First face-to-face meeting

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

I recall my first face to face meeting, which was a long time ago in a place far, far away. But I still remember it quite clearly.

What surprised me when I walked into that room was that there were a few women among the more than twenty people there. I was a bit shocked and wondered to myself how it would be to talk about sexual problems in a room that included women.

Turned out that it really was no problem at all, particularly when over time (fairly quickly) I got to know those women and realized that everybody was there with the same root problem and the same potential solution. The details didn't matter at all, and in fact, the details typically just got in the road of what we needed to be talking about and doing for sobriety.

It didn't matter in the end what my or anyone else's particular attractions, struggles, perversions, or acting out behaviors actually were. The core problem was spiritual, the mis-connection with God and others. The common solution was also spiritual, connecting rightly with God and others by working the Steps under the guidance of a sponsor.

Now in my case it took me a lot more years and a lot more pain before I became willing to really surrender to that God, but that's another story.

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.