I'm sick

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

I'm a lust addict. I am a sick person. All sorts of odd things can be triggers and temptations to me. I'm not like "normal" people for whom those things would be no big deal. I am that sick.

But I get a daily reprieve from my sickness based on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. For me that means that I stay rightly connected to God by surrendering those triggers and temptations and my insane thinking and my will and my life to Him. I learned how to do that by working the 12 Steps of the SA program under the direction of a sponsor. That is what the literature of SA suggested that I do if I wanted sobriety, recovery, serenity, and freedom from slavery to lust. As far as I've ever been able to figure out, SA actually doesn't offer any solution other than working those 12 Steps under the guidance of a sponsor.

My experience is that the program of working the 12 Steps simply works. And I know a lot of other people for whom it worked just like that as well.  I also know through my experience that everything I came up with on my own as a means of getting rid of my sickness didn't work. So I just accepted that I was sick enough that I had to do what had actually worked for all those other "sick" people who were now living in freedom one day at a time.

It would have done me well to realize how sick I was a long time ago so that I could finally give up, let go, and let God. But I guess I needed more time to experience more pain first. But whatever the reasons are that I refused to really work the 12 Steps way back when I went to me first SA meeting, I'm really happy that I finally did.

Daily reminders

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

I'm reminded every day that I am a lust addict. It starts in the morning as I take time to connect with God at the beginning of the day and I remind myself as a habit when I pray that I am an addict. It continues during the day when some random temptation or trigger comes my way and reminds me that I am a lust addict. It also reminds me that I can connect with God in the midst of that trigger or temptation and make good use of what used to drive me to fear and panic. It now drives me to God. And that's a good thing. So it's good to be a recovering addict. I've grown and changed in ways that I don't think I could have if I wasn't an addict.

I used to desperately want to be rid of my addiction. I wanted the addiction gone and to never return. I wanted to be an "ex-addict" for whom sexual temptation no longer held any attraction. I wanted to be rid of "the addict", to cut that part of me out and get rid of it once and for all. I wanted an instant and permanent cure so that I could just be a "normal guy."

I wanted so many things, including wanting my will regarding my addiction to be done.  I told God what I wanted, and when He didn't deliver, I began doubting Him.

But God apparently knew better. He offered a different solution. In this solution, I still am a lust addict. Temptations and triggers are still real. I sometimes have what seems like the most random memories or thoughts pop into my head. (Apparently my brain still holds all those memories and thoughts somewhere.) In the real world there are real temptations for me to face.

But I do not have to live in fear of any of that. I have "a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition."  By working the program of the 12 Steps under the direction of a sponsor, I have become rightly connected with God, the Power greater than myself, who can and will keep me sober as I surrender my will and life and temptations and triggers to Him.

So I have embraced being a lust addict instead of continuing to fight it. It is not a separate part of me that I can be rid of. It is who I am. I am a sexaholic, and I am living free from the power of lust one day at a time because God keeps me sober.

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.

Accepting Others & The Solution - Personal Story

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

I appreciate the reminders I get of how my life is so much better when I finally give up trying to change other people.  I continue to learn that attempting to change other people is simply a battle I can not win, and as such, all I succeed in doing is to frustrate myself and others when I try to do it. It's just one of those "accept the things I can not change" situations.

Granted, if someone really wants my help because they are really ready to change and will go to any length to do that, that's a different story. In that case I need to be unselfish enough to actually offer the experience, hope and strength that I've been given because of what God has been doing for me, and because of the help I got from other people in the program. Specifically, I can try to suggest that there is a solution that works if someone is willing to work it.

And I don't think it can be said too often that the solution is to get a sponsor and follow the sponsor's directions to work the 12 Steps as a means to connect rightly with God (who keeps me sober) and others (which means I don't have nearly as much pressure/temptations/triggers to return to the lust drug I used addictively for decades).

I guess it really is a simple program. It's just 12 simple Steps that if taken with the right attitude of surrender, result in a life-changing, spiritual awakening. Yeah, it's hard work, but it's worth it.

Why I Acted Out - A Personal Story

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

I'm reminded by something I read in the Alcoholics Anonymous book that we don't decide for someone else whether or not they are an addict. (And then they gave a suggested test for "potential" alcoholics who want to try to find out for themselves, which involved some more drinking.)  So all I can say is what is true for me, someone who has concluded without a doubt that I am a sexaholic.

I acted out to deal with stress. I acted out to avoid feelings. I acted out to escape from life. I acted out to have a fantasy world to live in. I acted out to punish myself. I acted out to reward myself. I acted out to prepare for the day. I acted out to help me get to sleep. I acted out because the sex I engaged in two minutes ago wasn't the fantasy I wanted it to be. I acted out because I was bored. I acted out to heighten dull emotions. I acted out to heighten already heightened emotions. I acted out to bring myself out of the dumps. I acted out because I liked how it felt. I acted out because I just acted out and I was feeling awful about it. I acted out because it made me feel in control of something. I acted out because it made me my own god. I acted out because of the intrigue, the tease and the forbidden. I acted out because I believed it was impossible not to, so I might as well get it over with. I acted out for myriad of other reasons.

But whatever might be the particular reason at any particular moment, in the end, I acted out because I am a sexaholic. And that means for me that acting out is what inevitably follows my lusting. And I couldn't stop, even when I wanted to.

And then finally when I was really ready to be done with acting out, I surrendered to God and to this simple program of working the 12 Steps under the direction of a sponsor.  And now I am no longer acting out.

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.

Lying to Myself - A Personal Story

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

Before working the Steps of the SA program, it was so easy for me to lie to myself.  There was so much of that kind of dishonest thinking revealed in my Step 4 inventories as I worked through the 12 Steps with my sponsor.  My sponsor taught me that I lie to myself primarily in four ways: illusion, delusion, rationalization, and justification.  Making decisions particularly when I'm rationalizing and justifying my bad plan of action, is just going to make it more likely that I end up regretting a relapse.

I now surrender any thought of doing anything that even has a whiff of lust.  I'm powerless over lust.  If I purposefully put myself into situations in which I'm entertaining the possibility of acting out, I will indeed end up acting out.  It's what I do, because I am a sexaholic.

The bottom line for me today is that I seriously do "desire to stop lusting, and become sexually sober."  That's the only requirement to be a member in SA, and there isn't any point to not taking that commitment seriously.  So that means I must be honest with myself and surrender to God those lustful thought I used to entertain while I was trying to tell myself that I could handle them.