All my life I have been surrounded by loved ones with fatal and sometimes incurable diseases. The first person I knew to pass away from a disease was a three-year-old girl named Amy, who died of leukemia. My mother just finished chemotherapy for B-cell Lymphoma. She was diagnosed just after her retirement from the Veterans Hospital where she worked tirelessly for thirty-plus years for men who served in the US Military. My sister’s life was permanently altered while she was in her twenties. She was diagnosed with a large brain tumor. It took two major operations, over the course of seven years and two years of heavy medicine. She was in a support group for those with brain cancer. Of the twenty-plus close friends she made in that group, my sister is the lone survivor. A childhood mentor of mine, Mike, passed away last year as a result of diabetes.

The above examples all have a few things in common:

1. Nobody asks for cancer.
2. Without the right outside help none of them would have survived, and even with the right help, some still do not survive.
3. Loved ones also suffer.

Such is reality. I used to never be able to accept it, life on life’s terms. I was always full of fears and resentments and self-pity, wanting the world to be different. It was only when I got to grips with the principles and concepts in the Big Book of AA that I found peace.

Today, I’ve come to learn that when I experience those fears and resentments and self-pity, it’s my ego in the driving seat, plain and simple. Sometimes my ego tells me I should be farther along in life, in recovery; that I should have already mastered everything. Other times, my ego will tell me that I’m “less than” because I’m addicted to negativity, negative energy, and negative emotions.

Part of my qualification as a sexaholic is “using a resentment like a drug.” Resentment toward myself plays just as well as resentment towards another. It works every time. Better, in fact. That’s my default. It’s ego shattering to simply be right sized. To be just another one of God’s kids.

Comparing is not healthy for me. Comparing what I feel on the inside to what I see on the outsides of others leaves me losing every time. So I have to let it go. All of it. Self-seeking, shame, guilt, resentment, feeling better than, or less than.

Instead, I get back into service, throw myself into the program and let the results follow. The inevitable results for me have been that as I strive to do the next right thing, listen to my sponsor, attend meetings regularly, and throw myself tirelessly into 12-Step work, I have become free of the obsession to lust and from my debilitating obsession with self.

Selfishness and self-centeredness, that is the root of my trouble (AA 62). Selfless service is the solution.