Some years ago, while sitting on a park bench in a university town and reading a book, I saw an old monk walking toward me. He was wearing a medieval-looking dark brown habit, and as he approached me he asked if he could sit beside me and talk. As I had seen him approaching out of the corner of my eye and had hoped that he would talk to me, I was happy to say yes. Although I was totally immersed in my disease at the time, I had always been thirsty for spirituality, and I was curious about this man’s unusual appearance in that place filled with young students.

As we started talking, I disclosed to him how desperate and lonely I felt and how powerless I was over masturbation and sex with women I knew, as well as with prostitutes. He listened with a keen interest; then he talked without any judgment, but with a lot of compassion and love. And although I told him everything, I didn’t sense any disgust or judgment on his part.

He told me—with a child-like honesty—that he had never masturbated in his life. However, he did experience temptations once in a while, and he used spiritual tools to overcome them. I told him that I didn’t believe in the same God as he did, but he didn’t mind. He said that each time I was able to give up any of my addictive urges to my God, then God and His companions would be dancing in Heaven.

My suffocating heart felt a glimmer of hope. He added that anytime I was able to surrender my urges to God, I also could use that surrender as an opportunity to pray for a person I loved. I couldn’t grasp the concept at the time, and I was too self-absorbed to even “act as if’” I could pray for anyone else’s welfare.

I met with him a few more times in those months, until I fell so deep into my addiction that I avoided all contact with this holy person. When I tried to contact him again in the first year of my recovery, I was sad to learn that he had died some months before, at the age of 91.

After joining SA, I found a similar idea in “The Joy Response” (from Recovery Continues) of saying a prayer of gratitude whenever I’m tempted: “It occurred to me that I might try gratitude whenever I was tempted. The next temptation I had happened to be resentment-anger, and as I became aware of it, I thanked God for the situation and for victory over my resentment. Doing that felt strange, but I thanked Him for both trial and victory while feeling resentful. I was immediately loosed from it” (RC 39).

So I tried thanking God when I felt tempted, and I’ve found this practice to be beneficial in reducing my overwhelming fears of relapsing, as well as in bringing me to a place of more trust and acceptance. But the prayer felt incomplete.

Then one day I remembered the words of the old monk, and this motivated me to take the prayer one step further. I could actually thank my Higher Power for the temptation—because it is an opportunity to abstain from lust—and at the same time I could offer the prayer for someone I loved. So in the next lust temptation I said: “Thank you God, for this temptation which I present to You as an offering for the spiritual health of my parents,” or, “…for this fellow that I don’t like.”

In this way, for me, the circle feels complete. The prayer of gratitude is always helpful, but then also offering a prayer for the sake of someone else (even people I don’t like) seems to turn the surrender into an even more spiritual act. Each time I do this today, this unnatural not-doing-what-I-want-to-do gets a whole new dimension—a new meaning. My worst struggles become my greatest opportunities to do good for others.

I am reminded that, “For if [a sexaholic] failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If he did not work, he would surely [lust] again, and if he [lusted] he would surely die” (AA 14-15). I really don’t want to lust again, so I must strive to enlarge my spiritual life.