The 12 Steps of Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous

The theory of the 12 Steps approach to recovery is that - in spite of the great complexity of our experience of this disease - the key issue affecting us is spiritual hunger.

As soon as we begin to nourish our spiritual needs, we have experienced a sense that we have started recovering and healing from this addiction.

This is the basic 12 Step approach since it was founded by Alcoholics in 1937, and it has been extended to many other addictions since, with great success for all those who can adopt it as a way of life.

The 12 Steps is a radical departure from many long-held prejudices about how we are supposed to live and find happiness.

It is a radical program of rigorous self-honesty. It takes much ongoing work and commitment, but the rewards for working it successfully are remarkable beyond description.

We find ourselves lifted up into a way of living which is happy, joyous, and free. We can at last look ourselves and the world in the eye, and feel we belong.

Here are the Steps we took, which are recommended as a program of recovery:

  1. We admitted we were powerless over sex and love addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable.
  2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
  6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
  7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
  8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
  9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
  10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
  11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with a Power greater than ourselves, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to sex and love addicts, and to practice these principles in all areas of our lives.