My name is Bill and I’m a grateful and recovering sexaholic, actively involved in SA for almost ten years. I’ve been blessed with the grace to maintain sobriety, and by all appearances seemed to be working a solid program. However, somewhere along the path in the last few years, complacency set in. I began tolerating certain lust-based behaviors, particularly toxic web-surfing. Inevitably, the frequency increased, the intervals of being clean decreased, and the content of my viewing got worse. All while going to meetings, regularly checking-in with my sponsor, doing daily renewals, sponsoring, etc., and without violating the bottom line of sex with self or anyone besides my wife.

After some furtive behavior of my part, my wife asked me if I’d gone back to using pornography. I had to admit that I had. With further confrontation, it became clear that I was in full-blown relapse. As a result, and after much turmoil and anguish, I reset my sobriety date and re-assessed my program of recovery. Among other measures, I decided to write a First Step.

The format I used was the one I was taught and gave away in my first year of recovery. There are four sections for each behavior. The first simply identifies it. The second attempts to quantify the behavior’s frequency, duration, and intervals between occurrences. The next section describes the perceived benefits: why did I do it? The fourth turns it around and assesses the true cost of the behavior.

As my writing continued, I decided to add a fifth section which I call “Status.” In this section, I sought to get current with where I was in the behavior, and how I’d done since my new sobriety date. I also outlined steps I had taken or was taking to deal with that issue. And I mentioned any ongoing questions about the behavior that I had.

After detailing each behavior thusly, I realized that I had written mostly about the cost to me. While the individual behaviors seemed minor in their impact on others, collectively these actions had the subtlety of a train wreck on the lives of those I most love. So I wrote paragraphs on the cost to God, my wife, my kids, my parents, my church, my employers, my sponsees and fellow SAs, and others. This was painful and convicting.

I found this writing to be an amazing, difficult, revealing and grounding experience. I highly recommend it to anyone who did a First Step long ago and has since been struggling with recurring lust-based behaviors.

What have I learned about myself and recovery?

• This program works if you work it. By applying the principles and strategies I’ve learned in SA, God enabled me to almost immediately shut down the majority of my relapse activity.

• My ability to self-deceive is limitless. The condition of my recovery became clear to me in an instant, but only when one of these behaviors was revealed to my wife and I saw it from her perspective.

• I had placed too much stock in my status and accomplishments in recovery. Being an “elder statesman” in the program was way too precious to me.

• If I focus on actions, there will always be wiggle-room, shades of gray and new possibilities. If I put the spotlight on the attitude and posture of my spirit, the behaviors will follow.

• I still have a lot to learn. While the years of experience have value and I’ve come a long way, I’m back to being a student, with unresolved questions.

• If I act out (by any definition), people get hurt. Yet so often in the moment of decision, I cannot remember this.

I live in a society where technology and media make it inevitable that I will be exposed to images and verbiage that is dangerous for me (even if I do everything in my power to avoid it); that half of the world’s adult population has anatomy that intrigues me and that a significant percentage of that group dresses so that I’ll notice it; that I have enough memories of erotic or sex-tinged pictures, experiences, literary and verbal input to keep me intoxicated for life; that somewhere deep in my psyche remains the core instinct that all my problems can be solved by some sexual experience. Based on this, I’d say I am powerless over lust and sexual acting out. I need God.