The saturday evening speaker at the Denver Unity Fellowship 4th Annual Retreat in Evergreen, CO

Thank you,

I just had some some it's a little more than notes, kind of halfway in between. It's some things I wanted to cover. I wasn't truly expecting to give one more, but I'm glad to do it. Any service service is always great for me.

Last evening I berated the fact that

I think half measures will do us nothing. And so I'd like to talk a little bit about what I believe some of the

measures we need to do are. And part of some of this will be a little repetitive because I threw it in a little bit at the end of last night. But first thing is I my term is you got to want to. That to me is the most important. You have to want to stop acting out. You have to want to gain progressive victory over lust and get sober. I don't know how many times I've heard the newcomers and meetings or people who coming back and back.

I have to stop acting out. I've heard all the reasons my wife believed me. My life's in the shambles. I've been in jail. I've spent all this money. I'm going to die from the disease. It's a sin in my religion. It's against all I stand for or believe in.

And I know all those things are true and they were true for me. They're true for all of us. But that person is not going to get sober. The person who comes in

and says I have to get sober, they've known that for years.

I knew it for years that I had to stop doing those things. It wasn't until I wanted to,

until

I have, well, I use EU, even though I sometimes I don't like to do that because I want to speak for the first. But you have to have that feeling deep, strongly inside with every ounce of your being that you want to stop acting out and get sober. And you have to want it because it's the right thing to do, not because if you don't do it, if you don't stop, all these bad things will happen.

We don't come to the

we don't come to the program to keep our spouses, to keep our families, to keep our jobs, to keep our sanity, to keep our principles, even to keep our life. We do it because we want to do the right thing. I believe that that's what this

has to be there to work.

If we then work these things and give ourselves completely over to this simple program, these other things will no longer be problems. They'll be byproducts rather than the product. But we don't work the program on these things, these unmanageable things. We work the program on ourselves because we want to. Similarly,

we will not get sober if we are here because a spouse, minister, therapist, or judge

says we have to come here or else that's not going to get us sober either. It's fine. I've seen many times that an AA when the the judge sends people the AA and one out of ten of those people get it. So let's find that they get the the

losing the word here, but you get to experience it and see it. But that isn't going to do it. But if maybe getting there and experience it and hear other people share

who want it, then that can be can work for us.

And

and I don't think it is until you want it for the right reason that you're going to get it. And then when you do, you'll feel that Zing I felt I've seen. I had a buddy who came in the same time I did an essay.

You know one of these nicest guys in the world. Two months sobriety

back out. Four month sobriety back out after seven years.

He got it and and you could tell immediately that it was inside him that he wanted it, that that that zinc had him and I am very blessed. I don't know why, but I had that Zing almost immediately that I wanted it. I I knew I was going to lose all those other things, but I wanted it.

But that's not enough. You got to want it more than anything else in the world,

more than anything else in the world. And I mean it. It has to be our number one priority. It has to come before anything. And as that sounds tough, it sounds unfair, it sounds unreasonable and impossible, but it's not. I mean, it is unfair, tough and whatever, but we got a disease. There isn't anything we can do about that. We have the disease.

To me, it was obvious. If I didn't make

this my number one priority, I would never have all those other things

that I thought at times should, I should have priority over. If I didn't make sobriety my number one priority, I would never have a wife and family to come home too. I would never keep a job. I didn't go through my story, but I had 17 jobs and 14 years and these were not, these were VPS of this or that, you know, I, I couldn't keep any of those.

I would never live long enough to have a healthy body.

I would never truly be in church or in my case synagogue, even if I was there physically because my mind was on the lust or, or whatever. So, so I can't tell you how many times in my lusting and acting out days I was truly with my family when I was there. I mean, I was there physically. I went to all the Little League games and all the school things and, and all that,

but I wasn't there. And I was, I was either lusting or I was worried about being caught in a lie that I had told or something else. Or I was so full of anger or shame or guilt that I, I wasn't there, only my body. And even though my family didn't really know what was going on, they didn't know about my acting out necessarily.

They knew I wasn't really there and around. They knew it, even even if they didn't know it was very

freaky to them.

This wasn't. This didn't happen every minute of my family life. But as I got deeper and deeper in the spiral, got more and more often and for longer and longer times. And the same could be said about all the relationships in my life, including my relationship with my higher power. I wasn't there.

Now, I'm not saying that working the program, going to meetings, calling your sponsor,

rendering lust or whatever else you need to surrender are the only things in your life we live. We live in the real world. I'm not, you know, not that whatever, uh, hardcore, uh, we still live in the real world and we need to live in the real world. But I'm saying that anytime there's a choice anytime, and we face these choices in the beginning 100 times an hour, any choice between doing what you know, you should do for your sobriety and something else,

you must make the choice for sobriety every, every time.

Uh, and I'm not saying, you know, if, if in Denver there's 20 meetings a week that you go to every meeting and don't spend any time with your family, But if it's, oh, I'm too tired or the family's grousing, but you know, I need a meeting, go to the meeting, the grousing and whatever will only get worse if you don't get the sobriety. You may say that this is not fair. It's not right. I should not have to give up time with my family or spend time working the steps

instead of enjoying myself.

In fact, that goes against my cosmic rules of the universe.

Uh, and, and you're right, it's not fair. In fact, it's downright awful. But that's the way this cunning, baffling and powerful disease has it, you and its clutches. I, I compare it to a leaky roof. We had a leaky roof in the house in Los Angeles and, and whenever it rained, I don't understand how the water knows exactly where how to find that leak, You know, and, and, and go in there. It always. And not only that it doesn't

come out where it goes in you know, it goes along the the girders or whatever and comes out here. Well, that's kinda how our disease works. If we let the littlest opening up there, it's gonna find it and it's gonna work its way through and it's gonna come out here. And you may not even put two and two together here, but it's because we left that opening there because when we had the choice as to what we really

needed and wanted to do, we chose Terry's cosmic rules of the universe instead of what it needs to do to get sober.

Umm And as I said, with the hard work and work in the program, making those choices become second nature. They become a lot easier. You learn to, to do your time, you know, change some things around so you do have time for the family or do have time to play golf or whatever it is you like to do. But it takes a little time in the beginning. You got a error on the side, always on the side. I'll call it error, but you gotta go over on the side of of doing what you need to do.

Gotta want it more than anything else in the world.

And next you need to be 100% vigilant in the beginning. Almost every conscious thought needs to include an awareness as to whether that thought or the act to follow will more will make it more likely I will act out. In the beginning of my sobriety I was surrendering lust and other things 100 times a day. But I had to always be vigilant, always about what's going on.

OK,

Lust

that was to me, that's been one of the I'm very grateful that I saw that lust is my disease. When I came in,

when I introduced myself at meetings, I, I first say that I am a lust addict, then I'm then that I'm a sexaholic. I do this because my drunkenness is on lust, not on the sex. I do this because never once in my life did I act out without it being preceded by lust. Lust was my drug of choice.

The acting out was just the inevitable consequence of my lusting. Thinking that our sexual acting out is the problem is similar to thinking that fever is the problem of a bad illness. Certainly the fever can kill you, but it's the disease inside that's causing the fever.

Coming to SA to simply stop acting out is like coming to an, A, a meeting to stop from getting Duis or hangovers.

That's those are the inevitable consequences of the drinking. I've heard people come into me. I'm here because I'm getting too many, you know, Duis, wherever the Duis and hangovers may cause big problems. But to see alcohol and actually the allergy to the alcohol

that is the cause of the problem.

As you know, I'm also an alcoholic and a drug addict. I know that when I was drunk on lust, I was just as stoned as if I had done 3 lines of coke or six gin and tonics. Worse, I didn't have the same telltale signs that could at least warn others

to be careful. I knew that I I know that I have come out of lust blackouts 4 miles down the freeway over three lanes and not remembered one second of those those four miles on that freeway what I did or anything.

I know I've been so stoned on lust that I can't remember a single word my wife or child or boss or clergyman has said to me.

I know I've been so obsessed with getting another hit of lust that I put myself and others in grave bodily danger.

I know that I got tolerance to lust just as I did to my other drugs. And for those who I think tolerance meant, you know, like I thought it was OK, it just means that we need more and more to get the same hit. Uh, that it took more and more, oh, what do you know,

more and more to give me the same escape as before.

Umm, but I had to have new and different types that I had to isolate more and take bigger and bigger risks in the vein attempt

that that they would satisfy this insatiable thirst. I didn't see any of that until I got into programming. I didn't see that lust was the problem and that that that was what was driving my acting out. This was true especially of my masturbating before program. I had this insane belief that masturbating was somehow quench the fires, for my sexual acting out

went all along. Rather than quenching the fires, it was fanning them.

I was just adding fuel, not removing it. It's amazing to me, this accountant here, that over 20, I think I masturbated over 20,000 times and it never occurred to me that my old way of thinking wasn't going to work. That maybe on #20,000 and one, that it would be different. This wasn't this. This was an easy one of the easier ways, my old ways of thinking to give up.

So if lust is the true culprit, I must keep ever vigilant for lust. In the beginning, this was the most important thing for me and it still is today.

The only difference being that it's second nature to keep vigilant and I have more tools to use for my vigilance and sneak attacks come less often and they are sneak attacks. I mean, it's really, it's really rare that I say to myself today, Hey, Terry, I need an escape or I need to cause some big, big problems in my life. So let's lust.

Uh, instead I just find myself doing it. All of a sudden, I,

I, California, I wake up, I don't mean from sleep, just wake up and say and realize I've been looking in the car next to me. And I got to tell you, I say, part of my prayer ritual is on the way to work. Driving in the car, I'll be saying prayers to God and find and wake up finding that I'm looking over in the car next to me to see what's there. That's after almost 16 years,

so I've still got to be always vigilant. All of a sudden I kind of wake up and realize I've been looking in the car next to me or obsessing on the outfit of a figure skater.

We're hoping that a coworker will smile at me or remembering an old flame. Some S programs have a 10 second or three second rule about surrendering lust. I have a three one thousandth of a second rule

about that.

If I don't instantly, and I mean instantly surrender the lust, I've had a slip.

And even though I may call it a slip, it don't matter because it's going to be one because the next time it's going to be 10, one thousandth of a second. The next time it's going to be 10 seconds and the next time it's going to be 10 months. So I don't take that chance. If I don't turn over to my higher power, my feeling is if I don't turn that over to my higher power immediately, I won't leave you long before I'll be dead. And that's where my,

my first step is on powerless over lusts. And I will die

because that's where I was going. I was going to go. We don't have to. We don't, we don't have to go into the front log. We have sex along, but I was going to die.

Some things now that I don't have written down, but just some things about what I think is I'm going to tell you this and then correct what I said. Don't get a sponsor.

Use a sponsor. I don't know how many people get a sponsor. Hey, Joe's my sponsor. Don't call him, don't use him, don't work the steps with him and think, oh, I've punched that ticket. I can go all along to the next thing.

Uh-huh. You are kidding yourselves. Use that sponsor. And even if you don't like the sponsor, you know, even if they make you or whatever, use them. And if you need to get another sponsor, fine, but not until. Don't leave the one until you've got the other. And usually if there's something about that sponsor you don't like, it's because this they got something

similar to what you've got and that's why you don't like them.

I'm going to say one that is a little tough.

I hear a lot of people pray for this session to be removed or pray to not be a sexaholic or whatever. Think you're praying for the wrong thing. OK, the miracle is here. This program, this essay is a miracle it God has given us the way to get recovery from our disease and

rather than pray for some ZAP of both of lightning to take this away

for the willingness to do whatever it's going to take to use the tools that God gave us.

Umm, I, I've, I think I've no man has prayed to the fly, you know, be able to fly for for you for centuries, the myths and all. And I don't know if the Wright brothers prayed to be able to fly or not, but but I know that it was, I believe it was God that gave them the idea of how to to build an airplane.

But they had to try and work and work and put everything they had into it and fail and,

and whatever until it worked. It took years and years once they had the idea of how to do it. And then just look, I mean 50 years from within 50 years, within 60 years we were on the moon, maybe 70. So it takes the hard work. God has given us the tools we need. I don't. I'm not saying don't pray to God, but I think pray for the willingness to do whatever it takes.

One of the other things I've seen in in in

talking to and hearing a lot of sexaholics talk is

besides being addicted to lust. I don't know if it's an addiction or what, but I think we have this deep, deep thing about being self-destructive. I mean, we chose the type of disease, you know, I'm not saying we really chose it. We could have chose alcoholism or you know, if you're an alcoholic, it's going to cause you a lot of problems.

But if it gets found out, you're not going to get fired because you're an alcoholic from a job or lose your place since now you may get fired because of how you do your job because you're not. But we chose the disease that if or the types of acting out that if we get caught almost immediately, the family is going to be gone, our place in the community is going to be gone or whatever. And I don't,

I don't know why, but I don't think that I think that's something we need to take into account.

And, and I say that because I don't know how many times I've heard it in a meeting. I don't understand. It was going so well. Everything was going OK for me. And then I just threw it. And I think it's because a lot of us say, I can say, you know, I can hear my father's voice. Terry, you no good pieces. So and so you don't deserve anything good. You know,

there's a voice inside a lot of us that say we don't deserve anything good. We need to do self-destructive. I can give you, I can work on a project,

spend, you know, three weeks and do this terrific job. And I know nobody else in our company could have possibly done turn into my boss and tell him about the 110th. The one little thing that I'm not sure about, you know, that that he never would have seen that or anything. I've just sabotaged that or, or sitting in a meeting, keeping my mouth shut, knowing that, you know, and all of a sudden spouting out saying some dumb, stupid thing. I didn't have to at all

and look back and say,

well, that was about the one thing you possibly could have said that could have really screwed you up really good. And and they just come out of nowhere from so I think that besides surrendering lust,

we need to surrender this need. I don't know what you call it to be self-destructive,

and I think that

that's really, really important. I think we need to look at that. I think if you do,

I'm not a good one about journaling at all, but I think if you do consistent tense steps

and review your days and review them in a non judgmental way, it's an inventory. You know, I'm account if I take inventory, I don't think, oh, there's a good bottle of this. There's a bad, you know, just a, it's just 12 cases of this or or 100 lbs of this. They don't make a judgement on it. If we could do the same thing with our own inventories, I think it would help them. And what I found is if I do that, I can see patterns that I can see things about the

destructive and where it's leading

and then just the other again about another thing to surrender.

As I say, what I've learned for me was working my way back up the ritual was the lusting caused the acting out. Feeling bad, less than, fearful of or whatever of something inside of me is what caused me to need to escape,

and my natural means of escape was lust. So if I can

be honest with myself about what's going on with me today, how I'm feeling about this or whatever, or even, you know, even afterwards, after I've out of nowhere, you know, yelled at my wife or whatever, or had a button pushed to go back and look and say, Oh yeah, you know, you were scared about, you were scared about being laid off from the job or whatever. You're fearful

and this is this is the result of it. Even if that fear or shame, as I say, is completely

nonsensical. If, if,

if I could be honest about it, I could say, oh, it's nonsensical. It's nothing to really be afraid of. But if I don't have that honesty, and if I can't look at that and say I need to surrender that fear, I need to surrender that shame, then it's going to turn into lust. It's a lot harder to surrender the lust than it is the other. And then it could turn into backing out ritual.

Umm, that's about, that's about all Iconic

have right now. And so I don't end on a good good crescendo there or whatever, but I'll be glad to talk to anybody. My e-mail and phone numbers are there too, if you want to talk when I get back to Moab or even North Carolina. Thanks.