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Step Minus One Workshop

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The missing physical aspect of sexual recovery

The concept of Step Minus One comes directly from Alcoholics Anonymous and Sexaholics Anonymous literature and early AA history.

The image of the cart before the horse represents the approach to threefold recovery that has occurred in many 12-step programs including SA. Threefold recovery, originating in AA, incorporates the physical, emotional and spiritual elements. Unawareness of the significant part medical treatment played in early AA, and in the absence of sufficient medical science, physical healing has largely been limited to sobriety. Incorporating the physical aspect helps creates the horsepower to support sustainable and rewarding sobriety and recovery for more members.

Workshop contents

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My Step Minus One Story

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This is the full, unedited version of an article from December 2019 edition of Essay, the official SA newsletter.

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The missing physical aspect of Three-fold Recovery

I’ve lived most of my life in Australia. After being sexualized by an older boy, at age  5, I started acting out with my self and other boys. A few years later imagery became part of my MO. That deepened into pornography in my teens and relationships with much older men at 16, group sex and anonymous encounters by age 20.

I knew at the time there was something off about what I was doing but I was powerless to stop. I was seeking help continuously for my many difficulties with life.

I got the first hint of sexual recovery when I was travelling in the US at age 21 in 1980 when I came across a couple of isolated cases. It offered me hope. 12 Step became part of my life at age 30. By then I’d had 3 major relationships with men, each chaotic and dysfunctional in their own way.

I’d founded SA in Melbourne in 1992 after leaving another program. I immersed myself in service, step-work, sponsorship, conference recordings, local and international conferences. At 35 I began my first period of prolonged sobriety.

At some deep level, I knew it was all unsustainable. Even with all the inventory work, I sensed there was something deep inside I had trouble describing or identifying. After 8 years of sobriety, I lost it and struggled for the next 10 years.

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Does anyone mean anyone?

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Does Tradition 3 in the AA 12 & 12 and the Responsibility Declaration tell us that SA must accommodate anyone with a sexual addiction?

Key quotes from  AA literature are:

  • ‘When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of A.A. always to be there. And for that: I am responsible.’ A.A.’s Responsibility Declaration
  • “neither punish nor deprive any A.A. of membership, that we must never compel anyone to pay anything, believe anything, or conform to anything?” AA 12 & 12 p 141
  • “You are an A.A. member if you say so.” AA 12 & 12 p 139

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SA founder Roy K on same-sex marriage

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In 1998 Roy and I  were discussing by email some of the challenges to the SA Sobriety Definition on the same sex issue. In these emails, Roy, referring the campaigns to legalize same-sex marriage, wrote in an email “let them get married”. My understanding of what he was saying, was that the legalism of the same-sex marriage debate in the political sphere blurred what was a spiritual issue in SA. Roy came from a background of legalistic religion.

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“Sexual Orientation” is an outside issue in SA

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The term “sexual orientation” is not mentioned anywhere in the main SA literature:  Sexaholics Anonymous (aka White Book), Recovery Continues, Step into Action books. The first time “sexual orientation” was directly addressed  in SA official literature was in Member Stories 1989 p 49, in a member’s story repeated in Member Stories 2007.   The member  wrote

I see now it was not an issue of “gay, straight, or bisexual.” It was an issue of addiction. Once I put my drug away, for one day at a time, these issues seemed to vanish.

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A firm and clear bottom line?

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 In the SA main text, Sexaholics Anonymous (aka the White Book) the sobriety definition is described as a “a firm and clear bottom line” (page 2). “not a relative matter that we define for ourselves” (pages 1 & 191). The concept of “marriage as you understand marriage” promoted prior to the Cleveland  Statement of Principle … Read more

Bill W and Roy K

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In the 1990s, prior to the Cleveland Clarification,  my grand-sponsor for a while, a prominent member who endorsed and very actively promoted the liberal interpretation of the sobriety definition wrote in an email “…leave it up to each person to decide what that (spouse and marriage) means just as we leave the decision on what God means … Read more

Wordgames

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Words change their meaning over time. Principles don’t.

One argument used by those against the Cleveland Clarification is that before 1999 the SA literature did not define the terms “spouse” and “marriage” .  Thus the “original SA program” allowed members to define those terms for themselves: endorsing as sexually sober, sex within a same-sex and even polygamous relationship.

In the 1980s and 90s SA Members were so clear that that “marriage meant marriage of a man and a woman” that

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