IN THE CURRENT MAGAZINE

My name is Ana, and I live in Mexico. I thank God for the miracle of quitting my addictive behaviors, those patterns of lust that kept me enslaved for six years. I felt completely captive to the demands of lust, unable to resist even when I wanted to. In the last three months, however, I’ve realized that my recovery goes far beyond just quitting. God has granted me self-control, peace, temperance, discipline, and hope for the future. He has never denied me any of these gifts whenever I sincerely asked. God has given them to me generously and without reproach.

These are my experiences as a woman of lusting and interacting with male fellows in SA, both in person and virtually. I’ve been in SA for four years and am two years sober as of this writing. I’m a single widow in my 50s.

I was a Catholic, then a Protestant … also a pastor, a missionary … and a sexaholic. That was me in a not-so-neat nutshell. God was always a significant part of my life. I fully embraced my mother’s devout religious practice and fully engaged in the church. I loved the fact that people accepted and admired me. Being "a good guy" fit my need for recognition perfectly. The more good you did, the more respect you earned. I embraced that culture wholeheartedly.

I grew up in a religious home. My father was an ordained minister, and our family observed many religious practices. As much as my father preached the doctrine, he did not live the church principles at home, (at least, that’s how I experienced it). My sexual acting out started at a very young age and included isolation, fantasy, secrets, hiding—a real double life.

"Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him." (Step Three)

I have always been, like every other creature with a heartbeat, in need of love. I needed attention from others, connection with others, and the knowledge that I was accepted for who I was. I was often overly sweet to my mom as a little girl and then as a teenager in hopes of receiving her love. However, no matter how much my mom loved me and how hard she tried to give us everything, I didn't feel the love I so longed for.

I really never considered the spiritual side of life until I was 22 years old. I was meeting consistently with a counselor who started to convince me slowly over many months that there is more to life than just logic, reasoning, science, and intellect. I started to agree that intuition and self-reflection could have value, too. I read books on spirituality and became interested in mystical matters. I found it very exciting, but unfortunately I was not sober. My obsession with lust was actually getting worse, and my dabbling in spiritual things was not helping things.

When I first came into the Program, I had a problem with the italicized qualifier on God, “as we understood Him” (SA, 208). Now I see it as the best idea of the Twelve Steps.

I am a 50-year-old man in Poland, sober since 2011. I came to the Fellowship in 2007. My first significant stretch of sobriety was for 2.5 years starting in April 2008. Then I ended up in a psychiatric hospital diagnosed with severe depression. I lost my sobriety there, but I immediately reached out to the Fellowship again and found a sponsor. I started the Program all over again. I have been sober ever since.

I've had several conversations over the last 24 hours about Step One. It seems that everything right down to the core of my being resisted admitting my powerlessness. This has been, quite possibly, the biggest hurdle in my recovery journey. Admitting complete defeat felt like dying, it felt like I’d be giving up, it felt like the end. And it was the end—the end of my old life and the only passageway through which I could be born into the new life. Freedom from the bondage of self is a free gift that can only be accessed by the grace of God.