The Twelfth Step

I often feel like my recovery from sex and love addiction is way more difficult to handle than the one I’ve had from alcohol and drugs. Even though I have over two years of sobriety now from when I last relapsed into any toxic sex or love behavior, I find I’m continuing to be triggered quite a bit with this disease. So I decided it would be a good thing to write down some of those triggers, not just for my benefit, but also for others who might be unaware of what they actually look like with this specific addiction.

For those who might not know what a trigger means in recover, it’s all the things that can lead a person to a relapse and back into their addiction. With alcohol and drugs, there’s very few of them anymore that exist for me. Going to bars and visiting my fraternity are really the only two I can think of that still stimulate my thoughts on drinking and drugging. I stay away from bars completely for that reason and I visit my former chapter house only once a year solely to speak about the disease with the hopes it will help my brothers. It’s a completely different scenario though when it comes to my sex and love addiction.

Before I go into what some of my triggers are for that addiction, I’d like to mention briefly the top five things I was doing at the peak of when I was active in that disease.

1. I was sleeping with a sponsee (13^th stepping) instead of helping them recover.
2. I was looking at porn and having sexual conversations on the Internet every single night for 3+ hours.
3. I was chasing after married men regularly and trying to seduce them.
4. I was saying sexual innuendos in just about every single conversation I had.
5. I had multiple friends in my life quite close to me who I walked the fine line with between harmless flirtation and direct sexual behaviors.

And that’s only the top five, but there were many others as well. Once I found recovery from that addiction in Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous, my life began to greatly improve. It’s then I began to see just how many triggers I actually had with that addiction and here are ten of those I know that can drive me back into it.

1. Any type of movie or television show that has high sexual content in it with people I find attractive.
2. Daily masturbation by myself.
3. Group situations with friends who regularly use sexual innuendos in conversation.
4. Close friendships with anyone I would consider dating if I were single.
5. Any type of bar, especially gay bars.
6. Any man who says they are straight but still flirts with other men.
7. Weekend retreats where there is nudity or public sex taking place.
8. Any type of bookstore that predominantly caters to sex.
9. Locker rooms, steam rooms, and saunas in public gyms.
10. The bear culture (a subset of the gay culture for large men and their admirers)

There are plenty of other ones I could mention as well, but these were the first ten to pop up in my mind. To be honest, sometimes it feels like I’m navigating a minefield when it comes to this addiction. I can see why now there’s an extremely high rate of relapse with those who’ve suffered from sex and love addiction. In fact, it’s far higher than alcohol and drug addiction is.

I believe the reason for this is due to the fact that sex is everywhere in our culture and is present in almost everything we do. While alcohol and drugs can be avoided and aren’t necessarily part of our biological makeup, sex and love are. I believe they are God given and truly a part of our human nature. Our media, advertising, and most of our culture cater to it for that specific reason. So while one person may see something as simple as a magazine with people half naked on it and never even pick it up, I can be immediately triggered because of it, if I find the person on it sexually attractive. This is why my recovery for my sex and love addiction is a constant work in progress. It’s something I know will probably test me on and off for the rest of my life. I do my best to avoid all of the triggers I have with this addiction, but I know it’s impossible to do so 100%. Thankfully, I have a very strong relationship with my Higher Power today and that alone has kept me clean and sober from my sex and love addiction since April of 2012.

A sex and love addiction is cunning, baffling, and powerful just like alcohol and drug addiction can be. In some ways though, it’s can be even craftier because sex and love are a part of who we all are inside. Thankfully, this addiction is in remission for me and a big reason for that is in knowing what my triggers are. It’s truly is very important to know them no matter what the addiction is, because when we don’t, we stand a good chance of allowing one of them to drive us back into our disease. I know I don’t want that to ever happen, and so I will continue to do my best to draw closer to my Higher Power avoid being around any of them…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

I often hear many folks in AA say that every meeting they attend is always a good meeting. But of course I’ve also heard just as many with an equal opposing view say there are plenty of bad meetings as well. I’ve been learning on my spiritual journey though that when I label any meeting as good or bad that I’m not only making a judgment, I’m also being somewhat self-centered too.

This topic of good and bad recovery meetings is one I continue to hear about in many of the ones I attend regularly. In fact, quite a few newcomers seem to be posing this question all too often lately during them. I believe there is a simple answer to that question.

Who am I to say which AA meetings are good and which ones are bad?

Unfortunately I used to do this all the time. I’d badmouth one meeting in favor of another and never thought once there was anything wrong in doing that. But what I see now is how self-centered that behavior was. How did I ever really know whether someone might enjoy going to a meeting that I didn’t? And maybe that meeting was already working for many others? What I’ve recognized through my spiritual recovery is how judgmental I was being when I did so. I also saw how most of those meetings I was biased with were do to areas of my life where my ego was still in control.

This same argument can also be applied towards the meetings I once said were the best ones to go to. How did I ever really know that a meeting that worked for me would work for someone else? Making that decision for another was also being just as judgmental and self-centered.

First of all, recovery is a tailored process for each and every individual. What works for one person may not work for another and that includes what meetings to attend. To prevent this from happening, I try to focus now on improving my recovery in every meeting I attend. I do that by looking for the positive at each and every one and I always am able to find it if my Higher Power is the one guiding me.

And second, one of the main points of 12 Step recovery programs is to reduce the ego. Making judgments about any meeting is not helping that to happen, it’s actually expanding it. The ego wants to believe it knows more than everyone else. Telling someone which meeting is better than another helps the ego grow rather than shrink. I’d prefer my ego to shrink these days and one sure of doing that has been to not label any meeting as good or bad.

The bottom line is this. When someone asks which AA meetings are the good ones to go to and which ones are the bad ones to avoid, the best answer anyone can give is no answer at all. Instead, let them always choose for themselves. In doing so, two character defects that often plague many alcoholics and addicts will definitely lessen, that being making judgments and being self-centered.

I end this with a question to ponder.

Instead of talking about which AA meetings are the good ones and which ones are the bad, isn’t the most important thing for each of us to just get to any meeting?

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson