Long Term Sobriety in COSLAA

Long Term Sobriety in COSLAA
What is sobriety in COSLAA?
Guidelines for recovery in this program include the COSLAA member take the first step and admit he/she is unable to manage life with a sex and love addict and that help is needed from other recovering people. This reach out needs to be made directly by calling the helpline, or emailing the webmaster, or coming to a first meeting.

Sobriety means the recovering member’s bottom lines in dealing with the disease of sexual addiction and one’s codependent behaviors to that addiction. Coming into program the newcomer carries the wounds of betrayal and abandonment as a victim. Working the program means a process of working step one to detach from the addict’s behavior and begin to “get current” and talk about their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. We let go of illusions of causing, controlling, or curing the sex and love addict. We turn the focus on self-care, self-responsibility, and healing using the 12 steps and 12 traditions of COSLAA. We come to recognize what feels healthy, “sober,” in our day to day living. We grow to turn over our codependent ways over to a Higher Power, whether it be “group wisdom” or other spiritual source greater than oneself.

Long term sobriety takes time, earnest effort, and dedicating oneself to being in recovery, “in healing.”
The first four to six meetings will let you know if this 12 step group will be helpful to you. Working the program means using the steps, traditions, tools, and fellowship contacts regularly. We encourage you to come to meetings and share and listen to others. We do not do crosstalk, or advice-giving. Each member will go at their own pace and all feelings are respected because it is true for that person.

“Meeting makers make it.”  Working the steps and committing to meetings regularly builds fellowship, sponsorship, and service.  Those members who work the program for their healing a day at a time find that being restored to sanity relates to much more than surviving the injuries of living with a sex addict.  They bring a commitment of  service, providing regular safe space in meetings to bring the message of strength and hope by sharing their willingness, openness and honesty.  Those who keep meetings open provide this vital network so that newcomers can have the same steps, traditions and comfort that longtimers found when they were new.  The hour to hour and a half meeting time helps sustain the members and remind them they are not alone.  Often, the sharing of others sinks into our consciousness and helps to sustain us the days between meetings.  We can reach out and call another COSLAA member rather than reacting out of desperation or other character flaws.  Our condition of co-sex and love addiction can be transformed into a life saving way of life that allows us to have a happier life, more free to truly become who we are meant to be.  If you would like to start a meeting in your area, you can let the helpline know:  860 456 0032, or post a message on this website, leaving your preferred contact info.  Two or more people suffering from the effects of another’s sex and love addiction may form a COSLAA meeting, provided that they do not have a shared affiliattion.  COSLAA has but one unity of purpose and that is to offer aid to the suffering family, friends and significant others affected by another’s sex and love addiction.

Here are some of the gifts of long term sobriety:
1. Living fully in the moment, being present.
2. Living a life free of shame and blame.
3. Greater self acceptance and being able to do amends
when we have hurt others with our behaviors.
4. Being able to set boundaries clearly and timely.
5. Communicating our thoughts and feelings effectively
with increased self-esteem and compassion.
6. Recognizing triggers that bring relapse behaviors
and how to learn healthier responses.
7. Sponsorship and service work to carry the message of hope and healing to newcomers.
8. Repairing our part in our relationships by using the sober behaviors we are learning. 

9.  Being able to embrace one’s past and not want to shut the door on it, but weave it into one’s healing.

10.  Living a day at a time with more serenity, acceptance and grace.