Quality Education and Experience w/ Steven Croshaw

This week, Justin B takes some time to talk quality education, the value of rigorous honesty in recovery, and experience in the school of life with Steven Croshaw.  In this episode, Steven addresses if shame is the driving factor in addiction, the process of surrender,  and helpful educational resources are discussed. Access those resources in the links below.  Come walk this Pathway to Recovery with us and experience the healing that those on this pathway are experiencing.

Resources in this episode:
Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anna Lembke
Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
Self-Identifying as a Sexual Addict: Shameful or Empowering?  by Steven Croshaw

Transcript

Quality Education and Experience with Steven Croshaw

Justin B: Welcome to the Pathway to Recovery podcast. I'm Justin B. I am a son of an all-loving and all-powerful God, and I am a recovering sex addict and a grateful member of SAL. I'm grateful to be the co-host of this podcast. Tara is also a co- host and, and has recently released an episode on the topic of quality education. We're going to be talking a little bit about that. 

Now, as a little background here, before I jump in to speak with Steven Croshaw, who's our guest here, I want to share a little background information about myself in my job. I interview a lot of people, at least five or six people every week to see if they are good candidates for the business that I work for, to work with us, to qualify them. And what I want to do in this conversation with Stephen is kind of talk about quality education. And that's one thing that I've learned through interviewing a lot of people. Yes, somebody can have a degree from Harvard. Somebody can have a degree from Stanford and somebody can have a degree from Lower Slobovian University. I care about what they have learned and what they do to apply what they have learned in their lives. Quality education can come from lots of different sources, and my experience is that some of the best education comes through experience, through failure, through success, and through all these things.

So that's kind of where I'm going to go here with this, Stephen. Before we get into this, I want to read what it says on the SA Lifeline website under quality education. It says, We need to understand the comprehensive nature of betrayal trauma, and sexual addiction. When both betrayed spouses and addicted spouses can finally see their own weakness, and their own powerlessness they are better able to move forward on a proven pathway of recovery. The S.A. Lifeline Circles models illustrate the behavioral and relational dynamics of sexual addiction and betrayal trauma for both individuals and families, as well as the pathways for healing.”

So Stephen, as we get into this topic and talk a little bit about the importance of quality education, and also of qualifying for what we do in this program, what are some of the thoughts you have? What are some of your experiences that have led you to be on this podcast here? 

Steven: Thank you, Justin. It's a pleasure to be invited to participate in the podcast today. A bit of my own story - as a little boy, I was first discovering sexuality and inadvertently ran into a magazine, a pornographic magazine in my brother's chest of drawers. And this was early on in the pornographic industry, really it was in 1958. And that was my first education about sexual things. And I recognize that the power of that education changed my life. That moment in time of discovering pornography introduced a very euphoric feeling that I hadn't felt before into my life. And so I would say from an educational standpoint, that experience became one of the most impactful that I can recall.

I remember looking at the magazine, feeling these feelings of euphoria, some describe it as magical and mystical. And at the same time, I had this feeling that what I was doing was wrong, even though I was really little. So I gave the magazine to my mother. So from an educational standpoint, I would say that there are educational experiences just from everyday living that change our lives.

In my case, I continued in the behavior, not understanding because I was really not taught, or given information, or read information at that time about what the experiences that I was having young, with pornography and later masturbation, would do to change the course of my life, and how that would impact me.

And so, my actual day to day experiences were my teacher. I didn't have much direction from parents in that regard, very little direction from church leaders in that regard, no real education in school about healthy sexuality, so I was kind of self taught in that regard. Going forward in my life, it wasn't until about 18 years ago that I decided that I really needed to understand more of what was a big part of my life and that was acting out sexually and I'll call it unwanted sexual behavior.

I couldn't figure out why I was continuing to go back to this destructive behavior in spite of the negative consequences. And I had tried multiple times in my life to stop the behavior, unsuccessfully for the majority of my life for any length of time. So I welcomed the opportunity 18 years ago to begin to understand what I was dealing with.

And the interesting thing was those who I went to initially for help didn't know how to help me either. And so what they introduced me to was, I had this direct comment from a church leader, “Stephen, I don't know how to help you, go out and figure this out.” And I took that to heart because the consequences in my life from unwanted sexual behavior had come to the point where my marriage literally was hanging by a thread.

My job was in jeopardy. My membership in my church was in jeopardy, and the list goes on. The effects of disconnection with my children and others were in jeopardy. So, I needed to discover for myself the challenge that I was facing and what the solutions would be. And so I'm happy to share some of the things that helped me understand that from an educational perspective.

And as we go forward, Justin, I'll do that. But that's a bit about my story. I would say I am not unique in not understanding how to deal with sexual addiction or betrayal trauma. Most people who deal with the issues of unwanted sexual behavior and betrayal trauma haven't had a lot of experience with education, haven't been properly taught, haven't been given a pathway to recovery by those that they trust, and so they've got to figure it out.

And hopefully we can give them some information today that will direct them and maybe make the path easier to see better lit. 

Justin B: Yeah. Thank you so much, Steven. And as I referenced earlier, you know, some of the best lessons I've learned have been in the school of hard knocks. But there are also very good quality educational things out there to help us better understand addiction, better help us understand the betrayal trauma, help us better understand why I as an addict do what I do now. It's not necessarily to excuse it, but to better understand it. So as you think about these types of things, what are some resources that you have found most helpful to you as you have walked this path over the last 18 years. Actually a lot longer than that, but as you've walked in recovery for the last 18 years.

Stephen: Well, a most recent experience that I've had I can share and give people some direction towards is a book that I found extremely helpful for me. And I would refer everyone to the book called Dopamine Nation by Anna Lemke. It is a book, non-denominational. One of the things that is really helpful about it is the author, who is well educated. Anna Lemke is a physician, she's a psychiatrist. She teaches at Stanford University. In fact, I think [she] is in charge of the department that deals with addiction at Stanford. So her professional experience and her training give her a lot of credibility. 

In addition to that, she also tells a bit of her own story. And that gives me hope that a person, with her experience with unmanageable sexual behavior, unwanted sexual behavior as well, who is willing to tell her story and then back that up with her science and professional experience. That gives it a lot of credibility. So the book, Dopamine Nation, those who are listening, order it today on Amazon. It's not a difficult read.

And one of the most profound points of the book is the most important lesson that I learned early.  She calls it radical honesty. In SAL, we call it rigorous honesty, both being essentially the same thing. And that is that I have recognized in my work of recovery, as Anna Lempke points out, that working recovery from addiction is not possible if I'm unwilling to be honest. And so that would be a book that I would refer people to. 

She talks about, obviously, the physical nature of addiction and she specifically focuses on dopamine as being the chemical that gives us a pleasure reward. And dopamine is released in our brains for a number of reasons. One is it gives us enough incentive oftentimes to just move and do things that are important.

We get a dopamine release when we eat, and when we walk, and exercise, and when we meditate. All of those things which are healthy. The challenge with dopamine is there's a heavy and high dopamine spike in sexual behavior. She explains that and she talks about the brain and our emotions getting out of balance and [how a] dopamine balance is a requirement for a healthy living.

So I would highly recommend that book.  And to back that up, a book that goes way back to the 1930s, written by Bill W., primarily, and Dr. Bob, Alcoholics Anonymous. I would consider that book one of my most powerful education tools in relation to understanding the importance of honesty as well.

So both Anna Lemke and Bill W., both addicts, both talk about honesty. Chapter 5 of Alcoholics Anonymous, the first sentence is, “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.” That's the first sentence. Then it goes on to say, “Only those who are incapable of being honest will not recover.”

So that lesson, just those two books teaching me the importance of honesty, confirmed in my own experience in 2005 when I was hiding my sexual behavior and had been for years. It wasn't until I was willing to be honest and literally talk about it appropriately, honestly, completely, that I was able to step on the pathway of recovery. At that point I really didn't even know what to do, but the honesty gave me an opportunity to get some help and people then helped me and pointed me in the right direction, where resources could be found.  

Justin B: Thank you so much, Stephen. By the way, the book Dopamine Nation and the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'll put links to those in the show notes of this podcast so you can quickly link to them if you want and check those out. I also highly recommend those books as a major part of my own recovery and understanding of addiction. 

Now, Stephen, recently you wrote an article that's posted on the SA Lifeline website and I'll put a link to that also in the show notes, entitled “Self Identifying as a Sexual Addict.” 

And I want to go from what you just shared here into that. I don't know if this is like an avant garde thing in the world today, in therapy for sexual addiction or anything like that, but one of the things that we hear about is that shame is kind of the driving force behind addiction. But in your article, you kind of turn that a little bit and talk about something else with that and I want to ask you about that.

I'll read a paragraph from your article here and then follow up with that. It says here in the article, “Others suggest shame is the main reason I didn't come out of hiding. My experience is that shame certainly kept me isolated. Shame contributed to feelings of negative self-worth and a fear of being judged, eroding vital relationships with my wife, family, and friends. Shame influenced me to lie about using pornography, but was shame the primary driver for using pornography? No.”

So  tell us a little bit about that and tell us what is the primary driver and how that relates to what we've been talking about so far. 

Stephen: For me, the primary driver is the reward of acting out, which is immediate. And as we talked about just a moment ago, the dopamine spike is not experienced because of shame, at least as I understand it. The release of dopamine is based upon an emotion of....the desire for a dopamine hit can be based upon emotion, but that's not the desire, it’s not what drives me there. It's the actual dopamine hit. So the reward that I found was what I was seeking. And the fact that I felt negative about myself or that I may have had some kind of an emotional need, like boredom or anger or stress or resentment or just some physical need, like being really tired. So all of these different parts of being in mortality, having a physical body, I'm seeking some kind of balance.

And so my experience then with dopamine or with acting out sexually, which gave me a dopamine hit, was really what I was seeking, for relief.  So it wasn't just shame. But I would say, and to a greater degree, I was influenced by all of the challenges associated with trying to keep balance in my life or feel good in the moment. And if I didn't feel good, if I wasn't feeling comfortable because I was tired or I was agitated or I was hungry, or the list goes on, then I would seek to find this relief through acting out. 

And if I want to take it right down to the science, I'm seeking relief by a dopamine hit. So once I begin to learn and understand that that's what was happening, I'm looking for that chemical release in my brain, and I know where I can go to get that instantly, and it will be a really heavy hit of dopamine. It'll be a euphoric experience. So if I choose to look at pornography, that hit is going to be really strong with dopamine. That becomes the reward. That becomes the driver. All of those other things will lead me to want to go there. But that's not why I go there. I go there because I know what the reward is going to be.

Justin B: I remember when I was an active addict there were times when I would go to certain people, the ecclesiastical leaders or others and say, “Hey, I continue to do this.”  And they would say, I don't remember these exact words, but I remember feeling this, Aren't you ashamed that you go back to those actions, those things. Doesn't that make you feel yucky and gross?”

And honestly, it didn't. It made me feel euphoric and relief and everything in the moment. Now, afterwards I felt yucky and gross. And when I started reading recovery literature and I'm going to go to the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous that you referenced here, in the doctor's opinion, on page Roman numeral 28 it reads about alcohol, but this applicable to me in sexual acting out also. “Men and women drink, use or act out, essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol or lust. The sensation is so elusive that while they admit it's injurious, ‘Yeah I know it hurts me in the end,’ they cannot, after a time, differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic, their addictive, their sexual addict life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable, and discontented unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks, a few lust hits, which they see others taking with impunity.”

And I'm not going to read through that whole paragraph, but that's the basic idea of it. And when I read this and understood this, it opened my eyes. Tell me a little bit more about that experience in your life. 

Stephen: Well, I think that that's an incredibly good description. What we read in Alcoholics Anonymous is, the reward is what I was looking for when I was acting out. And what would take me towards that, to seek out that reward, was a desire to feel better, to feel good, to have that reward. And as you said, it's after the acting out behavior that I really have the letdown. So, leading up to it, even in preoccupation and then going into rituals, the euphoria actually begins at that point, I'm forgetting about shame. I'm not feeling shame at the moment that I'm in preoccupation or going to rituals. That's not what's driving me. What's driving me towards ultimately getting the lust hit, ultimately getting the dopamine hit is the reward that my brain will give me. 

And so to understand that helps me understand how to interrupt that desire. I have to use my agency. I have to use my thought processes to change the direction of preoccupation or the triggering moment where I'm desiring lust. For me, it was not shame that became the triggering moment. That's not what it was. That would get me off balance at times, but generally that was something that I would remember or come back to or some kind of an interaction that I was having with someone that would make me, where I would choose to feel, “Yes, I'm a bad person.”

Well, it's not the yes, I'm a bad person that takes me back to the behavior. It's looking for this way to escape the reality of the challenges that I face. That's why when I often talk about this, then the acting out behavior is really a medicating behavior of trying to help me get through everyday life challenges that I've now used as a counterfeit.

And so instead of growing and being strengthened and making correct choices, it actually takes me in a negative direction where I'm disconnecting and not as able to make positive choices. So we can kind of massage that around and twist that around. And a lot of people want to say, “Well, just take the shame out of it, and people won't act out.” 

I say that is so untrue. Take the shame out of it, people won't act out. I totally disagree with that. 

Justin B: If I take the shame out of it, what's stopping me from acting? Take the shame out of it and I'll probably act out more. 

Stephen: Exactly. That's how I see it too. 

Justin B: So you mentioned just now, you mentioned, “Hey, you know, when I start seeing myself go into the ritualization, the obsession, start seeing myself going into those things, I can now stop that.” I can now put a staff down and say, “I'm not going to go any further.”

Tell me a little bit about the process of that and then I've got a question again, based on a reading from your article to follow up with that. But tell me a little bit about that process in your own life, how you interrupt  that process before it becomes too far along.

Stephen: Well, the process we call surrender, that is the process. And the surrender is, “Where do I need to go to surrender and how can I be empowered because over the period of years in my life, I have continued in the behavior in spite of the white knuckle efforts to try to stop.”  And so what's the difference between what I was doing that I'll call white knuckling, just sheer grit trying to stop versus surrender? And it's really answered most succinctly, I believe in the first three steps of the twelve steps originally written by Bill W in Alcoholics Anonymous. 

So the first one is for me to be honest with myself that my behavior has really become unmanageable. So in spite of all my best efforts I have not been able to stop the behavior. I continue to go back to it, in spite of the negative consequences. And so, I've got to now admit that I've got a problem. And that admitting for me, it was finally to admit that that unmanageability was directly related to addiction.

And so the study of addiction, if a person really looks at that, then that is essentially saying, “I have gone to the point in my behavior where I'm losing my ability to choose. And that's because the mortal being that I am has now progressed down the pathway of needing some type of behavior in order to satisfy these demands, and it overrides my best judgment.” 

So, step one, acknowledging the unmanageability of my life, and in my case, I had to acknowledge that I was a sex addict. And for a lot of people, that is a very, very hard step. And it was for me. It took me decades to finally come to myself to the degree that I was willing to deal with my behaviors from the perspective of an addiction. So my recovery would be based upon recognizing that this addiction is lust, and my addiction is toxicity to the lust. It impacts me. 

That was my first and most important step in moving forward in recovery. Along with the honesty and that's part of the honesty. And the step two is, I've tried over my whole life to try to have the strength to do the work of recovery and on my own, [I’m} unable to do it. So step two is, where is the power? What is the power that I need to access in order to be able to meet the challenge? And I've come to understand that that power is the power greater than myself. And it is the God of my understanding. Whatever that understanding is, I can call upon that belief in a power greater than myself.

And in my case, I believe it to be God the creator, all-empowering, who wants me to be successful in my life, who loves me, who knows me. And so I can call on that power,God's power, but I have to be willing to submit to that power. And that's step three: So what does it mean to submit to that power?

And I believe that what God is doing for me is to give me a pathway to change my direction by simply recognizing that in my mortal experience, I have choice. But what do I need to interrupt this preoccupation and ritual experience? It has to be interrupted, early on, even before preoccupation. But let's say that there is a situation where I experience a desire to go to the lust. It might be an innocent exposure to something that is causing me to have a lust hit. The first thing that I have to do is pause. I have to think about what's really going on with me and not just follow the carnal idea or the carnal lust hit and just follow it down the pathway.

I've got to step back and pause and say, “What's going on? How do I really feel?” and to give me an opportunity to pause for a few seconds. I actually have something that I've memorized that gives me a chance to think about it. And it's a positive memorization of what, going back Alcoholics Anonymous, is the third step, prayer.

And so I will pause and I will then know that my next step is to give me a chance to take just a moment to think about where I am. And that prayer is, “God, I offer myself to Thee to build with me and do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help with Thy power, Thy love.”

So, in that pause, I know I can say that prayer; it's a rote prayer, but it says something to me. God, I offer myself to Thee. I am now giving myself over to God. The next thing, beyond that pause, is get back into a present situation and breathe. Breathe. Just listen to myself breathe, and what's the reality around me?

Is lust the reality, or is that just something I'm conjuring up in my head? So, breathe, and then with that breath I think, “How do I really feel inside?  Am I bored? Am I tired? Am I restless? Am I angry? Am I fearful? How am I feeling right this very minute?” So I get back in touch with my feelings. So I've paused, I've breathed, now I'm getting honest with myself to say, “Where am I? What am I feeling? What are my emotions? Why are these emotions contributing to my idea of wanting to just go down this pathway of lust?” 

I had an interesting conversation with a young man yesterday who I'm helping to understand this whole process of surrender, the actions of surrender. And I had told him last week in a meeting, I said, “I recognize that sexual addiction is defined for me this way - lust is toxic for me. That's sexual addiction to me. Lust is toxic for me.” And so when I talked to him yesterday, I was talking to him about how he was organizing his own surrender process and kind of tweaking it.

And he said, “Last week, when you talked about this lust is toxic for me thing...” He said, “I decided to incorporate that into my thought process to remind myself of really what's going on. So he said, “I will say to myself, after I have paused, and after I have really worked to think about where I am and what I'm feeling, I would then say to myself, ‘Lust is toxic for me. Lust is toxic for me.” And he said, “I will say that enough times that I begin to see that that's not the pathway that I can go down.”

So in the surrender process, literally what the process is, is giving me an opportunity to be present, to be in the moment, to be in reality and not go down this unreal path, dark path of lust, and to pursue the lust hit. Now that's not going to give me the dopamine hit that I want. My brain is still saying, “I need a dopamine hit.”

It's not just sort of saying it, it's saying it, “I need a dopamine hit.” It doesn't say it in those words, but it says to me, because I'm feeling it in my whole body. So I need to be able to do something that will give my body some relief. That is, take a walk. That releases dopamine. Meditate. That releases dopamine. Literally sit down and look at nature for just a moment. That moment of looking at nature, getting in touch with nature, releases dopamine. So, there are many ways to satisfy this craving. 

I'm not going to get the same spike by taking a walk. I'm not going to get the same spike by looking at a flower. I'm not going to get the same spike by meditating. But after a period of time, and this is what's so important for people to understand, is in addiction, I have essentially found a new norm of how much dopamine my brain is demanding and Dr. Lim key talks about this in quite a lot of detail.

We have to go a period of time, by using our agency, to not go to this dopamine spike by acting out sexually -  to give our brain a chance to readjust. So that it doesn't have that strong demand, “I need dopamine right now. Give it to me.” So, once 30 days have passed that I have not acted on the strong desire to go to a lust hit, to go to porn, to masturbation, then my brain begins to recalibrate.

The dopamine requirement has lessened the balance, the balance beam that she describes in the book. Becomes now I can balance that with healthy living instead of trying to balance that with a drug, whether it's sex [which] is a drug, or whether it's an ingested drug. Once I begin to have a level of abstinence for a period of time, my brain will settle down and it's not going to require that strong dopamine hit.

So, that's another part of education that I had to come to understand. Abstinence is critical and it has to be put day after day, one day at a time, put together for a sufficient length of time, that my brain is no longer saying, “Give me a spike of dopamine right now.”

Justin B: Yeah. And that's kind of where I want to go with this next part and [then]  we're going to start wrapping this up. But I want to read one of the last paragraphs of the article you wrote. It says here, “Let me underscore that the work of recovery and living in recovery from unwanted sexual behavior, which I now understand to be sexual addiction, is not easy. The path may be simple, but initially the work of recovery requires strenuous effort. Then, after a period, the path becomes less strenuous, but still requires a humble, dedicated effort over a lifetime.”

So, I speak for myself here, as somebody who is in active addiction who really wanted to stop, who really wanted to stop, but just couldn't get through those first 30 days that you're talking about. For you, what was your experience? Did it take 30 days? Did it take 60 days? Did it take six months, a year to where the strenuous effort of really white knuckle, strenuous and constant continual surrender changed to a more natural flow of things? How long did that take for you, Stephen?

Stephen: Well, again, going back to 18 years ago - I was arrested for picking up a prostitute. And that got my attention to the point that I was willing to do whatever it would take. And so I had a really strong motivation and a very willing, humbled heart to do the work. I was, gratefully, led to a really good therapist and I was gratefully led to a really good 12 step meeting. I was gratefully led to a great sponsor who had a story similar to mine that I could relate to his work of recovery. And so the initial effort for me, as I was so highly motivated to do the work, that’s where my complete focus went.

So I went on this focus of getting involved in 12 Step and actually doing the 12 Step work. Not just going to meetings, not just buying the book. But literally beginning to work the steps so that I understood where I was going. And part of that was to learn and understand all of what we're talking about right now, especially steps one, two, and three, and what the surrender process was. 

In the beginning, it was somewhat more difficult because I was now separated from some of my support group, specifically my wife. I chose to be out of the house for a time. I had some interaction, but I was not around her and I was not around my children. I was kind of on my own. And so that family, the 12 step family, became really critical to me, that group of men who were great examples to me.

So I had to be willing to be in contact with them. That meant I had to make phone calls and talk to these guys and ask them about their own experience. I had to work the steps. I had to find the literature to read and understand. Part of that was the 12 Step literature that I wrote, and part of that was the scriptures. I spent a lot of time in the scriptures. And so I couldn't be lazy about putting my mind towards something positive. And just letting myself drift away. So the heavy lifting initially came because I was motivated to such a degree because of the precarious place I was, in my life with everything that was so important to me. 

Now, my situation is different from many who are trying to stop the behavior, especially young single adult men and women. Their consequences are minimal with the behavior and their accountability is minimal. And so they're really in a struggling situation because it's easy to kick the can down the road.

Kicking the can down the road and saying, “Well, I'll act out today and then tomorrow I won't act out, I'll get on my pathway.” And that can go on forever. So there has to be this motivation to say, “I'm going to understand the surrender process, and I'm going to consider my life at this moment. What do I really want out of life? And what am I willing to give up to get it?”

And a person has to literally call down the powers of heaven to help them do that because they're in a tough situation. The dopamine spike opportunity through pornography and masturbation is within a second away. It's in their pocket. So, certain boundaries have to be put in line. Certain consequences, self imposed, have to be put in line. Certain activities have to be set aside. Anyway, the lifting becomes changing my lifestyle with boundaries and bottom lines. Doing the work of recovery, which includes all the things I just talked about. 

It's going to include attending 12 Step meetings often. Working with my sponsor daily. Studying and writing about the 12 Steps daily. It's going to be setting boundaries in place. And here's a boundary that's one of mine. Anybody can do it if they want to. A lot of acting out takes place with phones and bathrooms. So I don't take my phone in the bathroom. That's a boundary and a bottom line.

So Justin, we could go into this heavy lifting part. But because I don't know what to do, I've got to submit myself and work with people who do. And I'll tell you the very best place to find that is in a 12 Step meeting with someone who's got real sobriety. [Someone] living in sobriety who can share their experience, strength and hope. 

Another place to do, talking about education, another place to do that is with qualified therapy.We could have a whole discussion about qualified therapy. I'll just say this - the therapist that I knew that I needed had a belief system very much like my own and my therapist believed [in]abstinence was really important for me. My therapist believed that I was dealing with an addiction. My therapist believed that 12 Step was a critical part of my recovery.

So, that therapist worked with me from that perspective. If I wanted to find a therapist that believed something like, “Don't worry about masturbation or porn,” that has a different belief system than me, that doesn't really believe that this is an addiction, it's just something that's part of life, then that therapist is not going to take me where I want to go.

So if I want recovery in my life, I need to find and go to a therapist that believes in the things that I believe in and what I truly want to achieve. So there's just three points.

Justin B: Yeah. Thank you so much for hitting on those. And I appreciate you sharing your education through your life and through your recovery with us on this path. And we will get to quality therapy. Thank you for hitting on that, that will be something we'll touch on here in the next month or so on this podcast. 

Before we close this out, Stephen, a question that we ask everybody at the end of these podcasts is, “What advice do you have in regards to what you've shared with us for the newcomer?” And then what would you say to somebody who's more seasoned in the rooms about this, to help them decide to keep on the path?

Stephen: Well, for the newcomer, I would say, God is aware of you. He knows you. He will help you be successful. Be willing to submit yourself to uncomfortable situations. Be willing to get out of your comfort zone and then, with complete honesty, move forward with the honest desire of your heart, which, in my case, 18 years ago was, I really did want a change of direction.

So be willing to be teachable. I look at my own story, and my story is really long. Twice, in my best efforts to stop many years ago, I was not willing to be teachable. I thought, “I can do this on my own” and I rejected some of the important support opportunities that I had because I felt like I could do it on my own. So to the newcomer, humbly approach this. Know what your heart is, be willing to be teachable and move forward. 

For the person that's worked recovery and literally is living in recovery, and that's a lot more than sobriety. The biggest reward for me has come in an opportunity to help other people along the path. That's really the way I think God has designed this life, is for us to be able to find ourselves and then share what we've found with others. And finding ourselves, I believe, is actually finding God. So, share my experience, strength, and hope with a person who's suffering and help them along their way. And in turn, that has helped me. 

So, in both cases, a lot of courage is required. Take heart. God has blessed me along the way, and I know that He will bless you along the way, if that's the honest desire of your heart. 

Justin B: Thank you so much, Stephen. I gained so much from this and really appreciate you sharing your experience, strength and hope, the education that you've obtained and those invitations to the newcomer and to the more seasoned person in recovery. I am grateful for those invitations for myself. 

And as we close out [like in] each of our SAL 12 step meetings, keep coming back. Everybody keep coming back. It works when I work, so work it. You, yes, even you are worth it.