IN THE CURRENT MAGAZINE

I have amends to make to some people. A few years ago, I abused four women, and I hurt two others for terribly selfish reasons. The four women were prostitutes. They were working in that abusive industry here in my own locality. Two were on the street, one was listed in the classified ads, and one worked in a “studio,” a sanitized name for a brothel.

Before joining the Program, I didn’t realize how mean I was to my wife. It’s not that she’s perfect; after all, she married me. But something would happen, I’d get angry because something wasn’t going right, and I’d yell at her. I’d often blame her for things she had nothing to do with. Or I’d just yell at her because I was upset.

As a child, I was lonely. I may have felt love-deprived or full of harbored resentment, but I needed some sort of outlet. Then I discovered a strange pet: Lust. This little creature seemed harmless as I studied it with my wide, innocent eyes. The most convenient thing about my pet was that I could keep it a secret from the rest of the world.

Lust hates the light and flees from it; it loves the dark secret recesses of my being. And once I let it lodge there, it’s like a fungus and starts flourishing—the athlete’s foot of the soul (SA 160). As a biologist, I have studied several different types of fungi (e.g. yeast, ringworm, mushrooms, mold, athlete’s foot, etc.). Recently, I discovered an unfamiliar form of fungus: fantasy.

A story out of the old West tells about a stagecoach owner interviewing applicants for driver. He stood at a dangerous curve on a winding mountain road where one side dropped hundreds of feet sharply into the canyon below. The owner asked, “Driving six horses at full speed, how close can you come to the edge of the cliff and not go over?”

While working for the radio industry as a disc jockey, I was trained to avoid dead air in my work. Pushing buttons, speaking, starting programs on time was very important. Timing, down to the second, in every hour was accounted for. Two seconds of “nothing” on the radio seemed an eternity, and was often cause for unemployment if done repeatedly.

Sometimes, in meetings, I would share about the “amazing insights” I had, but these are all things I now see in my rear-view mirror. My motives and drivers were revealed to me after I did the work of the Steps. My insights did not lead to recovery. They are knowledge I had been given as the result of working the Steps.

“Sounds like you are feeling better.” Those were the words uttered by my sponsor when I called in despair over a financial predicament I was working through during a career transition.

Thank you God for SA with a very tough bottom line; recovery came to me because of this program. Thank you for teaching me that every person has dignity. No matter what their station in life, economic status, addictions, and illness, no matter what they’ve done—every person has dignity.

The following suggested policy on how to deal with abuse disclosed at meetings first appeared in the ESSAY in October 1990. It is reprinted here at the request of the Delegates and Trustees, who discussed this and related issues at the General Delegate Assembly meeting in St. Louis, on July 7.