Here is The 18 Wheeler as found on pages 158-168 in The SA White Book. It starts with a short introduction and then goes into the 18 ways the author overcame his lust. As you will come to see some of the 18 (for example 1&2) don't have much chiddush and will not tell you very much that you don't already know, while others (for example 4&5) are quite profound. Some of the 18 that don't sound very profound are still worth discussing for various reasons and we will try to do that.

How I Overcame My Obsession with Lust

How did I do it? I didn't. A woman in AA told me after she spoke in a meeting, quoting chapter 5 in Alcoholics Anonymous, that " G-d could and would, if he were sought." And that's how I did it by letting G-d do it. Because I couldn't. But G-d could and would-and did. But I had to go to meetings to learn things like that. "Meetings, meetings, meetings,meetings..." That's what they told me. "Just keep bringing the body." "Work the steps, work the steps, work the steps, work the steps, work the steps." Going to meetings and working the steps; that's how I did it. That's how I learned to let "the grace of G-d enter to expel the obsession." Here's what worked for me:

1. Stop practicing the compulsion. I stopped acting out sexually in any and all forms, including sex with myself (Masturbation) and nonmarital relationships. There could be no relief from the obsession of lust while still practicing the acts of lust.

The first of The 18 Wheeler is quite obvious and doesn't say much that any serious GYE member isn't already trying to do. There are however several points to discuss such as the SA Bottom Line, the main point of the 12 Steps, and where stopping to act out comes in with regards to the rest of the steps.

I will IY"H post in the near future to include these discussions.

A few comments on the first of The 18 Wheeler:

1. The SA bottom line (if you do it you reset your sobriety) is diffrent than GYE's bottom line. GYE includes deliberately watching pornography in it's bottom lone while SA only includes masturbation to (finish) and sex with others. Of course SA includes progressive victory over lust which includes everything from porn to second looks on the street to a few seconds of fantasy. The reson why the SA bottom line doesn't include porn is two fold:
a) If we constantly reset our sobriety especially in the beginnig it will be much harder to get into solid sobriety time and get over that early hump.
b) Masturbation releases large quantities dopamine in the brain and is a much bigger drug scientifically than watching some porn is. We first get ourselves out of the more potent dugs and then work on the smaller ones. This not to say we advise watching porn in the beginning as we will see in number 2 of The 18 Wheeler we need to stop feeding the obsession right away. This is just to say that we don't reset our sobriety for watching porn without masturbation.

2. There is a diffrence of opinion among SA Old-Timers if we move up our bottom line to include other actions of lust as we progress in sobriety. There are those who say that the bottom line always remains the same, while others assert quite forcefully that we move it up with time. This issue is probably decided for each SA member by his individual sponsor. Roy K., the founder of SA, reset his sobriety when he was 28 years sober to 18 years due to an action of lust that he took at year 10. He did not reset it at the time that he took the action at year 10 only later. If he would have reset it at year 10 would he have stayed sober? Who knows. Guidance on this is always given by a sponsor.

3. The point of the 12-Steps is not to stop acting out, but work on the reasons behind our acting out. We act out due to a level of insanity, our inability to deal with our emotions, our defects of character, and a deep spiritual emptiness and hunger. The 12-Steps works on these things and completely remakes the person into a new and better version of himself. The main point of the steps is not to get us sober, but to keep us sober and to give us recovery (relief from the problems mentioned above).

4. Do we get sober (for a week, 2, or 3) and then work the steps, or do we work the steps in order to get sober?
Again it depends who you ask............

* I will finish this post later I gotta run to an SA meeting......