Twelve Steps – Jacob The Addict

Step Four … Finally

(Note to Readers: I wrote this post in August of 2023 but never posted it. I’m posting now, so that I can follow up with an update on my progress.)

Hi, my name is Jacob (not my real name) and I’m a grateful, recovering sex and love addict. I’ve been in recovery for about 20 months and sober a little longer than that.

As is the norm, it’s been a while since I have posted a out my step work. I could give you a million reasons, but then that’s what addicts do. They give you excuses for why they aren’t focused on important things.

I posted about finishing Step Three back in October. So that we stay on the same page, I’ll remind you that Step Three says:

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

Since that post, I’ve been working Step Four, which reads:

Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

It took me well over six months to finish Step Four for a number of reasons:

Recovery fatigue. Even at a relatively easy pace, recovery takes A LOT OF TIME. One or more meetings per week, group therapy every week, individual therapy every other week, making phone calls, journaling, meeting with my sponsor, being a sponsor to others. Note that “step work” wasn’t in that list, because it is on top of all those other things. So, sometimes I just need a break, and step work is usually what gets put off.
The REST OF LIFE. Recovery is extremely important but it can’t be the only thing in life for me. I have a family. I have a job. I have other obligations. And I’m trying to rebuild a life with Amy. Finding the balance isn’t easy, but these other things have to get their share of me.
Step Four is HARD. Maybe this is the real reason it took me so long to work through Step Four. The work that is required is very, very difficult to do. A “searching and fearless” review of one’s life isn’t for the faint of heart. Deep reflection on the moral failures of life is very easy to put off. More about that in a bit.
I’m a perfectionist. Many addicts are. I don’t want to say I’m done with and Step until I’m certain that my sponsor, Dan, will give me a “100” on it. That’s not the way the Steps work, by the way. It’s just how I approach nearly everything in life.

In spite of the competing priorities, in spite of the excuses and all the other reasons I can come up with, I made it through Step Four several months back.

I “made a searching and fearless moral inventory” of myself. I know it’s incomplete. My sponsor and my fellows tell me that I’ll revisit Step Four many times in the future. Each time a previously unidentified “defect of character” rears its ugly head, I’ll need to do a Step Four on it.

There are many ways to work the steps, and at least as many guidebooks are there are methods. The one that I’m using is “A Gentle Path Through the Twelve Steps” by Patrick Carnes, PhD. Carnes himself is a recovering addict – one of the same stripes as me – so he knows a thing or two about the Steps. But don’t let the title fool you. Don’t think “gentle” means “easy’. The soul work required for Step Four isn’t an easy thing to do, but Carnes provides a gentle a way as possible to do it.

Some methods have the traveler (my favorite term for an addict on this journey) make a list of everything they’ve ever done wrong. The piece(s) of candy they pilfered when they were six, the time(s) they cheated on a test, the time(s) they slept with a stranger, the time(s) they drove drunk, the underreported income on income tax returns, the pills they stole form others, etc. – plus all the lies they told to cover these things up.

However, Carnes doesn’t take that approach. He goes much deeper than what specific things I did wrong. He truly goes after “defects of character”. He had me go through: anger and the misuse thereof, avoidance of responsibility, paralysis by fear, unhealthy risks and self-sabotage, shameful incidents, feelings of unworthiness and more. Carnes also makes you pause to reflect on positive expressions of anger, healthy risks taken and conquered fears. This helps the process from becoming overwhelming.

I think the “make the long list” method would have been easier. That list could have been made with only a minimal amount of shame. Digging into the drivers behind the moral failures is much more difficult and mentally exhausting work. Each time I went back to the workbook, more examples of the real issues came to light.

But Carnes’ method makes the traveler confront these defects of character and see how anger was used to manipulate others, how the taking of risks impacted more people than just me, how self-sabotage killed so many relationships and hurt the other party, and how shame is such a repetitive cycle.

I can honestly say the Step Four was more than just an exercise for me. It made me face my “defects of character” which are now much more obvious to me and are now accompanied by a willingness to face them. That means acknowledging them when they rise up and admitting that I’ve wronged someone when necessary.

It’s gonna take a whole new way of living to overcome these. The kind of living that only God can make possible.

As always, thanks for visiting.

Jacob The Addict (jacobtheaddict@gmail.com)

Step Three

Hi, my name is Jacob (not my real name) and I’m a grateful, recovering sex and love addict. I’ve been in recovery for about a year and sober a little longer than that.

My last post was about Step Two of the Twelve Steps, which says:

Step Two: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

In that post, I wrote about realizing that I couldn’t tackle my addiction alone and accepting that I need a Power Greater Than Myself to take over. I wrote a bit about trust and how few people there were in my life that I felt I could share my struggles with. I closed with writing about having enough trust in God to let Him in.

But now the rubber must meet the road. Step Three says:

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

I am to the point where I know that God CAN help me with this addiction. But getting to a point where I can trust that God WILL help ME is a completely different task. That’s what it will take to facilitate a legitimate decision to turn my life over to the care of God.

When you’ve spent your entire life wondering who you could trust, that’s hard. And when your view of God has been that of an angry God, it’s even harder to let go and let Him lead.

Thankfully, my view of God has changed tremendously as a result of my ongoing recovery and the unpacking and self-reflection involved. With a Loving God in the picture, it becomes easier to surrender. But it still takes a tremendous amount of trust to turn things over to Him.

And that’s what Step Three is about: surrender

Surrender has always carried a negative connotation for me. Vanquished armies surrender. Cornered bank robbers surrender. It suggests a person or group that once had power yielding and giving up that power to someone else. It seems to be a weak and shameful kind of thing.

In my addiction, I thought I had power. I had control over my actions and my life. I didn’t need anyone else … except for the purpose of sex. I was in control. And control, I did. I controlled people. I controlled situations. I tried to craft everything to meet my needs. And I didn’t really care about how that impacted others.

The reality is that I am a control freak. I used to spin that in a positive way. Things in my span of control were generally done well. That was good, right?

But I worked very hard to never let people see the dark side of that control – the dark side of me. That side of being a control freak is not pretty. As I said above, I controlled situations and people for my benefit and/or pleasure.

In reality, I was out of control. My life was chaotic and unmanageable. I over-controlled the few things I could in an attempt to cover for all the other areas where I was losing control. My sanity was slipping away.

Deciding to give up my control to the care of God means that there must be fundamental changes in my life and how I view the world around me. I must surrender my control – the control I thought I had – and let God take over.

While I’ve completed Step Three with my sponsor and have turned control of my life over to God, I’ve struggled with leaving it in His hands. That’s nothing new and is what got me here. I’ve been surrendering to God, then taking everything back for my entire life.

So, this idea of permanently surrendering my will to God is new and it’s a bit scary. But thanks to my ongoing recovery, my Twelve Step group and my “tribe”, this time things can be different. My rational brain knows that God is faithful and will never leave me, nor will He stop loving me. Now, if I can just get my heart and my head to stay in sync!

As always, thanks for visiting.

Jacob The Addict (jacobtheaddict@gmail.com)

Step Two

Hi, my name is Jacob (not my real name) and I’m a grateful, recovering sex and love addict. My sobriety date is unchanged since my last post. I’m past one year of sobriety.

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged here. Things have been busy, crazy, enlightening, sad, joyful, stressful … all in all, remarkable. The past year has been the best worst year of my life. There is so much to share, but today I’m going to focus on Step Two.

If you recall, it took me a long time to get to Step One, powerlessness. Admitting that I’m powerless over this addiction took accepting that admitting powerlessness wasn’t a cop-out or a “hall pass”, i.e. “I’m powerless over this, so why even try to stop?” It’s far more than that.

It’s about admitting that my attempts to control the things in my life and deal with this addiction have resulted in disaster. Powerlessness is about surrender. Giving up control. Admitting that my attempts have been unable to control anything.

If I’m powerless to fix this or deal with my addiction, now what? Where’s the hope? Is there any? Or am I just doomed to live a self-destructive life?

Step Two of the Twelve Steps speaks directly to this:

Step Two: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity

I’ve read that the definition of insanity is “doing the same things over and over, expecting a different result”. That also defines addiction. Doing over and over things you don’t want to do, each time expecting that thing to “fix it”.

With powerlessness comes an understanding that I can’t fix it. It’s going to take a Power greater than me to affect any real change in my life. It’s that simple.

I believe in God. Always have. I responded to “the invitation” when I was 12 years old and was baptized for the remission of my sins.

Actually, I was terrified of Hell and wanted to escape God’s wrath. I knew right from wrong and realized that I had sinned, violating God’s holiness. I knew I needed saving. But I knew nothing of a real relationship with God. After all, how do you have a relationship with an angry, distant Being who finds pleasure in striking sinners dead?

So, while I’ve always believed in God, I’ve never really known Him. And I’ve never really trusted Him, other than to destroy me if I stepped out of line. I’ve been afraid of Him all my life.

Step Two says that I will come to believe that God can restore me to sanity. I firmly believe that God can do ANYTHING. I have always believed that. The problem for me, however, has always been “why would He do something for ME?”

That makes Step Two all about TRUST. Trust that a Higher Power will do something for just for me, something that I can’t do for myself. It means trusting God, when I’ve been unable to really trust anyone in my life.

The step workbook I’m using asked me to list all the people in my life that was able to trust in my formative years. The prompts suggested the following categories: parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, teachers, coaches, ministers, etc. I pondered that question for hours and the list I came up with consisted, in its entirety, of only three people: my two sisters and my high school English teacher.

Just those three. Mom was unpredictable. Dad was absent. My aunts and uncles were dysfunctional. My minister was judgmental. My Boy Scout Leader was an escaped Nazi war criminal. There was no one else I could go to.

So I stuffed my fears, frustrations and anxieties and started looking for love – in all the wrong places, it seems. Looking for someone to soothe my inner pain and make me a whole person. And when a woman was not available, porn and masturbation filled the void.

As I’ve mentioned, that approach didn’t solve any problems and made things much worse. My life had truly become unmanageable.

So, now I’m faced with the reality that I need God more than ever ( actually, I’ve always needed Him this much; I just wouldn’t see it). How do I trust Him enough now to let him help me?

As I’ve written previously, I’ve come to understand that God loves me because of Who He Is and not because of who I am or am not, or what I do or don’t do. With an understanding of His unconditional and unrelenting love, I think I can do it. I now find myself wanting a relationship with Him, rather than trying to run away and hide.

It’s been a long road, but I now firmly believe that God can and will restore me to sanity. It’s not something I can do for myself. I now see Him working in every facet of my life. From the insight He has given me into what makes me tick, the many fellow travelers that He has placed in my life and the daily help of His Spirit to stay away from addictive behaviors, He is changing me.

And I haven’t even gotten to Step Three! That will be the subject of my next post.

As always, thanks for visiting.

Jacob The Addict (jacobtheaddict@gmail.com)

My Letter to God

Hi, my name is Jacob and I’m a grateful, recovering sex and love addict. I’ve been sober over ten months. Thanks for visiting.

First, allow me to offer my apologies for being absent for the last several weeks. There has been too much going on to post regularly. However, I recently completed my work for Steps Two and Three. I’ll write a bit more about that in another post, but thought I’d share part of the work I did in that effort – the most important of which is my letter to my Higher Power, whose name is God.

Here’s the letter:

Dear God, the Holy One of Israel, the All-Sufficient One, Father of Mercies, Jehovah,

I first learned about You through my experiences with Mom and Dad at church. Sunday school stories taught me about the Bible and the heroes of faith throughout it. I came to view you as an old – though stately – grey-haired being with a long beard, sitting on a gold throne – far away in Heaven. You were very distant, and I suppose I thought that Your holiness required that.

I had very positive experiences at my Mom’s church – a small-town Presbyterian church. The people were friendly, and the minister was very kind and generous toward me. One of the men in the choir used to give me peppermint lifesavers when I stood behind Mom in the choir during services. Those memories are very warm and comforting.

At my Dad’s church – a very conservative evangelical church a few miles outside the town we lived in– the people were more distant. The preacher was harsh. The sermons were always about Hell. I never liked going with Dad to church. I wanted to go with Mom to her church.

When Mom gave in to the pressure to leave her church and join the church Dad attended, I was stuck. Our whole family went to the church of Dad’s choosing. There was not a lot of love in those churches. There was a lot of judgment. I learned that if you didn’t measure up, you were doomed.

I came to see you as an angry God, Who was always watching for the tiniest slip-up in me. Any failure put me on the express train the Hell. I spent many of my childhood years fearing You – not honoring You; just being utterly terrified of You.

In my tweens, I started to understand the real difference between right and wrong. I guess that was an initial understanding of the concept of sin. I reached the “age of accountability” as that fellowship called it. This left me with the (accurate) understanding that my sin had separated me from You. I felt like You were VERY angry with me (a “sinner in the hands of an angry God”) and that, had I died in my sleep, I would have certainly awakened in Hell.

I spent several years terribly afraid of everything because death from any cause would have led to eternal torture. I look back on those days with a huge amount of stress, maybe even some ptsd (BTW, I can’t use the all-caps acronym – I reserve that for those who have gone through Hell in service to our nation).

When I was twelve, the fear of death and Hell completely overtook me. I walked down the aisle at the church we attended at the time, and was baptized by the preacher there. I got into the water because I was terrified of You, not because I was seeking a relationship with You. I came out feeling that I had escaped Hell by the skin of my teeth. I was saved – at least for the moment.

Then, I’m certain it was only hours or days later, I failed at something. I cursed, or lied, or talked back to my parents. And there I was again – a sinner in the hands of an angry God. Baptism had washed away all of my prior sins, but now what? I had to say a prayer of repentance or, had death come, I would have awakened to the grinning face of Satan himself.

For the next umpteen years, it was much the same story. Constantly failing – at worse and worse things – and hoping that I could do enough, be right enough, say prayers enough, go to church enough or do something enough to make things right with You. Your love was conditioned on me doing everything “right” and doing it the “right” way. If I did all the right things in the right way, maybe – just maybe – you might let me into Heaven.

I got pretty good at doing the right things the right way: I went to the “right” church, read from the “right” translation of the Bible, did worship the “right” way, gave 10% of my salary away, hung around with the “right” kind of people, judged those who didn’t do things the “right” way, and was always “fine”. I taught Bible Class and served as a deacon and an elder.

Oh, yeah. And I lived a double life as a sex and love addict.

So, there was a self-righteous me that got very good at doing the right things and feeling pretty good about it. Yet always wondering if I was doing enough to earn Your love. And there was the addict me, treading farther and farther from the core value system that I (accurately) learned from those around me.

The self-righteous me started doubting the “do enough” system two or three years ago, but never could figure out what to do with it. And the addict me was saying “Fuck it. Just do whatever you want. You’re screwed any way you look at it.”

Then I hit bottom. You know the story. Life was spiraling out of control, and I didn’t care about anyone or anything but me.

As it turns out, discovery was the best thing that ever happened to me. It made me realize how broken I am. And how broken I will always be – at least without You.

Once broken, I was open to different thinking. I am so very, very thankful for Richard Rohr’s book Breathing Under Water for many, many things. The most important one – far and away – is that You love me because of WHO YOU ARE, not who I am or am not, or what I do or don’t do. And second only to that one is the fact that Jesus came to do for me what I could never do for myself – restore my relationship with You.

You have become to me a God I want to know and be with. You always were that God, I just couldn’t fathom it.

But I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to have a relationship with You. I want to spend time with You, but I seldom do. I know that only You can make me whole, but can I trust You to do that? I know that You have forgiven me through Jesus’ sacrifice, but is that really enough? I know that I have to live in Your Light, but what if I mess up again? (it’s funny I wrote that – I know I will.) How do I live as a son of the Most High?

So, I guess it’s up to me to take a step – or leap – of faith and determine once and for all if You will catch me. I know that You have been waiting for me for years, just as the father waited for the Prodigal. My head knows it but my heart struggles.

You are Holy. You are Worthy. You are Merciful. You are Love. I think it’s fair to assume that You are Trustworthy. So, I’ll put my trust in You and see where this goes. Will You be with me every step? I need for You to stay with me, for I fear where You may lead me. I can do it if I know You are there.

As I mentioned earlier, discovery has been the best thing that’s happened to me. It forced me to deal with my own failures. It forced me to deal with my past. It forced me to come clean with my wife. It forced me to find a support system that works. It forced me to deconstruct my faith and start over. It forced me to do a lot of things I never would have done without the pain and embarrassment of discovery. And You are using all of those things to create a better me.

I no longer have secrets to hide. I no longer have something that keeps me alienated from my wife, my family and my friends. I have been freed from the shackles of my addiction. It seems kinda crazy, but freedom comes from surrender. The battle is not against someone or something else. The battle for freedom is against myself. And the craziest thing of all is that I’m learning these things from a bunch of sex addicts!

While there is great freedom, the clarity that comes with that freedom makes it much easier to see and understand how much I have hurt my closest friend on earth, Amy. My secrets and my actions have been devastating to her. We are working on rebuilding our relationship and redeveloping trust. We both need Your guidance and Your Spirit to be with us every day. I pray that my working my recovery and our working together on our relationship will bring about restoration and an even deeper relationship than before.

I have great hope for the future but know that I cannot make a successful future alone. My future must be found within You and Your will. I must surrender myself, my pride and my agenda to Your will – every day. Only in doing that will I find the peace and serenity I desire. (Why is that so hard to do from day to day?)

Father, I ask for Your help in all of the things I rambled about above. But I especially ask for Your help in these specific areas:

Help me fight the daily battle against this addiction and its companion, sin in general
Help Amy as she works through the betrayal and pain I’ve caused her
Be with us as we rebuild our relationship, this time with true intimacy, honesty and oneness
Help me to be open, honest and trustworthy in all of my relationships
Help me to live in humility, knowing that everything I am, everything I have and all that I will ever be comes directly from You
Help me to live every minute of every day in the present and in reality
Help me help others with their struggles
Help me share what I am learning about You and the freedom found within You with others

Fill me with Your Spirit. Fill me with Your Love. Pour Your Mercies out on me, for I am a sinner in need of all of Your Mercy I can get.

Your Servant, Jacob

Made It to Step One

Hi, I’m Jacob, a grateful, recovering sex addict. I’ve been sober for seven and a half months.

I’m behind in telling my story.

Several weeks ago, I met with my sponsor, Dan (not his real name), to go through my Step One work. It took me a while to get there. I think I’ve already covered that, but a quick summary is probably in order.

Step One is all about admitting that you are powerless over your addiction. My self-righteous inner self pushed back at that concept, as I spoke to a few posts back. Admitting powerlessness sounded like a cop out to me. I would just try harder.

But as I went through the worksheets associated with Step One in one of my workbooks, my rational self became the Prosecuting Attorney in the case of the People v. Jacob The Addict (detailed in OK, I’m Finally There). As Prosecutor, I amassed an enormous amount of evidence that proved beyond doubt that the Defendant (my addict self) was indeed powerless over his addiction. Powerless to stop, powerless to change and powerless to heal. Once presented with that evidence the Addict capitulated.

I’ve also spoken about the deconstruction of my faith that took place on a parallel track (Deconstructing My Faith – Part I and Deconstructing My Faith – Part II). This was also necessary, since the faith that I had was of little to no help in dealing with my addictive behavior and the shame that accompanied it.

When I met with Dan to go through my Step One work, I shared with him the discoveries that I’ve made in myself: the case I’d built against the addict, the deconstruction of my faith and stark assessment of what I believe and why. And the realization that I am powerless over SIN. And SIN just happens to be most pronounced in my life as sex addition.

So, I told Dan that I was, indeed, powerless over my addiction and that my life had certainly become unmanageable. And only two things matter at this point:

God loves me because of WHO HE IS, not because of who I am or am not, or what I do or don’t do, and
Jesus came to earth to do for me what I could never do for myself

With that, Dan told me I had completed Step One. But then he went further. He asked if I remember the parable of the Ninety-Nine and the One. The story of the Shepherd who left the 99 sheep that were safe to go in search of the one that was lost. I told him that I did remember it.

Then he said: “You are the ONE.”

Chills ran down my spine as I gradually understood the gravity of what Dan said. You see, every time I had read that story in the past, it was always about the Loving Shepherd who went after that wayward sheep, while I hung back with the other 98, lazing around eating green grass. The story was never about me.

But as I reflected on what Dan said, it hit me that I was the wayward sheep and that Jesus came looking for ME. And HE FOUND ME. I genuinely felt FOUND for the first time in my life.

Isn’t it funny how in order to be FOUND, I had to get to the point where I realized that I was LOST. That’s how God works.

As long as I was driving the bus, God was not going to intervene. When I thought I was in control, He stayed back. When I crashed and burned, He stepped in to rescue me. And He did it via Step One of the Twelve Steps.

He does move in mysterious ways. And He’s waiting for you.

Jacob The Addict (jacobtheaddict@gmail.com)

OK, I’m Finally There

Hi, I’m Jacob, a grateful, recovering sex addict. My sobriety date is unchanged since my very first post.

I’m hoping this is the last time I’ll write about getting to powerless. But I need to share my final inventory with you. Or, perhaps better said, the case I’ve been building against myself.

And here it is. The list of things I’m powerless over.

The dysfunction in my family of origin.
The addictions and abuses of other members of my extended family.
The codependency I developed with my Mother.
The pain caused by my Dad’s emotional absence.
The hurt I carried away from my home life.
The feeling that I’m “less than” … less than just about everything.
The drive to prove myself over and over and over again.
The addiction I turned to to numb the pain I’ve felt for so very long.
The constant acting out, swearing to myself and to God that I’d never do it again, then returning to that behavior in short order.
The long list of broken, dysfunctional relationships I had before I met Amy.
The hurt and betrayal that I’ve caused my dear wife, Amy,
The harm that I’ve caused to others who were objects of my addiction or were victims of collateral damage.
The emotional harm I’ve caused my kids by my failure to be present in their lives.
The numbness I feel from day to day.
The anger and rage that lies buried deep inside.
Sin.

And then, there’s the acceptance that my life is unmanageable. Here are a few clues that might be the case.

I lost touch with my God; how long ago, I cannot say.
I lost touch with Amy, my soulmate, a long time ago.
I lost touch with my adult children.
I lost touch with the few friends I have.
I all but lost touch with my siblings.
I lost touch with my church family.
I let this addiction take over my soul, reaching the point that I don’t care what might happen.
The only thing I never really let get out of control is my work, and the fact that is true proves I’m messed up.

So, that’s the case Jacob the Sane presents against Jacob the Addict.

The prosecution rests its case, feeling it has proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Jacob the Addict is powerless and is living a life that is unmanageable.

Men and women of the jury, what say ye?

Jacob The Addict (jacobtheaddict@gmail.com)

I Think I’m Powerless

Hi, I’m Jacob, a grateful, recovering sex addict. By the grace of God, I’m still sober.

My last post was about “powerless-ness” and how hard it is for me to get there. But I think I’m almost there.

Recently, I was listening to my sponsor talk about his past (“telling his story” – an important part of the realization and recovery process) and a great deal of what he said resonated with me.

He talked about how many times in his life he had purchased pornography (magazines, movies, etc.), used them for self-gratification, then destroyed them all, swearing he’d never do it again. Then find himself at the magazine shop or video rental place buying more.

Last time, I gave you a list of the evidence in the case I’m building against myself related to being powerless over this addiction. When I made that list, I had not even considered what Dan was talking about.

I cannot begin to count the number of times in my life that I’ve done exactly the same thing: bought magazines or movies, downloaded images, watched online porn, etc., “used” them, then destroyed them (or the browsing history leading back to them), swearing that THIS would be the last time.

Then a few days later (hours, sometimes), find myself desperately trying to find the same material I had just destroyed.

I’ve tried willpower, web filters (with a friend serving as my “parent”), accountability partners, encouraging notes to myself, scripture, “white knuckling it” – you name it. And nothing has ever kept me clean. NOTHING.

Now, my prayers for forgiveness immediately following acting out have almost always been genuine. I’ve asked the Lord to “create in me a new heart” so many times that He knows what I’m going to say long before I approach Him (He does anyway).

My point is this. Each new personal discovery, or challenge to remember the past, or hearing of a fellow addict’s story helps me understand even more how futile my effort to stay clean has been. If I’ve tried for decades to beat this and have only managed to get deeper in this hole I’ve dug, then I must certainly be powerless over it.

And, by the way, the “it” in my case is pornography and sex with self, but the more general term is “sin”.

I am therefore POWERLESS over sin, regardless of how it manifests itself within me. I am powerless over this addiction to sex, regardless how it may present itself at any particular time.

I need help from God Himself to change anything about me or this addiction. He is my only hope of becoming a whole human being, one that is useful to Him. I’m glad I can finally say that and really mean it.

Thanks for reading.

Jacob The Addict (jacobtheaddict@gmail.com)

Getting to Powerless-ness

Hi, I’m Jacob, a grateful, recovering sex addict. I recently passed six months sober. I’m working on admitting that I’m powerless.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Step One of the Twelve Steps is:

We admitted we were powerless over sex and love addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t much like the word “powerless”. It sounds wimpy and weak. It sounds a bit whiny. In some ways, it sounds like a cop-out, as in “Yeah, I’m addicted to sex, but I’m powerless against it, so I’ll keep doing whatever I want because I’m powerless.”

I like to think that I’m powerful enough to manage my own affairs. I’ve never been a “power freak” by any means, but just powerful enough to take care of myself. On the flip side, to admit to be powerless sounds a lot like failure to me.

Maybe that makes me a control freak. I do like to be in control and drive the bus. I think I’ve done a pretty good job, thank you. I have a great family. I have a great job. I’ve been successful.

Except for the fact that I’m sex addict. And have been for decades. And while trying to not be an addict, I keep going right back to the same behaviors.

I get angry, I act out.
I get sad, I act out.
I get lonely, I act out.
I get scared, I act out.
I get euphoric, I act out.

Looking at that, it appears that when most anything happens in my life, I act out. Maybe that is powerless after all.

And then there’s the baggage I carry around from a long time ago.

I’ve been working with Hank (not his real name), my counselor, on identifying past traumas. Things that I didn’t really identify as trauma at the time because I was a kid. But as an adult looking back on them, they were traumatic because adults treated a kid that way.

In the exercise we’ve been working on, I went through all my past traumatic experiences and identified: 1) the roles I played in my family of origin, and 2) the unwritten rules that existed in our family. Then, reflecting on those, I was to write the mission statement of our family as I must have understood it.

Here are some highlights:

Keep Mom happy
Don’t express negative emotions
Love is conditional
Protect the family name
Be perfect
Work hard
You must out-success your Father
You are a bad judge of character
You may not act independently of Mom

I don’t have time for the backstory here, but all of those are spoken in my Mom’s voice. She was larger than life. She was in control. She was nurturing and explosive at the same time. Crossing her was dangerous.

She’s been dead for a while but I’ve still been living in her shadow. I’m seeing that as it is for the first time in my life. But it’s hard to deal with.

So how do you break the addictive cycle I started out with above, PLUS deal with all the baggage I carry around from my childhood? I think I’m coming up on the answer.

Here it is: You Don’t

You want to know why? Because I am powerless to change any of those things by myself. And that’s not a cop-out. That’s an absolute fact.

So, maybe I’m coming up on Step One. Maybe I am powerless after all. I do know that my life has become unmanageable. And I’m ready for things to change.

I’ll be sharing all of what I’ve shared here with my Sponsor, Dan (not his real name), and see what he thinks. Maybe I’m ready to start “working the steps”.

I pray that someone out there reads this and finds hope. That’s the only reason I’m baring my own soul here.

Blessings,

Jacob the Addict (jacobtheaddict@gmail.com)

Brokenness

Hi, I’m Jacob, a grateful, recovering sex addict. My sobriety date is unchanged since my last post.

If you know anything about 12-Step programs and the steps themselves, then you probably know that Step One reads like this (modified for sex addiction):

“We admitted we were powerless over sex addiction— that our lives had become unmanageable.”

That may seem like a pretty simple thing to do – admit that one is powerless over one’s addiction. But it’s not.

Human nature says that I can beat this if I just try harder. Never mind the fact that I’ve tried for decades to overcome this by myself, without success.

I’ve read self-help books on overcoming pornography and I’ve implemented their recommendations. Then I’ve white-knuckled through several years of not acting out, only to relapse.

I’ve had accountability partners that I’ve promised to check in with. And I’ve forgotten about them or misled them into thinking I was OK when I wasn’t – and relapsed.

Nothing has worked for more than one or two years. Eventually, the stress or the pain or the anger or the whatever gets bad enough that I return to my drug of choice.

You can probably read what I just wrote and say: “That sounds like ‘powerless’ to me.” But for me, saying I’m “powerless” feels like a cop-out. It feels like I’m looking for (or claiming) an excuse.

Part of my problem is that I was “raised in church”. I’ve gone to church since I was born. When I responded to the “invitation” or the “altar call” when I was 12, it was out of fear, rather than surrender.

For many years, I’ve tried to work my way into God’s favor. And most days, I felt like I was carrying about 60% of the load and just needed Jesus to “top me off” with the other 40%. That attitude is a long, long way from surrender.

I hate to say it, but my church upbringing actually stands in the way of my surrender in Step One. You see, I’m a pretty good person, all in all, and God is pretty lucky to have me on His team. Again, that is a very long way from surrender.

Thankfully, the work toward Step One requires serious reflection on all the things I’ve done, all the places I’ve been, all the times I’ve tried to stop my addictive behavior and all the times I, like the dog in Proverbs, have returned to the vomit.

Looking at the many situations I’ve written about in my step work, it becomes very obvious that there’s a dysfunctional pattern. And the weight of evidence seems to indicate that I’m unable to stop my acting out.

With that said, I’m getting closer to surrender every day. It’s a scary thought to finally yield my will to God’s, approach Him with empty hands and bowed head, and say “Lord, I got nothin’.” But as one of my readings said recently, its time for me to get out of God’s way and let Him lead me where He wants me. After all, He made me and knows how I’m wired.

When I get there, it will be the first time in my life I’ve truly surrendered my will to God’s. Its high time I stopped trying to control everything. After all, its quite easy to see what a fine job I’ve done in screwing things up til now.

May God grant me the humility to yield my will to His.

Best, Jacob the Addict (jacobtheaddict@gmail.com)