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. Again I come to believe that God can and will restore me through the actions of the remaining Steps. I make a new decision to turn my life and will over to God.

Each time I do this, God’s will for me is revealed not through prayer and meditation, but through the inventories of Step Four, the disclosures in Step Five, and using my inventories to define my defects in Step Six. I ask God to remove them from me in Step Seven. In Steps Eight and Nine, I make amends by paying back money, working the extra hours to make up for all the time I slack off at work, and changing my behavior toward my wife and kids. These are all actions I am in no way capable of under my own power and impossible to do as long as I’m still driven by ego.

So the decision I made in Step Three does not really manifest itself in my life until I have worked Four through Nine. God’s will is revealed to me. At Step Three I still don’t have a clue. I can lock myself in a room for hours, praying to know God’s will, and walk out of the room believing I am doing God’s will when in fact I am just doing a new version of my own.

I am a sexaholic, and will be sexaholic until the day I die. I have an ego which resurrects itself. I am usually the last to know it, although many around me see it growing. I have a program, which when practiced as a way of life, guides me to actions which work to deflate this monster, and allow me to once again become an agent for God.

What I have been given through the Twelve Steps is a reprieve from the hopeless condition I was in when God first threw me a lifeline. At that time I thought I had to meet a certain standard before I could get to God. It is from this distortion, from this lie, that I have recovered. I have been shown that through actions of selflessness, using the power of God, and the plan of action outlined in the Twelve Step program, that all of the things which lust did for me are done better, more completely, and with far greater satisfaction by my relationship with my Higher Power.