Escapeandnevercomeback
Respected Member
You know, I have a similar experience with a "Sex and Porn addicts anonymous" group that I've been investigating, it's an online group too. Unfortunately, where I am, there is no physical group. Probably I will make one if I will ever beat this. But anyway, what I want to say is that I believe the steps are alright and good to follow and, at the same time, I don't always like what the 12 steps model of recovery preaches, sometimes I do though and what could probably make the difference is if you find "your group", that group that works for you or people who have been following the 12 steps model of recovery, even if you find one it could make the difference, maybe the biggest nugget you can find in those groups is someone who could help you for real, someone who is further ahead in the spiritual developement and experience and knowledge and could guide you, and by "spiritual development" I am not talking about religion or faith (although I don't have any problems with them, I have faith myself), what I'm talking about is the "developement of your spirit aka soul, if you believe in humans having a soul, I do, but if you don't believe we have a soul, just think about the self-improvement of the "real you" because I believe that there are things that trully matter in this life more than the material things people chase in general, and I believe those "not material" things could be the difference between we being happy and we being miserable, you know what I'm saying?
But anyway, what I want to say is that the steps can be helpful. They are not bad steps, they are actually pretty straight forward but maybe the fact that like half of them discuss God or Higher Powers can make people confused or push away the non-believers. Maybe some people who don't believe in God or Higher Powers and don't want to get into the whole Prayer/God/Higher Power thing don't want to go to those meetings. But the idea is that I know (not personally) atheists who have gotten clean of drugs and have had decades of sobriety through 12 steps. So it's definitely possible.
We probably really need a "map" of this recovery, some plan of how to do it. I guess what they tried to do with the 12 steps is create a 12 steps maps to follow, have a start and a continuation. One can really try to find the essence, like I did. And when I looked at those steps through this "lens" it became pretty clear:
1. Admit the issue/issues.
2. Believe you can change, you can deal with the issues and have a better life.
3. Seek and accept help (You don't just need to look for help, you also need to accept it).
4) Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. I wrote this step exactly how it is because it's pretty self-explanatory. We need to investigate what fucked us up. Why we keep abusing a behavior that fucks our brains and lives up.
5) Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. This step is also exactly how it is originally written because it's also self-explanatory. It's actually the step that you do at the group meetings after you do step 4, you make an invetory of yourself and share it with someone. Now this might sound uncomfortable or straight up scary. Who is this person that I should share this with? And what will the person do with it? I don't know what else to say here. But if you can share it with someone you really trust (like wife, close friends, siblings etc.) then I guess it will be alright. I'm not sure but I believe usually you share it with your sponsor.
6) We make the decision and make ourselves ready to start working on our bad habbits, defects or characters, fucked up patterns etc.
Step 7) I believe this step, number 6, 10 and 11 are the steps where we actually need to work on our spiritual self-improvement and what really matters to us, this is how I see those steps. At step no 4 we make a complete analysis of our life from way back as far as we can remember and see what went wrong. But then we actually need to start doing something to change and improve that.
Steps 8) and 9) are actually about making a list of persons that have been affected by our addiction and make amends to them.
And step 12) is about helping other addicts, after we have self-improved and got stable with our recovery and reached a great place with all this and have now some things we can actually use to help people.
That's pretty much how I see the whole 12 steps things, it's my interpretation, it's only by looking at the 12 steps through those lenses that I could actually find a place for them in my recovery attempt. Now, probably some people who follow the 12 steps don't agree with what I just did but I don't like to live in a bubble, you know what I'm saying? I believe we need to mold everything into what actually helps us and not follow anything blindly that stresses us out.
But anyway, this god pretty long. In conclusion, what I want to say is that I am not writing those things to advertise 12 steps and I'm not telling people not to go either, it's just how I see the whole 12 steps model of recovery, you can find your 12 steps that can work for you or you might not, it depends on you, they could inspire you in their original form or you might want to reinterpret them for yourself (not neccesarily to tell them that you're doing this until maybe way later where you could say I've been porn free for 5 years so obviously that worked for me).
But anyway, what I want to say is that the steps can be helpful. They are not bad steps, they are actually pretty straight forward but maybe the fact that like half of them discuss God or Higher Powers can make people confused or push away the non-believers. Maybe some people who don't believe in God or Higher Powers and don't want to get into the whole Prayer/God/Higher Power thing don't want to go to those meetings. But the idea is that I know (not personally) atheists who have gotten clean of drugs and have had decades of sobriety through 12 steps. So it's definitely possible.
We probably really need a "map" of this recovery, some plan of how to do it. I guess what they tried to do with the 12 steps is create a 12 steps maps to follow, have a start and a continuation. One can really try to find the essence, like I did. And when I looked at those steps through this "lens" it became pretty clear:
1. Admit the issue/issues.
2. Believe you can change, you can deal with the issues and have a better life.
3. Seek and accept help (You don't just need to look for help, you also need to accept it).
4) Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. I wrote this step exactly how it is because it's pretty self-explanatory. We need to investigate what fucked us up. Why we keep abusing a behavior that fucks our brains and lives up.
5) Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. This step is also exactly how it is originally written because it's also self-explanatory. It's actually the step that you do at the group meetings after you do step 4, you make an invetory of yourself and share it with someone. Now this might sound uncomfortable or straight up scary. Who is this person that I should share this with? And what will the person do with it? I don't know what else to say here. But if you can share it with someone you really trust (like wife, close friends, siblings etc.) then I guess it will be alright. I'm not sure but I believe usually you share it with your sponsor.
6) We make the decision and make ourselves ready to start working on our bad habbits, defects or characters, fucked up patterns etc.
Step 7) I believe this step, number 6, 10 and 11 are the steps where we actually need to work on our spiritual self-improvement and what really matters to us, this is how I see those steps. At step no 4 we make a complete analysis of our life from way back as far as we can remember and see what went wrong. But then we actually need to start doing something to change and improve that.
Steps 8) and 9) are actually about making a list of persons that have been affected by our addiction and make amends to them.
And step 12) is about helping other addicts, after we have self-improved and got stable with our recovery and reached a great place with all this and have now some things we can actually use to help people.
That's pretty much how I see the whole 12 steps things, it's my interpretation, it's only by looking at the 12 steps through those lenses that I could actually find a place for them in my recovery attempt. Now, probably some people who follow the 12 steps don't agree with what I just did but I don't like to live in a bubble, you know what I'm saying? I believe we need to mold everything into what actually helps us and not follow anything blindly that stresses us out.
But anyway, this god pretty long. In conclusion, what I want to say is that I am not writing those things to advertise 12 steps and I'm not telling people not to go either, it's just how I see the whole 12 steps model of recovery, you can find your 12 steps that can work for you or you might not, it depends on you, they could inspire you in their original form or you might want to reinterpret them for yourself (not neccesarily to tell them that you're doing this until maybe way later where you could say I've been porn free for 5 years so obviously that worked for me).
