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In early recovery I was terrified of my lust. It led me to cause great harm in my life, destroyed my career, nearly destroyed my family, caused a great deal of public shame and embarrassment for my wife and me, and cost a lot of money. I found that when lust came up, my fear made me fight lust, and that made the lust stronger.
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: December 2005 | Topics: Meditations
Before recovery I would go to any lengths to get my way. I would lie, cheat, steal and manipulate to get what I thought I needed. I was even willing to work hard to get my desired outcome. But once I got what I wanted, I soon began to want something else.
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: December 2005 | Topics: Featured Article - Meditations
I was sitting on my front porch yesterday, enjoying the beauty of God’s world around me. There are lots of trees, birds, squirrels, and even an occasional deer to help me focus on the serenity of nature.
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: December 2005 | Topics: The Slogans
I’ve learned in recovery that sexual sobriety is a gift, granted by God as I understand Him. Sobriety is not something I can control, any more than I can control lust.
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: December 2005
What if you never had to act out sexually again?
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: December 2005 | Topics: Featured Article
I acted out. I practiced hard at it. I started at a young age. I lived my life in fear and fantasy. I did not know how to live in the real world. I wanted to be any place but “here.” Fantasy would take me over “there.” I acted out to feel better; I liked it, and I pursued it to the gates of insanity and death.
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: December 2005 | Topics: Featured Article - SA Stories
Moved to task the Internet Committee to strengthen local website meeting information so that the burden of facilitating contact with newcomers and members becomes more of a local function than a SAICO function.
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: September 2005 | Topics: Trustee Committees - What's Going On in SA
Dan N. was my sponsor. He died on June 22nd at his home in Kimberling City, MO. Having tried unsuccessfully to work the program on my own my first five years in SA, I decided after a terrifying night of acting out that I needed to work the Steps with someone who was successfully staying sober, had a way of solving his problems that worked, and had a peace of mind that I didn’t have. Dan had what I wanted, and was willing to share what he had with me.
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: September 2005 | Topics: In Memoriam
Although I had finally gotten sober for several months, I was still very disturbed by old resentments and fears, and was dragging my feet on the Step I was supposedly working on. One day, after expressing frustration over my stagnation to my sponsor, he suggested that if I did some sort of service it would raise the ante in my program.
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: September 2005 | Topics: Featured Article - The Joy of Service
I’ve always had an approach-avoidance relationship with working the Steps. I always feel great after having done some writing on a Step, but it can take quite a long time for me to stop the squirrel cage long enough to actually sit down and start writing. The fact that I took five years to work the first three Steps in the program tells me that I wasn’t in any great hurry to recover from my self-destructive behaviors and attitudes.
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: September 2005 | Topics: Featured Article - Practical Tools
I left the ways of the old life behind.
Now I ride with the gulls in the stream,
Among the wayward sirens singing.
To whom do you prefer to turn?
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: September 2005 | Topics: Poems
It was fear that brought me into recovery,
But fear will not keep me sober.
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: September 2005 | Topics: Poems
When I sit in meetings listening to others sharing their personal issues, I have a tendency to compare myself to what they are describing. In doing this I miss the point of my recovery. My personal truth is that listening to someone else’s difficulties makes me feel comfortable that there is a group where I can express the same frustrations. I really loved that at first.
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: September 2005 | Topics: Featured Article - Steps & Traditions
Yesterday God gave me an Eleventh Step prayer. At the time, I was in my head, fussing over one of my sons, making an inventory of all the things I wanted for him. It was a typical dad-list, including things like a better job, a better education, a better place to live, and a meaningful relationship.
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: September 2005 | Topics: Steps & Traditions
Last week a guy who had just moved to the area attended our meeting for the first time. Afterwards he commented, “It is so nice to walk into a group I have never attended and feel immediately at home.” As good as it must have felt to him to say that, it felt even better to us to hear it. What greater compliment could a group receive from a newcomer?
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: September 2005
I suffer from a sort of hyper-vigilance. Something in me wants to identify and define every object, every person, every angle and surface in my physical environment. My ears are open; my eyes are taking in the very texture of things around me. This drive to know everything that’s going on around me could be a useful trait if I were Batman and dwelt in Gotham City.
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: September 2005 | Topics: Featured Article
Being born in August and growing up near the ocean, it was natural for my family to celebrate my birthday each year at one of the nearby beaches. After a day of living it up, I would come back burned to a crisp and covered with lesions given me by the local stingrays (well, okay, they were only jellyfish, but being an addict I tend toward the dramatic).
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: September 2005
All I can share is my experience, and my experience has been that so many times I have had opinions and given advice to others about matters about which I never had any experience. I was like a man who tried to tell someone how to fix his carburetor when he had never opened the hood to his own car.
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: September 2005
Tonight I had the honor of presenting my SA sponsor with a 19-year chip. It is a brand new chip. He saves his chip and presents it to me each September, fifteen months later. We have been doing this for years. I think that receiving a chip from a member who has carried it for a year makes it even more special.
TYPE: article | Magazine Issue: September 2005
I have found no way of permanently eradicating my ego. For me, living in Steps Ten, Eleven, and Twelve are not enough. It takes resubmitting to all the Steps formally again and again. It is not really that hard when I can see my current level of unmanageability to do a new First Step.