A New Freedom
Dear ESSAY
ESSAY is an essential and vital link to the fellowship for a loner, like me, without meetings available and very limited contact with other members of SA.
A New Freedom
ESSAY is an essential and vital link to the fellowship for a loner, like me, without meetings available and very limited contact with other members of SA.
How many sexaholics does it take to change a light bulb?
In more than one place in the AA Big Book it says “...and when all else fails, work with another alcoholic.”
The hardest part of any Step work for me is starting my writing sessions. Once I get started, I usually have the momentum to continue because I know I’m doing a good thing for myself—like someone with a heart condition cutting down on salt.
1. Does the meeting start and end on time?
My Ninth Step amends were about changing behaviors on a regular basis for years.
Recently I became acquainted with a new sponsee. I realized early on that he had serious problems: unfaithfulness to his spouse, involvement with prostitutes, and other faults which I too had experienced before entering recovery and working the Steps.
I can now see how my sexaholism isolated me from family, friends, workers, and employers in the past. I found fault with them in my “terminal uniqueness.” Nobody had a story like mine; therefore, I could not relate to anyone else. In the end, all I had was my sexaholism.
The other night I had a dream which stripped my lust of its pastel pink and purple euphemisms. I have avoided the word lust in my litany—preferring to tell myself that I crave “an affair of the heart”—further dressed up by such phrases as “out of my deep loneliness and chronic disconnection from others, I have sought soul mates, persons to join me in (at worst) the warmth of romantic fervor.”
Lust is the driving force behind my addiction, and if I allow myself to lust, then I will act out, sooner or later. When I consciously harbor lust, even in small amounts, it’s the same as an alcoholic taking a drink.