12-Step Meetings

I have been involved with two different 12-step addiction recovery programs for the past 19 years, Sexaholics Anonymous and the Addiction Recovery Program from the LDS church. Both work for me just fine and are based on the same core principles.  Pick one, find a meeting near you, and attend a meeting this week.  There’s nothing to be afraid of!  You’re going to find people there who are just like you in your same situation.

The inherent safety and anonymity of these meetings permits a level of honesty, humility, and faith in Christ sufficient to allow the repentance process to start working within me. The meetings are safe because everyone there suffers from the same addictions that I do. Therefore, I can have confidence that they will not gossip, backbite, judge, or condemn in the same way people might in other settings.

Attendance at these meetings changed me from the inside out – slowly but surely – in significant ways that I will describe below. It wasn’t necessarily the content of the meetings but the safe environment that allowed my heart to open and my faith to increase to the point that I could finally start to be healed and be set free from the chains that had bound me for over twenty years – one small step at a time. Faith combined with the opportunity to come out of isolation and connect with others was and continues to be a critical part of my recovery. There are many other essential aspects of the 12-Step programs besides meetings themselves that are crucial to recovery, but I found that without going to the meetings, it just didn’t work for me.

I didn’t talk to people in my church meetings about my addictions. I didn’t feel that it was a safe or appropriate place to share such things, and for the most part, I was right. Because of this, half of me has been at church all these years while the other half has not been there. Therefore, the addicted part of me had truly been inactive from the church since the addiction began. I had split myself into two parts – the “church” or “public” me and the “addicted” or “private” me. The 12-Step meetings are like a desperately needed testimony meeting specifically for that addicted part of me. Taking an active role in the meetings is called “step zero” by some. For me, the rest of the program doesn’t work without going to these meetings regularly – kind of like being inactive in the church never worked very well for me either, surprisingly enough.

These meetings increase my humility (decrease my pride). For me, this means that they increase my capacity to be aware of the true nature of both my strengths and weaknesses. Humility is the first missing piece of the puzzle and is also what the first of the 12 steps is about. This self-awareness increased as I attended the meetings. This was very important to me because, without self-awareness and impeccable honesty, I couldn’t begin to see clearly what things I needed to do to allow Christ into my life so He could start overcoming these addictions with me since I couldn’t do it on my own. I also learned that without such humility and self-awareness, I was a horrible judge of my progress. Months would go by with me thinking nothing was happening. Luckily, I kept going back because later I would look back and see that a solid foundation was being put in place while I was unaware. I kept going back regardless of what my blind eyes told me about my progress.

Faith in Christ is the second missing piece of the puzzle and is also at the heart of step two. I found an interesting quote in the Bible dictionary under faith. It describes two ways to increase faith:

“Faith is kindled by hearing the testimony of those who have faith (Rom. 10:14-17) … strong faith is developed by obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ; in other words, faith comes by righteousness…” – Bible Dictionary, “Faith”

The 12-Step meetings increase my faith in a few ways. First, I start to believe that Christ wants to help me and has the power to help me. This faith isn’t a learned thing – I can’t get it through reading a book or having someone explain it to me. It came to me through hearing and bearing testimony of the reality of our situations while sitting in these meetings. It also comes from my righteousness as I gradually move away from my addictions and replace sin with righteousness. I have not found any other way to increase the kind of faith in Christ sufficient to be free from the compulsion of these addictions and the underlying problems that the addictions are covering up.

The second way my faith in Christ increases deals with believing that Christ loves and respects me – warts and all. As I see people in the group respect each other even though we all know the truth about each other’s problems, I think to myself, “If these guys can love and respect me, maybe Christ is also capable of that kind of love and respect for me too.” The testimony of the other members of the group increases my faith in Christ’s capacity to love even me. I ended up loving and respecting myself more also, which I found to be essential to my recovery. Again, I had not found anywhere else that this kind of faith in Christ’s love for me as an addicted son of God was strengthened to the extent necessary for me to progress.

I had been isolated for most of my life when it came to this part of my addiction. Just showing up to the meetings was not enough. I needed to “connect” with the people there. I needed to come out of isolation (where Satan could gain victory over me) and form bonds with others that could allow me to share burdens with them when I was weak – during meetings or through phone calls. Some of my connections in the past were painful, and so I think that might be part of what kept me from connecting more readily.

Just as I cannot do very well in the gospel when I isolate myself and stop going to church, I cannot do very well isolated in my addiction – just like a hot coal from a fire taken away from the main pile of coals soon becomes cold and goes out. I could, however, even in the safety and brotherhood of these amazing groups, find reasons not to connect with others.

Judgment, pride, putting myself above or beneath the group, can all keep me going through the motions of going to group meetings while I remain isolated and dying on the inside. As I faced my fears and talked to, called, and befriended these men, I found myself beginning to progress at a much faster rate with a much more solid foundation than I did before I started connecting with others.

There are some aspects of meetings that seem simple but are very important.  When I introduce myself, I state that I am an addict.  I’m a lot of other things too, but being an addict is why I’m in that room.  Stating this gets me to get out of denial and pride and to connect with the reality that I am addicted to things that I don’t have control over.  It also lets everyone else know that they are with people who know exactly how it feels to be addicted and can be fully united in that.

“And he commanded them that there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another.” – Mosiah 18:21

There is no cross-talk in the meeting.  That means no interrupting or speaking directly about another person’s remarks.  This gets rid of contention and pride, which is essential to support unity within the group.

I’ve also found it very important to speak using “I” when sharing instead of using “We” or “You.”  This keeps me focused on sharing my experience instead of speaking for the group or preaching to people or giving a talk.  “Sometimes you feel alone and like nobody is going to help you.” or “Sometimes we feel alone and like nobody is going to help us.” versus “Sometimes I feel alone and like nobody is going to help me.”  The first sentence sounds to me like a lecture, the second one sounds like someone is speaking on my behalf.  The third sentence sounds powerful and vulnerable and is the only one that’s guaranteed to be true because it’s my testimony of what I’ve experienced myself.

I also try my hardest not to be codependent and “save” other people by sharing what I think they need to hear.  I also try not to share things to make people think I’m smart or a profound thinker.  I surrender my own will about what I think I need to say, and ask God to help me know what to share that will express my own experience in the best way possible.  I don’t want to hear what someone else thinks I need to hear, I want to hear what everyone else experienced this week or experienced while working the step we read about today and then I can pick out of that what I think will be helpful to me.

Meetings are a very powerful part of recovery, and I feel lifted up and connected in meetings when I can connect and be a part of the group – working step 0.

Going to meetings put me into an environment where Christ could finally heal me from the inside out. I started to turn to Christ more and more for comfort and support instead of resorting to the addiction. But this, by itself, I found was not enough. I discovered that I also had to work on myself from the outside in as well. In other words, I had to change behaviors and habits to the best of my ability – I had to do all I could do, and let God and Christ do the rest. Other articles on this website cover some of the daily things I learned from others and on my own that have helped me to make progress from the outside in.