The Solution

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

Recently our local group read "The Solution" on pages 204-205 in the Sexaholics Anonymous book. Those two pages are a great summary of the process of working the 12 Steps.

I noticed that the first sentence starts with "We saw that our problem...." Yes, we certainly have a problem, a seemingly impossible problem, a problem of being powerless over lust with no way to escape. That was my problem, and my problem brought me to SA.

Fortunately it doesn't stop there, mired in the problem forever. As we read on, my mind drifted to a short paragraph in the first section of the SA book titled "To the Newcomer". Here is that paragraph from page 2: 

"We have a solution. We don't claim that it's for everybody, but for us, it works. If you identify with us and think you may share our problem, we'd like to share our solution with you."

I am so grateful that the SA solution was available to me when I was completely demoralized and without hope of ever being free of my slavery to lust and sexual acting out. As one of our members likes to summarize it, the SA program is to work the 12 Steps as directed by a sponsor within the fellowship of the group. And that worked for me, thank God!

The final paragraph in "The Solution" summary section shows me what we can look forward to when we've have had the promised "spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps" mentioned in Step 12.

"We began practicing a positive sobriety, taking the actions of love to improve our relations with others. We were learning how to give; and the measure we gave was the measure we got back. We were finding what none of the substitutes had ever supplied. We were making the real Connection. We were home."

It feels great to be at home, living in a right connection with God and others. Yes, I did have to walk the Steps to get there, and those Steps were hard work and sometimes painful to take. But it certainly was worth it to find freedom by surrendering to God. 

Moral Decline

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

I remember very well the progressive nature of my addiction to lust and the increasingly deviant thoughts and behavior that were part of that disheartening moral decline. I crossed many lines and violated personal boundaries that I had claimed I believed for myself. It did me no good to later try to justify and rationalize my character defects. Eventually being overwhelmed by the evidence that I was never going to be free from my slavery to lust and my sexual acting out was what it took to reach the point of despair in which I became willing to go to any length, to do whatever it takes to be set free. I couldn't do that, but God could and would.

The SA book says this stuff better than I can. The whole chapter on "The Spiritual Basis of Addiction" is amazing in its ability to cut through my denial about who and what I had become. Step 4 took me through a "moral inventory" that laid bare the wrongs I had done to myself and others. I had to fearlessly face the person I had become, accept the truth about who I really was, and that process was painful.

From the book: 

"God has apparently not chosen to eradicate my defective self so that I am no longer capable of lust, resentment, fear, and the rest. If he ever did that, I'd have no need of Him; I'd be an automaton. It's progressive victory over my defects that's the name of the game. I myself am what could be called a "sinner." But I take from God the power I do not have in myself to transcend my sins. Victory through powerlessness by the grace of God!

"That's the beautiful paradox of this program: In and through my powerlessness, I receive the power—and love— that come from above.

"And that's the difference between self-denial and surrender. Self-denial—white-knuckling it—brought misery and failure. Acknowledging what I am, surrendering, and relying on God's power bring release, freedom, and joy." (p. 168)

Surrender was the key that I had always been missing. I think that I could not see it because my pride said that I had to take care of this mess myself, that I had to fix myself. But I could not. I was powerless. But thank God that it is "victory through powerlessness by the grace of God!".

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."

The real problem

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

Lust was my "drug of choice". I used it as the solution to all my problems. But then lust became a problem instead of a solution. And then I couldn't stop lusting, even when I wanted to.

I used to think that my sexual acting out behaviors were my real problem, but they weren't. Those resulted from my lusting, and when I'm not lusting, the acting out behavior simply doesn't happen. And actually lust also isn't my real problem. Trying not to lust didn't solve my real problem, and attempting to fight lust proved to be impossible anyway.

But what was possible was to work through the 12 Steps of the SA program under the direction of a sponsor. And when I did that as my sponsor suggested I do it, I began to make the right connection with God through surrender to him, and I finally had a real solution too my real problem. My real problem was actually my misconnection with God and others.

How I got started on real recovery was to get a sponsor and follow his instructions. Up until I was willing to do that, "sobriety" was only temporary at best.

The program works, IF you work it!