(The following is an extract from a talk given by Roy K. at the Socio-Psychosomatic Clinic in Bad Herrenalb, Germany, in November 1985. Roy’s audience consisted primarily of members of 12-Step Fellowships.)

These Steps are not for everybody. They’re not for everyone that needs them, they’re for those who want them. And for those who are willing to pay the price. So in any group like this, there are people who are not willing to pay the price. We just accept that. All of my remarks are directed at those who I hope want and are willing to pay the price for the great treasure that these Steps promise.

What I want to do is read the Steps slowly and try to give you my feeling on the essence of each Step from where I am today. Step One: We admitted we were powerless over lust — that our lives had become unmanageable.

What is the essence of this Step? It is “I can’t do it. I can’t do it.” But there has to be something I can’t do. This Step is meaningless unless there is something I can’t do. Do you have something today that you are absolutely powerless over? I want us to close our eyes for just a moment and I want you to see in your heart and say in your mind what you are powerless over right now.

“I can’t do it” is the essence of Step One. “I give up.” You say you are powerless over something, but have you given up? Have you given up today? That is the only question there is in the Twelve Step Program. If you haven’t given up, forget the rest of it. The rest is going to be an academic exercise.

Step Two: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. When I came into AA, that power for me was the group. I saw that the group — the people in the group — were staying sober. Somehow a power larger than myself was making it happen. And this was the beginning of that inner voice of mine that said, “I now belong.” So let me ask you the question: Have you become part of a fellowship? Not just going to meetings. Have you come to believe that there is a Power working in this fellowship that is making happen what could not happen in Step One? Is that happening for you?

Step Three: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. In the First Step, I said: “I can’t do it. I give up.” But that’s not enough. The completion of the surrender which is Steps One, Two and Three is “I give me up.”

I used to capitulate to my self-wants or to the woman. I have to be willing to give me up to the Higher Power. No man can serve two masters. Giving myself to God is different to giving myself to a lover or even to my wife.

Today the question in your heart has to be: Do you want something from this weekend? Do you want something from this clinic? Do you want something from your group? Your group can’t give it to you. I can’t give it to you. This clinic can’t give it to you. Have you surrendered your will and your life to God?

Let’s take advantage of this time together and try something. There’s going to be one point in each of our hearts today that I call “the sticking point.” That will be the only thing in our consciousness that we have to surrender at this moment. There will be other things; but it’s one thing at a time.

So what I’d like to have us do is to hold hands in a circle, sitting, and do the surrender of Steps One, Two and Three. [A pause as everyone joins hands.] We’re going to keep it simple and focus on the one thing that’s the worst, the most impossible in your life right now. Whatever it is, you don’t have to tell the person next to you. It’s your secret. You can’t do it. God can do it. I give myself up now and cast myself onto Him. Don’t worry about the consequences. In your heart you know what you have to give up.

As you come to Step Three in your heart now, you can say something like: My God, You know that I don’t want to give this up. Help me to be willing to be willing. I want to say, Thy will, not mine be done. I want to give my will and my life to You.

The taking of the Twelve Steps is a very private work.

Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. What does this tell me? It tells me that I will now start looking at the truth about myself. The question is not so much who I am, but what I am. And also, What have I done?

There’s a new scientific journal that deals with death and dying. And one topic this journal deals with is what’s called “panoramic memory.” There are stories in the journal by people that have experienced this. For example, a man is climbing in the Alps and falls from a great height, and knows he’s going to die. You know how we know that it’s finished? But he survives. When he came to, this man wrote down what happened inside him on the way down. He had all of his life actually pass before him.

There seem to be many scientifically documented experiences like this. This fact seems to be in the subconscious of the human race. I know that I have within me everything I have ever done. Judgement is within me right now. Step Four means I want to start looking at the truth about myself today — what I am and what I have done. I want to do it now because I put it off with my drugs for so many years, I almost didn’t make it. I don’t want to be surprised. And you know what you give me? In our meetings, week after week, you let me bring my final judgement ahead of time. You let me see it, face it.

So, what are you facing today? Are you able to really look at yourself today? In our SA book we have the parable of the man being chased by the wild elephant. To escape, he takes refuge in a well. Are you willing to face your wild elephant today? Are you willing to turn around and look at him? That’s the terror we’ve been running from and drugging ourselves from. It’s that part of ourselves we’re not willing to see. Step Four —have you written it out?

Step Five: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our — (what?)! Who put that word “wrongs” in there? I thought this was a self-help Program? [Laughter] But there it is — the exact nature of my wrongs.

The Twelve Step Program is not for everybody. I’m as sick as my secrets, as we say in AA. But I can only do Steps Four and Five if I have done Steps One, Two and Three. I really can’t cheat. I’m blind until I do Steps One, Two and Three. Bill W. of AA calls it “the deflation of the ego.” When Step Three was written originally, the words “on our knees” were added.

Step Six: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Step Seven: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. These Steps really are one. The shortcomings and defects are all tied in together. This is where I send it away to God. The question today is: Am I willing to send away this sticking point, this one thing, to God?

Step Eight: Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Step Nine: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. In Steps Eight and Nine, we make right the wrongs that had to do with other people. In Steps Four, Five, Six and Seven, we are willing and we send away our wrongs, but in Eight and Nine, it’s very specific.

Why do I have to right the wrongs that I’ve done to other people? They’ve probably forgotten all about it.

Let me tell you of an SA member in the very first year of SA. This man started his Fourth Step on resentments. It’s the most unusual case I’ve ever heard. It was a Fourth Step only on resentment, and he had to stop writing it. He stopped writing at number 450. He had perfect recall on every person he was currently resenting in his heart. I’ve never seen the man, but we talked on the telephone. He said, “These things in my mind are a cancer that I’ve been holding all my life. I have to make the wrongs right because there’s no other way I can erase them inside of me.”

In my limited experience, I have yet to meet anyone that has found any other way of totally erasing the effects of the past without doing this. Have you? Has anyone here discovered a way of doing that? When you come off your last drug, this inner damage will float to the surface. I urge you to come off the last drug — all of them — so the sickness will come up now and not stay inside and be that cancer.

Do you know how impossible this is? I know how impossible it is. I’m absolutely powerless. I can’t do it. But I do it. Part of me knows it has to die in order to do it, and that’s how I come to life.

In our sexaholism, we are apparently seeing something else influencing Steps Eight and Nine. That’s why we put in Step Eight and a Half: Surrendering our resentments, we asked for willingness to forgive all persons guilty of real or imagined wrongs against us and forgave each one.

This is what we discover: When we think about making the wrong right with another person, we really can’t do it unless we’ve forgiven them first. If you’re like me, you’ll find it impossible to forgive. But I forgive. Not because I want to, because I don’t want to I have to do it. As soon as I take the action, I receive the grace to forgive.

This forgiveness is part of Steps Eight and Nine. This is the toughest medicine the human race has to swallow. The best medicine. Now, where are you in this Step? Are you forgiving that person you can never forgive? This is how we discover God.

Step Ten: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were — (what?)!

All in unison: Wrong [Laughter]

Wrong. …promptly admitted it. I was wrong [Laughter] Impossible. I can’t do it. Not only do I not feel like it, I’ve never done it in my life. God, I just can’t. But I do it. Because I have to. There’s no choice. Otherwise, I stay in my death. “I was wrong.” The most beautiful words between two human beings that can ever be spoken. Try it and see.

Step Eleven: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. In my opinion, Steps Eleven and Twelve happen if we have worked Steps One through Ten and continue to work them. If I’m working One through Ten, Eleven and Twelve are going to happen in my life. All I’m doing in Step Eleven is what comes naturally when I get the junk out of the way and just say, “Come in, Lord.” I don’t even have to say that. He’s already there.

The question for us here this morning is: Are you letting Him in, or are you letting your wrongs shut Him out? That’s Step Eleven.

Step Twelve: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to sexaholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. This is the one Step that’s not in the imperative. This is the Lazarus experience, the awakening. Always in my life I used to look for the magic, the technique, the person that would give me life. You know — the laying on of hands [laughter]. The ecstatic religious experience. Studying theology, philosophy. Looking for the awakening in that magic encounter with another person in order to come to life. It never happened.

It never happened because it’s an ‘inside job’ and only these first Eleven Steps can do it. The question for us today is: What life are you living in? Are you living in the life in which you have always lived, or are you in the new life? Only you can make the choice. God gives us the choice. We can stay in the tomb, or come out.