The Problem - I can't stop

 

I can't stop because I have the SA Problem

Many of us felt inadequate, unworthy, alone, and afraid. Our insides never matched what we saw on the outsides of others.

Early on, we came to feel disconnected—from parents, from peers, from ourselves. We tuned out with fantasy and masturbation. We plugged in by drinking in the pictures, the images, and pursuing the objects of our fantasies. We lustedDon't understand what we mean by lust? Neither did we when we first arrived - what is Lust? and wanted to be lustedDon't understand what we mean by lust? Neither did we when we first arrived - what is Lust? after.

We became true addicts: sex with self, promiscuity, adultery, dependency relationships, and more fantasy. We got it through the eyes; we bought it, we sold it, we traded it, we gave it away. We were addicted to the intrigue, the tease, the forbidden. The only way we knew to be free of it was to do it. “Please connect with me and make me whole!” we cried with outstretched arms. LustingDon't understand what we mean by lust? Neither did we when we first arrived - what is Lust? after the Big Fix, we gave away our power to others.

This produced guilt, self-hatred, remorse, emptiness, and pain, and we were driven ever inward, away from reality, away from love, lost inside ourselves.

Our habit made true intimacy impossible. We could never know real union with another because we were addicted to the unreal. We went for the “chemistry,” the connection that had the magic, because it by-passed intimacy and true union. Fantasy corrupted the real; lustDon't understand what we mean by lust? Neither did we when we first arrived - what is Lust? killed love.

First addicts, then love cripples, we took from others to fill up what was lacking in ourselves. Conning ourselves time and again that the next one would save us, we were really losing our lives.

© 1982, 1989, 2001 SA Literature. Reprinted with permission of SA Literature.

So what's the solution?