going to local meetings and "fellowshipping" with a group of guys after the meeting (hanging out, drinking coffee and eating pie). That was pretty much all I did for what I called "my program". I did read the SA book, and I did have some vague notion that working the Steps was what people who were serious about recovery did, but I was looking for sobriety in the easiest way I could get it, and those 12 Steps looked like really serious work, something I typically avoided. (And no kidding, they are serious work!)

Some people like to say "Step 4 separates the women from the girls and the men from the boys." There's something to that, but stopping short of working all of the Steps all of the way through to the "spiritual awakening" we are promised in Step 12 meant relapse was an inevitability for me. That's because I stopped short of the intended life-changing experience of connecting rightly with God, the Power that would keep me sober by continuing to change my attitudes and my whole life.

The problem for me early on was that any "success" in staying sober was evidence to me that I was getting it right and doing enough. I was under the delusion that I was gaining some level of control back from my powerlessness and unmanageability, and I was "measuring" that by my length of physical sobriety. I was thinking like a child, playing a child's game. ("Hey, look at that; I'm staying sober more days than I'm acting out!") That did not work.

"Sober is not well." And until I committed to working all of the Steps under the direction of a sponsor, I had not even taken Step 3! (My sponsor explained to me that Step 3 was a commitment to working the rest of the Steps.) That did eventually happen, but that was many years later after the "child's game" wasn't any fun anymore, and I was sick of myself and completely defeated in my efforts to do things my way and get "sober" without addressing the wrongs I had done to others and the character defects that kept me doing those wrongs over and over again.

The program of SA is designed to be a life-changing experience. It is in daily actions of living a new life of surrender of my whole self to God that I can be assured of his power over lust and over my character defects that so easily can drag me back down. This statement is so very true: "If I don't change, my sobriety date will."

"The Steps never freed anyone...."

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

I was attending a conference of another Step program recently. Since I had been hosting the keynote speaker in my home, I had a lot of time to talk with him about the freedom we experience as we connect to the Power that frees us from the bondage of our past. It was truly exciting to see how each of us had come to the same place in our journeys even though we had started from two very different perspectives.

He shared a statement in one of his talks that I fully agree with because it has been my experience as well. He said, "The steps have never freed anyone from their bondage; only God can do that." That happened for me as I began to truly experience my own surrender to God and as I continue to grow in that surrender.

When I first started to attend SA meetings a very long time ago, I was not truly ready to surrender to God. What I wanted to do was run my own life my own way and have God boost me up just enough to get over this obsession and compulsion in which I felt so completely bound. I wanted freedom without having to actually surrender anything. But apparently for this addict, and many others I know, this is not possible. I had to surrender to God, and I had to have his power in order to find real freedom. 

I had seen this happening in the lives of some of the members of the SA groups I attended, so I figured they had figured out how to control lust themselves. But when I tried that, it didn't work. The truth is it doesn't work. That's not what they did. What they did was to truly surrender their lust and their will and their life to God. It wasn't the Steps that gave them power, it was God. The Steps showed them a path to connect rightly with God in order to have his power at work in their lives.

And now I can say that I have had that experience as well. God can and will continue to do for me what I can not do for myself as I surrender to and connect with the Power that frees me.

"My" recovery plan

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

Something I heard recently at a meeting caught my attention. The person was talking about having a recovery plan. I got to thinking about all the recovery plans I had made for myself.

No, they didn't work. If I had to boil it down to the main reason, they didn't work because they didn't make the surrender of my will and life to the care of God the very most important decision that had to be made. Those plans were all designed by me to keep me in control of my own life. They were supposed to make me strong enough to stand up to lust, take control of lust, and use just as much lust as I wanted without things going too far.

Insanity! Lust is my drug. I am a sexaholic, someone addicted to lust. I can't plan on controlling it or controlling myself (managing the unmanageable) without another Power coming to bear on my  problem.

That Power is God.  Connecting with that Power is the purpose of the 12 Steps. The "recovery plan" has already been laid out in plain language for anyone who is ready to take direction from a sponsor and work the program as it is suggested by AA/SA. I didn't come up with it, but I worked it. And it works!

Terminally unique

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

One of the problems I had early on when I started in Sexaholics Anonymous was that I thought I had to understand everything, figure everything out, and design something that was just for me in order to have a program that would work just for me. I suffered from a malady others have referred to as being "terminally unique". It was just another variation on being selfish, being prideful, having to be in control, and being fearful of actually having to change.

The solution turned out to be the same "boring" suggestions I hear from recovering s-aholics and alcoholics everywhere: go to meetings, get a sponsor, work the Steps. I had to stop wasting my time worrying about and planning for how I was going to solve all my problems. I simply had to start doing what the sober, recovering people had done and were doing. But as long as I tried to stay in control, figure it out and avoid change, I stayed wallowing in the problem.

Freedom is so much better.

The Maze of Addiction

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

Being an addict can feel like you are in a maze. And trying to start recovery can feel the same way, especially when you think you are headed in the right direction, but something's still wrong. The Sexaholics Anonymous book puts it this way:

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 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. (p. 61)

When I started out in the SA program, it was like I was in the middle of a maze of really high bushes. I first started in SA by going to local face-to-face meetings. I didn't have a clue about what eventually was going to be needed to get out of the maze I had lost myself in. I needed help, because I "couldn't see the path ahead." That I thought I could see the path clearly enough to take it on my own was part of the insanity that kept me from taking the Steps in the right direction right from the beginning. So I wandered around in that maze, mostly taking one or two steps in some direction that looked good to me, but then returning to my starting point having made no real progress for all my effort.

There were people in the meetings who clearly had gotten out of the maze. They were at peace. They seemed to be somewhere above the maze, able to look down at it from some other vantage point, able to describe the path out that they had taken.

I wanted to be where they were, but I also wanted to find my own way out of the maze, to "self-help" my own path out. For me that mostly meant shuffling around a bit with the first Step or two of the program, doing little more than kicking up a little dust. I definitely wasn't ready or willing to take each Step in the same way that those others who had gone before me had taken them.

When I finally got sick enough of myself, I was ready to become just humble enough to take the Steps out of the maze as someone else suggested I take them. That "someone" was what our program calls a sponsor. And the Steps he led me through brought me into a right and growing relationship with God, the one Power that could and would keep me sober and restore me to sanity, one day at a time.

SA has a solution. We admit it's not for everyone, but it does work. It is summarized and introduced in the section from which I copied that one paragraph above. That section is called "The Solution", introduced on pages 61-62 of the SA book. As good as reading about it is, what really works is taking the 12 Steps under the direction of a sponsor and having a "spiritual awakening" to God, which really is the whole point of the program, even if I didn't understand that from the beginning, and even if I didn't believe it from the beginning.

"The Toughest Act in Town"

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

Steps 1-3 brought me into the SA program (vs. just participating in meetings). Steps 4-9 under the guidance of a sponsor took me though the process of reconciling with my past and connecting rightly with God and others. Steps 10-12 keep me in right relationship with God and others and show me a path ahead to keep growing spiritually.

The Sexaholics Anonymous book introduces Steps 4-10 by titling them "The Toughest Act in Town". (p. 97)  Nobody is saying these Steps are not hard work! But I agree wholeheartedly that they are necessary for real growth to happen (vs. just working Steps 1-3 and just staying sober). "Sadly, many men and women with years of physical sobriety in Twelve Step programs never make the breakthrough into the heart of the program and true recovery. The biggest obstacle seems to be Steps Four through Ten—the core substance of the program." (SAWB p. 97)

Steps 4-9 provided me with some painful experiences, completely necessary pain if I was ever going to grow up and face reality. The thorough inventory work on my past (Step 4), confession of my wrongs to myself, God and my sponsor (Step 5), and facing my many character defects honestly enough to really want to be rid of them (Step 6), could not be called "happy days".  But finishing that process by taking it through to the direct amends to others in Step 9 meant that I really could "clear away the wreckage" of my past.

I no longer have to hide from myself and other. I know I can admit my wrongs to myself, God and others. I know that God loves me and will continue to do for me what I can't do for myself. I know that I have done (am doing) what I can to make things right with others. That "dreadful load of guilt" has dropped from my shoulders. I can "lift my head, look the world in the eye, and stand free." None of that could have happened without working Steps 4-9.

Selfishness and being a victim

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

Here's an important principle for me to remember: "Selfishness - self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt." (AABB p. 62)

Before working the Steps of this program, I was pretty good at living in the self-delusion that I wasn't really being selfish, because I could convince myself (and often others as well) that I was the one who was wronged. I could point out that I had the right to stand up for myself and protect myself. I was in the right and didn't deserve the treatment that I got.

Doing Step 4 inventory work and sharing that with my sponsor helped change that delusion. By the time I reached the final column on the inventory sheet, everything else had been stripped away, and I was only left with admitting my wrongs in each and every situation. In the end, it didn't matter what anyone else had done. It was clear that "selfishness - self-centeredness" was at the root of my troubles, even when I had convinced myself that I had been wronged and had a right to hold onto my resentment.

The SA program is all about working the 12 Steps. My experience is that working those Steps really was the start of a new way of life in which I'm set free from lust and selfishness as I surrender those to God. The Steps have led to a "freedom I could otherwise never know."

A Simple Program

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

My sponsor likes to say this about the SA program: "It's a simple program for complicated people." I really like that, especially because it is very true.

I spent a lot of time "in SA" but not working the Steps under the direction of a sponsor. I wanted to work them my way. I didn't stay sober. I wasn't happy, joyous, and free from the bondage of my addiction.

Everything changed when I had been thoroughly defeated by the addiction, and I had no other option but to give up and do what the sober members had done: work the 12 Steps under the direction of a sponsor.

Yes, it is God who keeps me sober. But working the Steps as my sponsor directed me to do them brought me to a right relationship with that God. And I can now say that I am happy, joyous and free!

Even though it is a simple program, it does work, if you work it.

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.

Being ready for the 12 Steps

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

On pages 206-207 in the SA book there is a lengthy quote from the AA book appropriately titled "From Chapter Five Of Alcoholics Anonymous". It ends with a listing of the 12 Steps. But in introducing the reader to those Steps, the book first says this:

"Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps. 

"At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas, and the result was nil until we let go absolutely."

There is an important "if..., then" statement in that first paragraph that jumps out at me every time I read it. "If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps." (emph. mine)

For me, there was no positive virtue within myself that brought me to the point that I really wanted what the sober sexaholics had and was ready to go to any length to get it. I reached that conclusion because constantly living in the lie of my lust and sexual acting out had become too painful for me to bear. I had reached the tipping point where the lust drug was causing more pain than pleasure. I wanted out of the mess I had made, but I had clearly proven that I could not do it on my own, or do it my own way. I could not stand being me anymore.

I needed what someone else had. I needed freedom, but I couldn't break free. What I wanted was what my sponsor and other recovering sexaholics had, and I was finally willing to go to any length to get it. I was finally ready to trust a sponsor and take those 12 Steps just as he had. I let go of my old ideas, and as fearlessly and thoroughly as I could, I worked those "certain steps." And by doing that I was brought into a right relationship with God who can and who will keep me sober.

Giving up

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

I had some things I had to give up in order to find sobriety, recovery and freedom from lust and sexual acting out.

• I gave up fighting lust.
• I gave up struggling against lust.
• I gave up doing things my own way.
• I gave up designing my own program for recovery.
• I gave up the illusion that I knew what was best for me.

Instead, I got a sponsor and worked the 12 Steps of the SA program as he suggested and as described in the AA Big Book.

And I've heard a whole lot of stories by people who have years of sobriety that they did the exact same thing. And I've heard a whole lot of stories by people who are still trying to do those things I gave up trying to do, and sobriety, recovery and freedom still escape them.

There really is a solution, but it requires that I give up my own way of doing things in order to experience it.

Is porn the problem?

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

For me, the problem isn't really porn or masturbation or any other particular form of sexual acting out behavior. It's about lust. Sometimes I think it would be better to call our program Lust Addicts Anonymous.

If I am not lusting, I will not turn to porn or masturbation or sex. But because I am an SA, if I am lusting , I will inevitably end up acting out sexual behaviors (which for me includes porn use and masturbating). Focusing on avoiding porn is a solution that is doomed to failure for me as a true addict. Porn use is a result of my lusting, not the cause of it.

For the SA, lust is the drug. God is the solution. The 12 Step program is the path to a right relationship with God, who can and will keep a surrendered lust addict sober.

That's my experience.

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!

Taking the Steps

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

I heard someone at a meeting share an analogy about taking a flight of steps in order to get through a door at the top. That image got me thinking.

Looking back at my history with SA, I can see that I spent years with the "crowd" that was milling around at the bottom of the steps. We went to meetings and participated in the sharing, but we didn't take the steps. We stayed below the doors just looking up the steps at the people who actually were walking up the steps. We saw people going through those doors, doors that opened to a new way of life, doors that led to serenity, peace, and freedom. But we weren't even sitting on the steps yet; we hadn't even started to trudge up those steps.

I felt good going to meetings in those early years. There was a sense of companionship being part of the crowd not yet taking the "Steps". It felt good to be with others who understood me and my obsessions and compulsions. People would listen to me as I shared about my latest failure to stay sober. In that crowd, failing to stay sober was the norm, so I felt right at home.

But it did me no good whatsoever to remain in the crowd at the bottom of the Steps and to not listen to the voice of someone who had reached the top and was offering to tell me how to take those Steps like he had. And until the pain of being me became a great enough motivator, I wasn't ready to leave the crowd. I wouldn't listen, and I wouldn't start taking those simple but hard Steps that led to freedom.

But thank God, the pain become enough, and I finally did take those Steps!

Taken by Step One

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

SA's Step One: "We admitted that we were powerless over lust -- that our lives had become unmanageable."

On page 87 of the Sexaholic Anonymous "White Book" it goes on to says this:

This is why "telling all" is not taking the First Step. Such confession can be anything from boastful replay to anguished dumping or intellectual analysis. And even then, it's not really "all" and often is only surface material. In truth, we don't "take" the First Step; it takes us. It overtakes us. And if it hasn't yet, hopefully it will. The sickness and punishment sexaholism produces inside us keep pounding us until we're ready to give up, let go, and know we are powerless over lust.

The first time I made an effort to work Step One was probably back in 1989. I had a look at some material about how to do it, asked a few questions, and then proceeded to try to do it my way by writing out a "Step One Inventory". I polished it up, and with quite a few months of sobriety already (it might have been a whole year), I shared what I had written in our local meeting. I can look back and see that person and remember the pride with which I shared that inventory, basking in the attention of the group, receiving the "good job" congratulations after the meeting ended.

But regardless of how well I had followed the formula to prepare and share, I had not yet taken the First Step. And it should come as no surprise that I had many more years of relapses and acting out ahead of me before I would finally have a true Step One experience. As with everything else in this program, it's an inside job and it all starts with proper attitude that will then lead to proper action. Step One happens in the heart.

When I returned to SA more than six years ago, I was a very different man. I had been beaten. I had been humiliated (but not yet humble). I had already been to the point of despair. I had several months of tenuous sobriety when I finally became just humble enough to ask for someone to sponsor me. I knew that my ongoing sobriety and true recovery depended on working the Steps the way that had worked for some other SA who was sober and in recovery. I knew I needed help, and I needed to stop relying on myself, because I was powerless over lvst and my life had become unmanageable. I knew I had to take direction and do what I was told was good for me whether I understood it or not.

So six years ago when I started with my sponsor, in all honesty it didn't really matter what he suggested I do to work Step One. My Step One experience was already done. Rather than me doing anything, it had happened to me. The admission was already complete. I had been taken.