So I'm finding myself concerned with understanding the SA definition of sobriety. I don't think that's a good place for me to be. Which is more important to me, having a sobriety date of March 19, 2015 or being truly free from lust for today? What I mean by that is if I have to move my bottom line up and include more lustful behaviors in my definition and to do that effectively I have to reset my date isn't that what I should do without a doubt? I guess the elephant in the room for me is that this really shouldn't be my decision at all. It should be the decision of my SA sponsor. That creates a two fold problem. I am in-between SA sponsors right now and I have a fear about picking a new sponsor. Part of that fear is that I will pick a sponsor who is too easy going and the part is that I will pick a sponsor who is too rigid. The bottom line is that I'm not going to find a new sponsor today so I should probably stop thinking about all this. I will be at the SA International in January and maybe God will send me a sponsor there. If not I will pray for the willingness to find someone soon thereafter. 

If I were reading my comment above and had it been posted by someone else, I would say "boy there is a lot of "I" in there."

Happy travels fellas. 

I love your posts, serenity! You are my source of inspiration for how far one can get. Shlomo24 never updated his 90 days chart, so it always says day 1. When I commemorate the date I reached sobriety I basically commemorate myself, my ego and my accomplishments. When I let go of myself (highly impossible:confused:) and start focusing on what needs to be done today, my start date hardly matters.  

It's a longer way of saying "there are to many "I"s in there"

Keep up your wonderful words of chizuk and inspiration, I love you!

Yitzchok

So I'm finding myself concerned with understanding the SA definition of sobriety. I don't think that's a good place for me to be. Which is more important to me, having a sobriety date of March 19, 2015 or being truly free from lust for today? What I mean by that is if I have to move my bottom line up and include more lustful behaviors in my definition and to do that effectively I have to reset my date isn't that what I should do without a doubt? I guess the elephant in the room for me is that this really shouldn't be my decision at all. It should be the decision of my SA sponsor. That creates a two fold problem. I am in-between SA sponsors right now and I have a fear about picking a new sponsor. Part of that fear is that I will pick a sponsor who is too easy going and the part is that I will pick a sponsor who is too rigid. The bottom line is that I'm not going to find a new sponsor today so I should probably stop thinking about all this. I will be at the SA International in January and maybe God will send me a sponsor there. If not I will pray for the willingness to find someone soon thereafter. 



If I were reading my comment above and had it been posted by someone else, I would say "boy there is a lot of "I" in there."



Happy travels fellas. 







 Don’t worry about the too many “I”s at the moment. Make the decision that is least likely to derail you. For me, sometimes resetting used to send me off the deep end and it was better in the short term to cut myself a little slack. 

serenity wrote on 19 Dec 2017 17:27:

In my experience, sobriety is a truly personal thing. I have modified my bottom lines with the help of my Sponsor, but he definitely wasn't the one to choose. My recovery is in my hands. I need to follow my truth, even if people around me are telling me that I'm lying to myself. At this point, I have enough of a spiritual foundation that I can trust myself. I'm a firm believer in the concept of recovery being different for everyone out there. SA sobriety is wonderful because it's a pretty good basic bottom line, but I believe that creating my own bottom lines was part of my growth in recovery.

@serenity i have a few approaches with this.
First for me personally, i made a decision in very early sobriety that if i would find myself repeatedly taking certain actions of lust then i would add them to my bottom line sobriety definition in order to work on progressive victory.
Thank God i have not yet taken what i would consider actions of lust in that way but since then i have added certain things to my bottom line, for example if i were to do a lustful search on the internet i would reset my sobriety.
For my sponsees it depends where they are on their journey.
Early sobriety its important to focus on the basic SA definition and build sobriety there, and as they progress and gain some time i would then take a similar approach with them as I took with myself.
But its also very sponsee specific, for example i have one sponsee whos actual problem isnt porn and masturbation rather its creating fake facebook accounts to approach and create emotional relationships, and the first time he did it after joining i made him reset, in order to set that bottom line in place immediately.
Ultimately lust is something that is very personal, and we each have to be in touch with ourselves and where our lust takes us, and create healthy boundaries in order to create a progressive victory.
So for yourself, you will know when you are moving too close to the edge of the cliff and now that you have some decent time under your belt, be able to take actions to protect yourself from slipping off the edge...
A good decent strong SA sobriety will have us working on a daily basis on walking further away from that cliff edge.
Blessing you to get the right sponsor ASAP for your own peace of mind and serenity!

Thank you for the replies. They were very helpful!

Here is something from the book of AA that Duvid Chaim mentioned on his phone call today talking about our natural instincts gone astray.

Step Four “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” CREATION gave us instincts for a purpose. Without them we wouldn't be complete human beings. If men and women didn't exert themselves to be secure in their persons, made no effort to harvest food or construct shelter, there would be no survival. If they didn't reproduce, the earth wouldn't be populated. If there were no social instinct, if men cared nothing for the society of one another, there would be no society. So these desires— for the sex relation, for material and emotional security, and for companionship — are perfectly necessary and right, and surely God-given. Yet these instincts, so necessary for our existence, often far exceed their proper functions. Powerfully, blindly, many times subtly, they drive us, dominate us, and insist upon ruling our lives. Our desires for sex, for material and emotional security, and for an important place in society often tyrannize us. When thus out of joint, man's natural desires cause him great trouble, practically all the trouble there is. No human being, however good, is exempt from these troubles. Nearly every serious emotional problem can be seen as a case of misdirected instinct. When that happens, our great natural assets, the instincts, have turned into physical and mental liabilities. Step Four is our vigorous and painstaking effort to discover what these liabilities in each of us have been, and are. 42 STEP FOU R 43 We want to find exactly how, when, and where our natural desires have warped us. We wish to look squarely at the unhappiness this has caused others and ourselves. By discovering what our emotional deformities are, we can move toward their correction. Without a willing and persistent effort to do this, there can be little sobriety or contentment for us. Without a searching and fearless moral inventory, most of us have found that the faith which really works in daily living is still out of reach.

i'm 20 and single Sephardi, and i just started gye 52 days ago and i'm 47 cumulative days clean bh, and started having addiction 4 years ago  didn't realized or cared in till year after i started having problems/3 years ago but i just couldn't stop no matter how much i tried, and this summer was hearing Jewish radio show that had gye talk about the web site  and this sukkot  bein hazemaninm i checked out the web site and joined and its bin a life changer sense:innocent:

Many people are lead to believe that the purpose of live meetings is to get sober. Many are sorely disappointed when they start going to meetings and don't get sober. There is no magic in going to a live meeting and I personally cringe when I hear people in SA pushing GYE people to go to meetings. If someone asks me where a meeting is and says they need to go I'll be the first to help them. But to push meetings, yikes! The traditions of SA maintain we a policy of attraction and not promotion. If you want want we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it then we will show you the steps we took. 

The book entitled Alcoholics Anonymous which has become know as the big book says the reason for meetings on page 15. "We meet frequently so that newcomers may find the fellowship they seek."  We go to meetings to help the new comer. From the forward to the first edition "In any meeting, anywhere, A.A.’s share experience, strength, and hope with each other, in order to stay sober and help other alcoholics. Modem-to-modem or face-to-face, A.A.’s speak the language of the heart in all its power and simplicity.".

I tend to disagree. Not that meetings make me sober, they don't. But there is definitely magic in the meetings. The fellowship of 12-Step has changed my life and it's one of the most precious things about the program for me. I have a friend (actually from GYE) who is a self-identified sexaholic who is working a program. He doesn't go to meetings and I wish he would go to meetings. The meetings are amazing and I feel so bad that he's missing out on something so special. The honesty and vulnerability I witness in meetings is unsurpassed by any other environment. If we're throwing books around, the White Book has an entire section of the value of meetings and while I don't know the exact quote, Roy K. says that they haven't found anyone to get sober without fellowship. The White Book also says that we "lead with our weakness" at the meetings. Personally, when I saw (and currently see) sober members sharing struggles in life it gave me motivation to share about my struggles. It also humanized them and told me that recovery isn't about avoiding difficulties, it's about dealing with them when they come up.

meetings is more like group therapy. and that might help you to understand the benefits of it.

tzaddik212 wrote on 02 Jan 2018 01:40:

Can you expound on that? I think "group therapy" doesn't come near to encapsulating the power of meetings.

 to encapsulating the power of meetings.
can you expand on that? what would you say is the power of meetings?

Shlomo, I'm not sure you're disagreeing with me. Thanks for the insights. 

tzaddik212 wrote on 02 Jan 2018 03:53:

I think my previous post explains an occurrence that is far greater than group therapy. To my knowledge, there's no power of someone 10 years sober sharing struggles in group therapy. The concept of sobriety at all doesn't exist in group therapy, for one.

serenity wrote on 31 Dec 2017 17:09:

I disagree with this part. I don't and didn't go to meetings just for the newcomer. I've heard people justify not sharing struggles at meetings because of the quote you just mentioned. Maybe you weren't saying that, Serenity. But I've definitely heard other members express that. For me, it's far more powerful to hear about someone who's sober and struggling and being brutally honest than it is to hear someone speak of a utopian lifestyle that I can't connect to. Obviously, it's also uplifting and hopeful to hear about the gifts of the program. However, reflecting back to my experience as a newcomer, I remember connecting to the addiction a lot more than to the recovery. As I got healthier, my outlook changed.