The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous is quite clear that our own thinking cannot solve our addiction problem. I have learned this time and time again. My own thinking never produced the power I needed to recover from sexaholism. Often, it compounded the problem. When I stopped arguing and surrendered to the program and followed the directions outlined by my sponsor and our literature, I began recovering.

Recovery entails growing into “true manhood and womanhood” (SA, p. 149). Recovery is meant to take me from emotional infancy and lead me into spiritual adulthood. This cannot be accomplished by faith in self, but rather by faith in God and by the power of the program. 

One of the fruits of recovery is the “restoration to sanity” where I can once again come to trust my thinking. While I once doubted my own thinking, today I have a healthy skepticism. I believe sometimes I have taken self-skepticism to a point that neither our literature nor my higher power would have me do.

The Big Book says, “Logic is great stuff. We liked it. We still like it. It is not by chance we were given the power to reason, to examine the evidence of our senses, and to draw conclusions. That is one of man’s magnificent attributes” (AA, p. 53). In fact, the Big Book uses the entire chapter “We Agnostics” to demonstrate the reasonability of faith in the “God idea.”

In my recovery experience, God has not asked me to throw reason and prudence out the door. In fact, recovery suggests that I ask God to “direct my thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives” (AA, p. 86). When this is done, I can “employ my mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use” (AA, p. 86). Part of recovery is this very restoration to sanity where God helps me grow in prudence – the ability to make good, reasoned judgments. I believe that in recovery, I can come to make prudent decisions. 

I believe I was never meant to divorce faith from reason. Both can operate together harmoniously, for by God’s power I can be transformed by Him renewing my mind so I may be able to discern what is good and pleasing to him.