Getting Started in SA - A Personal Story

(This is a post from a member of our group.)

I "got started" in SA twice. The first time was way back when I was in my 20's.  I heard about SA, I found out where there was a meeting, and I went.  It was great.  I found lots of people like me.  

There were also a smaller number of people at the meeting who were not like me.  They were the sober ones.  They had recovery.  They had peace and joy.  They certainly did understand how it was for me, because they had been through the same experiences as me, and those experiences brought them to SA just like me.  But in SA, they had found a real solution.

I had not yet found a solution.  And so for the next 20 years, I went in an out of SA meetings, dabbling in the Steps, and relapsing often.  Sometimes I'd just give up entirely and resolve to the fact that I was never going to change.  At other times I tried a combination of SA meetings and other religious and counseling help.  Nothing I tried and nothing I came up with worked.

There came a day five and a half years ago when I "got started" all over again.  But this time was different.  I had finally had enough.  I had finally reached the point that our SA book talks about where I "really wanted to stop, but could not".  I was defeated, I was broken, I was hating myself, I was hopeless, and I was helpless.  Recovering people refer to this as a "pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization."  It was painful. And when that happened, I finally gave up doing things my way, surrendered to God by committing to find a sponsor and do whatever he told me to do.  And I knew enough to know that meant I'd be working the 12 Steps under his direction. 

How can someone get started in SA?  Go to meetings, find a sponsor who's worked the Steps and has what you want, and commit to doing whatever that sponsor says.  It's really that simple to get started in the SA program of recovery.

Origins and Solutions - A Personal Story

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

Something I read got me thinking again about the "origins" of my addiction, at least thinking about my past attempts to figure it out.

When I was in college I started seeing a counselor because of my sexual acting out behavior. I knew I had a problem, and I was looking for a solution. The way I figured it, therapy was supposed to help me discover why I had a problem so that I would then somehow "just know" how to be free of this problem. I was looking for the "knowledge-based" solution. Just tell me where this came from, and then I'd be able to do something about it.

Apparently either he was a bad counselor, or I was a bad client, but in either case, there was no obvious predisposing factor I could pin my sexual addiction on. Actually, I really did like him as a counselor, and he did a lot to help me in those years. But I did not find either an origin or a solution to my problem. Nothing I "discovered" about myself did anything to stop my sexual acting out.

To this day, I still don't know the "why" of it. I don't know where it came from. I don't have any specific memories of events that "caused" me to be this way. Nothing I've come up with. Maybe I'm an anomaly, but that no longer matters to me either.

But I know without the least doubt the "what" of it: I am a sexaholic. I am what I am. I can't cut it out of me. I can't will it away. I can't think it away. I can't gain enough understanding or knowledge to "beat it". Because "it" is me. I've had to just accept and embrace what I am: a sex addict who is powerless over lust, who's life had become unmanageable.

But in working the program of the 12 Steps with a sponsor alongside other addicts, I have had a "spiritual awakening" in which I have begun to connect rightly with God and others. And as I connect rightly with God and others in the moments of life as life comes to me, I am given the gifts of sobriety and recovery. God is doing for me what I could not do for myself.

Simply put, the God of my understanding "could and would if He were sought." So I seek Him through surrendering in this 12 Step program of action, and He takes care of "the addict" who is me. And that's been working when nothing else has.