I know I am powerless over lust because of my inability to stop acting out despite knowing the outcomes and consequences. The ways I am powerless are many: I’ve continued to act out alone despite knowing that practicing the compulsion is directly opposed to becoming sober and maintaining sobriety.
What it was like. I enjoyed my first convention in the place where it all started. My cell phone’s background screen now has a picture of the gatehouse where Dr. Bob and Bill W. first met. When I open my phone, I say a prayer of thanks to God for the Twelve Steps.
About five years ago, my sponsor in another fellowship talked with me about Step Eleven. This was before I found SA, and I was busy imposing my self-will on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was the epitome of “half measures availed us nothing”—nothing except for maybe a check mark on Steps One through Ten, indicating I had completed them.
For me, lust is an attitude. It begins with a desire to covet. It is a desire to take (even if only mentally) something that is not mine to take. My acting out always begins with lust. Why? Because I am powerless over lust. I do not have the ability to control it.
I’ve always had a large ego, which never allowed me to acknowledge that I needed God. I looked down on people of faith, thinking they were foolish or weak, and that they used the notion of God as a crutch.
When I first got into SA recovery, I had been attempting for a month to recover—on my own—using a popular Twelve Step study guide, but I was slipping constantly. I happened upon an online SA meeting and posted my complaints about the triggers that were overwhelming me.
When I’m in my disease I cannot love anyone or anything. Making Ninth Step amends has helped me reach out to God, and God in return has enabled me to feel love for those I have harmed.
As a child I had no exposure to healthy intimacy or communication. My parents had seven marriages between them, and seven children, two of whom I never met. My father left when I was three; my mother remarried when I was in my 20s.
A member wrote, “I’m looking for a miracle. I’ve been looking for a miracle for a long time. Recently I’ve thought that if I just work the Steps, I could then have the miracle I’ve been looking for.” Wow! This statement hit me pretty hard, because it reminded me so much of my own Step Two (which took something like five years for me to fully accomplish).
The Rochester group would like to share our recent success following the adoption of a new Twelve Step group study format.
