Step 4 was not an easy one for me. After a lifetime of burying feelings, it was hard for me to recognize when I was feeling resentful and afraid. But I did my best knowing that it doesn’t need to be perfect and that I will have my whole life to go back and rework the Steps as I continue to grow.
A few years ago, I read a book, the theme of which was hiding from love. When I entered SA, I discovered—like many addicts—that I had been hiding from love my whole life. For me that’s seventy years which is no short time. A friend in SA who means a lot to me, shared that he too was hiding from love, but that God was working powerfully in his life to change him from the inside out. Slowly, a new desire for real loving connection with people began replacing his old tendency to keep away from people.
Recently during a noon meeting, we were reading Bill’s story out of the Big Book of AA. The secretary stopped us about half way where Bill wrote, “A tumbler full of gin followed by half a dozen bottles of beer would be required if I were to eat any breakfast. Nevertheless, I still thought I could control the situation, and there were periods of sobriety which renewed my wife’s hope. Gradually things got worse.” We call people like this beyond help.
This letter is for every man I ever had sex with. I want to write this letter to make my amends to you. I have used you, either once or regularly, to fill an emptiness inside me that was impossible to fill with human “power.”
I am eternally grateful for this program of recovery. This program has become one of the most profound changes in my life as it literally has saved my life (and it continues to save it one day at a time) from being sucked into a black hole with no hope of escape!
I was sitting in the sun, trying to recuperate from an upper respiratory infection. The sun was shining so brightly as I was comfortably sitting in a lounge chair by the pool at the retirement center where we live. All of a sudden it turned dark. I looked up at the sky.
A few years before I came to SA, I saw several therapists. I didn't realize it then, but I was looking for a “higher power” that would save me from myself, that would carry me. Being saved and carried was exactly what I tried to find in lust.
When I admitted powerlessness and unmanageability (Step One), I began Twelve-Step recovery. Within one week my spiritual awakening began as I could believe in the experience of others and feel hope. For me this was Step Two. Beginning to learn and live the Steps in my life (with some assistance from professionals) enlarged and deepened my spiritual awakening.
I'm Jesse and I'm a sexaholic. I'm very grateful to SA for its limited membership requirements. I meet ALL the requirements. I have a desire not to lust, and I want to be sober (Tradition 3). I've been sexually sober since June 9, 2013, and for that I'm very grateful.
I have to admit it. I spent a lot of my life searching for a solution. I used to think that I am drowning in a well, and I must find a solution in that well. But that all has changed now. After joining SA, I came to learn that I was looking for a solution in the mud of the problem! I am grateful to God that after I have joined the program, I simply did not leave and run away! I had a feeling, which I wasn’t sure about, but it said “stay in the program”.
