One Day At A Time

Although an essential part of our Program involves writing an inventory and making amends for past behaviour, we found that it was not necessary to spend time worrying about the past or punishing ourselves for it. Indeed, this slogan communicates the concept that we are responsible for our recovery today and only today, and that we need not be preoccupied with the past or the future. Contrary to what many of us had come to believe, we learned that we are not prisoners of the past. Furthermore, through our work in the Program, we learned that no matter what we had done in the past, we were capable of changing. We came to understand that while we cannot change the past, we can learn from it so that we will not continue to make the same mistakes. This slogan also freed us from spending time considering the what ifs of life. We came to believe that because we had turned our lives over to the care of God, as we understood God, things would ultimately work out the way they should. This belief, in turn, helped us see that desiring a certain goal and working to achieve it is different from trying to control the outcome of everything in our lives. When we first heard it said that ours is a twenty-four-hour Program, we assumed this was merely another way of saying that addiction and recovery never took a break. But we soon learned that this twenty-four-hour concept also refers to the fact that each day is broken into twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours of choice; twenty-four hours of potential recovery. In fact, this was exactly the way we worked on our recovery at first one hour at a time. When we found ourselves in particularly difficult situations, wed promise ourselves that we wouldnt act out for the next hour or even the next minute. We learned not to take on any more than we could handle. We began to see that whenever we focused our energies on the past or the future, we were losing at least part of ourselves to the here and now. Learning to live in the present led to a more fulfilling life for us as individuals, yet made it possible for us to be more available to the people in our lives. We knew that we were living both the First Step and this slogan when we stopped marking our calendars on the dates we expected to receive medallions. Because we had come to terms with our addiction, we knew that we could not guarantee to anyone - including ourselves - that we would be sober any day but today. We came to see our goal in terms of recovery, not in terms of medallions. During the period of our active addiction, we periodically swore off certain thoughts and behaviours, only to resume them soon thereafter. When we began to recover, we stopped swearing off thoughts and behaviours for any period of time longer than one day. We also came to understand that we would not get a reprieve from our addiction as a reward for the length of our abstinence or sobriety. We knew that any one of us could slip if we did not continue working the Twelve Steps, and we began to understand that no-one is slip-proof, because the addictive process is a factor in the addicts life whether he or she acts on it or not. We managed to arrest our acting-out behaviour even though we knew we would never be cured. We continued to recover. We discovered that while we would not get extra credit for not acting out during a certain period of time, we werent trapped by the past either. Just because we had acted out yesterday did not mean that we would act out today. We learned that regardless of what we had done the day before, recovery could begin anew for us each and every day of our lives.

H.A.L.T. Hunger, Anger, Loneliness, and Tiredness we learned that we needed to monitor and respond
to these four conditions as we worked on our recovery. We could see that whenever we failed to get proper nourishment, we became physically weak and our energy was low. At these times, everything in our lives became more difficult, we became irritable and negative in our thinking, and we stopped having a sense of gratitude. We found that when we held on to our anger, we became resentful. Our feelings of resentment, in turn, led to feelings of self-pity. Actually, when we were angry at the whole world and feeling sorry for ourselves, we were setting ourselves up for a reward acting out. Before we became part of the group, loneliness was a familiar condition for most of us. When we isolated ourselves from other group members, we became even more lonely. Then we started thinking that we ought to go back where people really cared about us. When we began thinking this way, many of us ultimately returned to the same places where we had gotten into trouble in the past. When we became extremely tired, many of us told ourselves that we needed something to give us a lift and help us relax. Being addicts, of course, we tended to seek out other addictive acts. After working the program for a time, we could see that when we allowed ourselves to get run down we actually set ourselves up for acting out, but that when we were alert and healthy we were much more likely to stay sober. Experience taught us that maintenance of good physical and emotional health is vitally important to recovery.

To Thine Own Self Be True

This slogan serves as a reminder that acting out when were sure that no-one will ever know about it is just as detrimental to our recovery as getting caught acting out. When recovery became the most important thing in our lives, we came to know our boundaries and specifically how, why, and when we had violated those boundaries. Not only did we come to know when we had overstepped boundaries, we also became keenly aware of the times we were being dishonest with ourselves and the people in our groups. We came to understand that our value systems are not imposed upon us by a person or a group of people, they develop within us. When we were away from our groups, we made conscious efforts to bring our value systems with us. We learned that we certainly did not have to be caught in order to be adversely affected by our acting-out behaviours, and that to think otherwise was simply a seductive lie that our addiction was trying to tell us. Through experience, we learned that a three-month period of honest sobriety is much more meaningful and valuable to us than being awarded a pin marking three years of sobriety only because we didnt get caught acting out or being dishonest.

Live And Let Live

This slogan reminds us that each person must have his or her own Program. There were times when we did not agree with the boundaries other people in the Program established for themselves or the manner in which they were working - or not working - the Steps and Traditions. We found that it was always best for us to focus on our own program and simply let the example of our lives speak for us. (We know all too well how defiant we were when someone tried to tell us how to run our lives or work the Program). We learned to treat others with the same respect, allowing them to follow their own process of recovery without interference from us. We remind ourselves that each recovering addict has his or her own Higher Power and that it is not our responsibility to decide how anyone else should work the Program.

Keep It Simple
As practicing sex addicts, many of us had become accustomed to crisis-driven lives. It seemed that we were always getting ourselves into situations that required immediate and complex solutions. When we came to the program, most of us thought to ourselves that it looked far too simple to be practical or effective for us. Later on we realized that because the Program required only a few simple and straightforward tasks of us, we were much more likely to succeed. In fact we could see that only two primary tasks were required of us and that each of these tasks was relatively simple: to heal from our sex addiction and to help other sex addicts. We came to understand that it is far better to do a few things well in the Program than to try many things and subsequently fail. The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions remind us of the value of simplicity in recovery.

There But For The Grace Of God Go I

When we were still acting out and saw other addicts acting out we often thought to ourselves, If I ever get that bad, Ill quit; Im not so bad after all. But once we got into recovery and realized how fortunate we were to know the Program and have some real choices in our lives, we began using this slogan in much the same way we would use a prayer. When we saw an addict struggling, we thought to ourselves, It was like that for me before the Program and it could easily be like that for me again if I neglect the Twelve Steps. I am grateful for my recovery. Each and every addict recovering or not teaches us some valuable lessons about ourselves and our recovery.