Originally published in ESSAY, March 1992

Our recovery calendar page today says, “Gratitude turns problems into blessings, and the unexpected into gifts.” I am grateful for the reminder how important gratitude lists have been to my recovery from sexaholism. During the first several months of sobriety I wrote gratitude lists daily. My sponsor told me to put twenty items on it per day. Some days, I wrote them down in one sitting. On other days, I kept an ongoing list as my Higher Power provided the experiences.

When I was first told to write a gratitude list I was not at all sure what to put on it. Being just barely sober, I felt awful much of the time. I was shocked at how continuously I fantasized and sexualized women, body parts, places around town such as motels, conversations with women or men, and even objects in the room. I kept testing my limits by being in uncomfortable or even dangerous lust situations. As some sobriety developed, I saw how often I took drinks of lust from everyday situations and used sexual memories or anger to get drunk. These unpleasant experiences, I realized, were the material for my gratitude lists.

Although I was an atheist, I had heard enough at meetings to know that I needed a Higher Power, and finally I had access to one. When I began to write the gratitude lists, I decided to begin each one with “Thank You” to my Higher Power. Then I would detail the sexualizing, limit testing, fantasizing or emotion which was disturbing me. My attitude with each gratitude was to thank my Higher Power for the opportunity to surrender whatever it was I could not handle. Over the past several years I have maintained the same attitude, except that now my Thank You is addressed to God as I understand Him. The need for the list is, however, unchanged.

Here are some of my typical gratitudes:

• Thank You for the reminder that I am powerless over looking at [her body part].
• Thank You for the desire to surrender my fear of intimacy to You.
• Thank You for my willingness to say the Serenity Prayer when I am scared.
• Thank You for my discomfort with the euphoric recall of acting out with [her].
• Thank You for my panic when I have a lustful thought about [behavior].
• Thank You for my need to call my sponsor when I am uncertain what to do next.
• Thank You for my awareness of pushing my boundaries by talking to [name] and my desire to stay inside them.
• Thank You for my shameful memory of [behavior] and surrendering my right to remember it to You.
• Thank You for the fear I feel when I hear [name’s] drunkalog and my awareness that I need You to stay sober.

My “positive” gratitudes (though they are actually all positive) are:

• Thank You for One Day At A Time.
• Thank You for my sobriety today.

The last one is the most important gratitude of all. I have no doubt after over thirty years of acting out that I cannot stay sober even one day. Any day I am sober and working the steps is due to my willingness to let God be in charge. As the Big Book says, if I trust God, clean house and help others, I will keep getting better. Gratitude lists have been an important part of that process, one day at a time.