Keep Coming Back 

by Joel B.

“Keep Coming Back.” 

For many of us, it’s one of the very first recovery aphorisms we hear. And while there are many – “One day at a time,” “Easy does It,” “Keep it simple” – to this day, for me, few resonate as viscerally and as warmly as “Keep coming back.” 

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Like any memorable maxim the fundamental concept of “Keep coming back” is simple, clear, and easy to grasp. Yet unlike most, it also has a very interesting twist. “Keep coming back.” Yes. Of course. But “back” to what? 

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Before beginning recovery in earnest in 1998, I did “Keep coming back.” But it wasn’t to recovery. It was to behaviors that, from my vantage point of today, were obviously destined to lead to negative consequences. And they did; a failed marriage, ruined friendships, financial repercussions, diminished self-worth, suicidal ideation. However, I didn’t experience all those repercussions to my actions at once. Maybe it would have been better for me if I had. Perhaps then I would have started recovery sooner. 

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But because I experienced the fallout from my acting out behaviors individually and irregularly, I did keep coming back…to those behaviors. Why? Because they provided the escape from the pain I was feeling. Pain from what? Didn’t matter. In time, pain wasn’t the reason. It was the excuse. And the rationale to engage in behaviors that – at least for moments at a time – provided the elusive and illusory belief that I could “leave myself,” that everything was okay, and, ironically, that I was in control. And, as I’ve heard others share their similar fate, that course of action worked. Until it didn’t. 

And that was when the real pain started. The “this is never going to end” pain. 

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My first recovery meetings were in the early 90s. I probably went to a half dozen. But I didn’t keep coming back. Well, to recovery. The reasons why are two-fold. Primarily, I hadn’t bottomed out. I hadn’t gotten to the point where I was in so much existential pain that recovery was my only option if I was willing to choose to stay alive. The second reason I didn’t stick with my first attempt at recovery is that in meetings I didn’t feel particularly welcomed. I felt like an outsider. I don’t remember any one person coming up and introducing themselves or welcoming me. I didn’t hear “Stick with it. It gets better” or “Congratulations! Your first meeting is brutal, but we all had to go through it. And the good news is you’ll never have to go through your first meeting again.” No one said, “Keep coming back.” 

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Or maybe they did. It’s absolutely possible that all these things were said to me, and I wasn’t ready to hear them. I have a friend of many years who told me, when I first started my journey of recovery, “We [everyone in program] all meet at a point of pain and come in on our knees.”

And once I was ready to begin recovery in earnest, I was in true pain and on my knees and was ready to hear encouragement from others. And I experienced that. And a lot more; others thriving in recovery, wonderful shares, fellowship. Oh, and I got a sponsor. And that was the single most consequential action I took in my very early days of recovery. By sharing my journey with a sponsor, I was no longer living a secret life. 

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And I have kept coming back. For 24 years. 

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As I shared at a meeting today, I came into program in 1998 for one reason – to stop acting out. Yet what I have experienced in recovery is infinitely more than that. I have a very fulfilling 21-year relationship with my spouse (married for almost 14 years). The friends I’ve made in recovery are truly FFLs – Friends For Life. My finances are better than I could have imagined. I have regained healthy self-worth. And while certainly every day is not a great day, I am truly grateful for each one and look forward to the next. 

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It’s because I have experienced these incredible blessings that I am keenly aware when a newcomer is “in the room.” I recognize their pain. I know they may very well feel as desperate as I did 24 years ago. And if there is a newcomer, I’ll be sure to introduce myself and say simply and with sincere gratitude for my own journey, “Keep coming back. It gets better.” 

Because for me, when I keep coming back – to recovery in general and “the rooms” specifically – it does. 

Why “Keep Coming Back” Means So Much to Me in SLAA, Plus Twelve Signs That I Must

Anonymous

With nearly three years of sobriety, I am seeing results from years of working the twelve steps in SLAA with a sponsor. But when I first got to the Program nearly a decade ago, I theoretically could have been banned from meetings, which is why “Keep Coming Back” is so meaningful to me.

Tradition three—that we restrict access to SLAA to none, so long as they have “the desire to stop living out a pattern of sex and love addiction”—may have saved me from a permanent life of acting out. I started out unsure of if I belonged in SLAA, but I wouldn’t stop talking at meetings about things that had nothing to do with sex and love addiction. I broke SLAA traditions left and right, promoting events, bringing up outside issues, you name it. But I had the desire to stop living out a pattern of sex and love addiction, and that was enough for me to keep coming back. 

Eventually, I started working with the right sponsor for me. His approach was very structured and based in the AA “Big Book.” Influenced by my sponsor, I started to become more serious about how I shared at meetings, working to be a sort of ambassador to newcomers and consciously sharing about the steps, traditions, readings, and leads at different meetings. It took a few more years, but eventually I put together a long stretch of sobriety. Clearly, I needed to keep coming back to reap the benefits of recovery in SLAA.

I look back at the progress that the 12 steps have enabled for me, and I know I’ve come a long way, but I also know that my journey isn’t over. I still need to keep coming back. For me, that doesn’t feel like a burden, or even a responsibility; it feels like a joy. Today I have a community in SLAA that I’ll always be grateful for. But I need to remind myself that I belong in SLAA and that living out a pattern of sex and love addiction is still something I struggle with. So, in that spirit, here are 12 recent signs that I need to keep coming back.

1. I am still attracted to unavailable people.

2. I went into fantasy in a restaurant when I heard a song called “Rescue Me” playing overhead as a cute server walked by.

3. Some sexual behavior can create unmanageability with my sleep.

4. I am tempted to do things that lead to act out every single day or close to it.

5. I still struggle with terminal uniqueness, wanting to share at most every meeting.

6. I have inordinate fear around being alone in terms of anorexia.

7. I need to keep hearing about how important service work is to recovery.

8. I am still really hard on myself.

9. I lack acceptance of others in meetings and can be really hard on them, too.

10. I assign magical qualities to dates, blaming them for not fulfilling my fantasies and expectations, just like it says in the Twelve Characteristics of Sex and Love Addiction.

11. I am sometimes experimenting with potentially problematic behaviors that could lead to “gray area” and acting out.

12. I still struggle with boundaries, though much less than I used to—I can overshare sometimes and push away connection at others.

“Keep Coming Back”

The first S-meeting I ever attended was on a Friday night in 2016 at the New Town Alano Club on Belmont; I was 22 years old. I’ve often been told by older members of the program that they are impressed by seeing someone so young getting into recovery. The truth is that I didn’t have many other options. The other part of the truth is that it took years after my first meeting in 2016 before I truly started to work the program, and a few years after that before I started to see some sustained sobriety from my bottom lines. What follows is a short summary of what happened in that time, which I hope will be helpful to anyone who is struggling with sobriety and unsure about whether to keep coming back. 

I remember being terrified at my first meeting, and very unsure of what I was getting myself into. Despite my fear, I ended up sharing about my struggles with addictive pornography use, how it was both a cause and symptom of my depression, and how it was negatively affecting my relationships, ability to finish an undergraduate degree (after already dropping out of school once before), and my life ambitions in general. The strongest memory I have from this meeting is a fellow immediately shaking my hand afterwards and warmly welcoming me to the program. I was truly made to feel welcome and important, which was motivation enough for me to continue going to meetings and eventually get my first sponsor.. My progress in recovery was anything but linear from here though. If you were to graph it, it would look a lot more like a mountain range. 

I ended up ghosting my sponsor after working with him for a few months, and stopped going to meetings altogether for a time. I wasn’t able to put together any sustained sobriety, and was ashamed every time I had to admit this to him or another program member. So I engaged in a typical behavior of mine at the time-disappearing completely. Though it was only a matter of time before I found myself feeling so beat down again that I had no other choice but to go back to a meeting. Thus begun a pattern of mine for the next couple years: get into program when I’m completely and utterly in despair with no other options, firmly resolve to commit 100% to working the program and swearing off porn for good, get a sponsor and start working the steps, continue working the program until I have a bad relapse that I’m particularly ashamed of, ghost my sponsor and all other program members and stop going to meetings altogether, return to active addiction, eventually feel so bad I have no other option but go back to meetings, repeat. 

Altogether I ghosted three sponsors over three years before I got serious about the program. The longest time I disappeared from the program was in 2018 when I moved from Chicago to Tucson, Arizona for six months. I had just graduated from college and took a temporary job out there. My plan was to continue working with my sponsor in Chicago over the phone and to find meetings in Tucson. This plan didn’t last long, and I was soon back in addiction for another six months before returning home to Chicago. I moved in with my girlfriend as soon as I got back to Chicago (something I wouldn’t recommend to anyone else immediately after doing long-distance for six months). It became clear to me pretty quickly that being in active addiction while living with a romantic partner in a studio apartment wasn’t going to work. So, once again, I came back to the program. It was summer 2019; I found another sponsor in the Tuesday noon meeting at New Town Alano Club and started working the steps with him. We talked on the phone most every day and met in person once a week to do step work. Sustained sobriety still eluded me, but I began to see some slow progress. When the pandemic and the lockdown hit in spring 2020 though, the conditions were perfect for me to have a spectacular relapse and to disappear from the program one last time. In the time I was gone, my sponsor had actually drifted away from the program himself and I was unable to get a hold of him (possibly karma for me having ghosted previous sponsors). I came back to an online meeting in complete despair and confessed everything to the other members in the meeting, asking what I should do. I got one of the better pieces of advice that I believe could be given to anyone new to program or returning from an absence: get a sponsor ASAP.

So I got another sponsor right there and then. We worked together for the remainder of 2020 until he eventually ended up leaving the program at the end of the year. Luckily enough, his sponsor was willing to take me on in his absence. He and I have been working together since January 1st, 2021, the longest I have stayed with any sponsor and the most seriously I’ve ever worked the steps. I am now working the 6th step, have close to 6 months away from my bottom line of pornography, and have a group of men in recovery that I consider brothers. One key to my recovery I have to mention here is finally becoming willing to quit my substance use, namely drinking and smoking weed. I was resistant to doing this for years, despite suggestions from multiple sponsors and mounting evidence that it was keeping me from being able to recover. I’ve been off of substances now for almost the exact amount of time that I have away from pornography, and this is no coincidence. 

It took me around three years after first walking into the rooms to stick with the program. And then it took another two years to become willing to give up substances for the sake of my SLAA recovery. Looking back, I think the biggest things that kept me from recovering sooner were shame, self-pity/resentment, and an unwillingness to sacrifice things in my life that were holding my recovery back. Strangely, I don’t have regrets when I look back (though the promises do suggest I will not regret the past). I feel that I’ve learned lessons through the ups and downs I’ve had in recovery that can be used to help others. One of the most important takeaways I could give from my experience in recovery so far is that for some people, recovery takes time. And it doesn’t necessarily work right away, especially for those of us who are seeking recovery from a sexual addiction. Do not be discouraged if it doesn’t happen right away; it didn’t for me. But, by the grace of God, I am starting to see the promises come true in my life today, all because I kept coming back. 

-Ryan W.

Announcements

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New SLAA Meeting

The Chicago-Milwaukee Intergroup would like to announce a new meeting: 

The Priceless Gift of Recovery Meeting

Tues 6:30 - 7:30pm.  In person.

St James Commons, 65 E Huron St. 

Meeting Rm 1 

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Thank You from Intergroup

The Chicago-Milwaukee Intergroup would like to express gratitude to the following groups

for their contributions, as reported at the November meeting:

Tuesday Solution in the Suburbs SLAA Group  $28.22

Thursday Keep Coming Back SLAA Group $10.00 

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These contributions help with Intergroup operations so we can continue to carry the message. Thank you!

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Opportunities for Newsletter Submission

As members of SLAA, you have the opportunity to contribute to our local Intergroup newsletters, as well as the fellowship-wide newsletter. Read on for more information.

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Contribute to GREAT FACT

GREAT FACT—what you are reading at this very minute—is the newsletter for the Greater Chicago–Milwaukee Intergroup.

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We're prepping for publication for the next few months and looking for the following submissions for future issues as it pertains to your experience, strength and hope:

• Essays

• Fiction

• Poetry

• Artwork

• Photography

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Upcoming deadlines:​​​ ​​​​​​​​​​​​

• December: New Theme:  “Conscious Contact”

•  How do I keep conscious contact with a higher power and how does it help my recovery?  Deadline: December 17th

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To submit, please send an email to mailroom@slaachicago.org with the subject line "Newsletter Submission."  Please feel free to send us something outside of the themes above, and we’ll slot it in when appropriate. Thanks!

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