Margot Speaking to the Barcelona "Easy Does It, But Do It" meeting on January 3, 2024
The Daily Reprieve
Barcelona Meeting - Margot
[Music] Hello and welcome to the Daily Reprieve, where we provide essays, speaker meetings, workshops, and conferences and podcast format. We are an ad-free podcast. If you enjoy listening, please help us be self-supporting by going to donate.thewreprieve.com and drop a dollar or two into the virtual basket. Please consider donating monthly by clicking the "Donate Monthly" button. However, one-time donations are always welcome. Just click the "Donate Now" button. Now, without further ado, this episode of the Daily Reprieve. [Music] Okay, today, 3 January 2024. We're very happy to have with us Margot C from the U.S. sober since 14 March 1986. She will be sharing on the topic of freedom from and freedom too. You are now on Margot. You have 25 minutes to share and Jerome has volunteered to be a spiritual timekeeper. Hi, I'm Margot. I am a real sexaholic. I am very grateful to be sober today. Through the grace of God in this program, I am still completely, absolutely, and to the end of time powerless, overlust. And it's kind of overwhelming to see all of you here and people that I've known over the years. It's also wonderful to see so many women and Iris, who's one of our co-hosts. I've given her permission to give my phone number to any women, so I believe you can chat her during my talk. If you'd like to be in touch with me, please ask Iris for my phone number. I'm also on WhatsApp. Thanks, Margot. Can you speak up a little bit? I'll try. I'm nervous. I just want to say, having the number of years of sobriety, I have does not guarantee recovery. And I've heard people with two years on this meeting that have awesome recovery. But I'm so happy to be here, and I'm so happy that I have a message to carry that has depth and weight, and that people really, really can recover through this program. So I'm just going to close my eyes for a minute and ask my higher power to guide what I have to say. So I'm going to give a little bit of a sketch of my history with this disease. And then I will talk about my topic, Freedom From and Freedom Too. I discovered masturbation as a young child. Well, and I've always thought it was around age eight, but now I'm not sure. Maybe it was junior high, but in any case, for a short while, it was really just fun. And then I began to be guilty and try to stop, and I could not stop. Nobody ever knew that I was doing this. Nobody made any comments. You know, this was a long time ago. We didn't discuss sex or a lot of other things in my family. And I grew up in a nuclear family of two parents and a sister, a younger sister. There was no violence, there was no abuse, as far as I'm aware. Both my parents were adult children, so they made a vow when they got married, never to fight. So that had consequences, of course. But it was a very stable economic family, just a regular middle class family. And it was a long time ago, a very innocent sort of upbringing that I had. But I still, the addiction landed on me. And I have another addiction that started probably from birth, but at least very young. So I tried not to act out with myself. I thought of punishments for myself, and I tried to stop, and I could not. And that was one thing that sent me into this program when someone said, "If you're trying to control it, it's out of control." And I thought right back to my childhood. I went to college, and I started acting out with people. And I made choices that hurt my roommates and hurt my parents. I'll be talking about that a little bit later. After college, I moved to a big city. I started drinking alcoholically and acting out, and acting out with people I met at work, picking up, letting myself be picked up on the street, acting out in all kinds of situations that were not safe. And eventually, I got involved with someone who was addicted to heroin. And I just want to say he was a fine and interesting person. I don't want to give any impression that he was less than human. He came to my workplace, and my employer saw the situation. And I had been getting back pain and all kinds of symptoms of an inner spiritual discord in this relationship. And I had also been changing my quote, my quote, unquote, morality, like, "Well, if you love someone, you should be married, but if you're not married, you should be committed. And if you're not committed, you should be in love." Of course, I had no idea what love was. So my employers called my parents in another state, and there was an intervention. And I left my employer that day. They just took me back to live with them. It was a very, very hard time. And I was completely oblivious. I was so selfish. I was completely oblivious to what it meant for my parents. It was amazing of them to come to this city, to see the situation, and to take me back to live with them. You would think that I would make some kind of a change of life in terms of my acting out. But I didn't. I got a job. I still kept acting out with people I met at my job. I moved to the area where I live now. And I still kept acting out until I found this program. I was acting out in less dangerous situations with people I knew, but I was no less promiscuous. In 1981, I found my first 12-step program. And in 1984, I found my second 12-step program. But I was still acting out. And I sort of read the big book a little bit. And I read the fourth, the third part of the fourth step. And I tried to treat my acting out like a character defect, which is kind of the impression that you get sometimes from the big book. And it didn't make any difference. I couldn't stop. And just Elle, who is one of the old timers, one of the originators of this program, was well known for saying I had to be in a room of other sexaholics. And I had to be in a room where you all would nod when I said what my behavior was and where you would really understand me. And so a woman in one of my programs somehow heard of Essay at that time, Essay was just Roy Kay in his garage printing out leaflets, I mean, you know, eight and a half by 11 pages. And she got a big book, she got a meeting place, and about 15 of us from women from that program came and started. And eventually a couple of men showed up and eventually a lot of the women left. But I did not leave. So I actually came to my first meeting in January 6th of 1985, when they said the sobriety definition, a chill went over me, but I realized that I had missed an important phone call the day before because I was acting out with myself, that masturbation was really a problem. And I started dating someone in October, I met him at a public event, he asked me to come for tea. And since he didn't say an alcoholic beverage, I thought we were probably destined to be married. That was my thinking then. I never actually acted out with him, but I did more and more, you know, on sober behavior. And finally in March, I called Roy Kay and told him what I was doing and he said, "Stop, this is too toxic, do you think you're sober?" And I burst into tears and left that relationship probably in a very hurtful way to the man. And that's my current sobriety date. And what I realized from that was that I had wanted to be sober, to be fixed up, to get married. And what I realized after that event was I wanted to be sober for me because it made me a whole person. Before this, early in this program, I thought maybe this sobriety definition would turn me into a stick woman, that's what I used to say. But instead, I found out that really when I was acting out, I was much more of a stick woman. I was much more narrow-minded and un-full and that this sobriety definition has made me a much more whole person in so many ways. So I'll talk a little bit about freedom from. A sponsor said to me, "Your step one is what you never want to go back to." And that's what I've gotten freedom from in this program. This is a miracle program. I'll just say, "I'm so happy we talk about lust. I'm so happy that I'm not just trying to control my behavior and that it's a progressive recovery as well as a progressive disease. And I'm always uncovering more and more, I guess, definitions of what lust is." Jess Ellie used to say, "Lust is wanting something different from whatever is coming down the pike." And that's a pretty radical definition. But I will talk about what I never want to go back to is masturbation, why? For me, it makes total sense that that is on our bottom line, that for me as the kind of addict that I am. For one thing, just practically, it always created a craving for more of the same. It never satisfied. And Harvey A. has said it excites, lust excites, but it doesn't satisfy. And that was true with my acting out with other people too. My acting out by myself became in a way violent. I think I was fed by so much frustration and anger, really, because I was looking for God and I was looking for God in the wrong places. I'll say about God, I did major in religion and in college, and I was looking for God and my family went to church, our whole growing up. And God was always there or I'd be dead or I would have gotten diseases that I didn't get. But anyway, I didn't know it at the time. Another thing masturbation did for me was to make me two people. So as a young kid growing up with hiding, hiding, hiding an essential thing that I was doing is a lot to bear and with my other addiction too, which I was also trying to hide, that's a lot to bear for a kid and it became more and more difficult. It was a life of hypocrisy and lying and deceiving and lack of integrity. Meanwhile, like in my high school, I went, my parents sent me to a girls high school because it's a Quaker high school for education. And I was the president of student council and the faculty voted me the most likely to succeed. So you really see there's a Dr. Jacqueline Mr. Hyde in me and that's how I was growing up. And for me, masturbation took on a life of its own. I don't really know the chicken or the egg. Did I act out initially over feelings, over issues in my family, over dynamics or I'm not really sure. I do think it's a process addiction, but I also think it's a physical addiction. And I think as an addict, this is just my opinion, once I started, it became a thing that I did for whatever reason. Then freedom from acting out with other people as my disease progressed, I got in more and more dangerous situations and the obsession was so bad. When I lived in this big city where there were hundreds of cars going by on the street, I used to look for my current acting out partner's tar and hope that he would see me. Later on when I was acting out with people I knew, I would have two, maybe half a second of freedom, mental freedom when I woke up in the morning. And then I would be, you know, focused on that person for the rest of the day. I had no mental freedom. The obsession was so bad and then freedom from the compulsion. It didn't matter how much shame or how much public humiliation I endured. It didn't matter if I was in a dangerous situation. Those things didn't touch me. I just had to act out. I was like Velcro to the other person and it was like lust created such a power in me. Ten minutes more ago. Well, thank you, Jerome. There's a line in the big book. I think it's in the early pages. I wrote it down, but I forgot maybe twenty eight or something like that, that the flimsy read has become the strong hand of God. And I love that line because when I think about the power that lust had over me and still could have over me, and then the power of this program and the power of my higher power to keep me sober from that huge thing that felt so overwhelming and so compelling. It's really amazing. So freedom from a life of hiding and dishonesty, freedom from, you know, when my mom would call me when I lived in this big city, all I ever did besides work was act out. She would ask, she would ask me, well, what do you do for fun? How many of you do, you know, in your free time? And I would lie, you know, I'm free from terrible harm that I did to self and others. Now, I still can harm people, but today I have tools to make amends. And I wanted to mention just a couple of things where I really harmed people. In my acting out in college, I harmed my roommates, I just abandoned them and I made poor choices in terms of our living situation the following year and so forth. And then one of the most painful things for me to think about is now my parents were both their first generation to go to college and education was so important to them. And so it was so important to send me to college, which they paid for. And at graduation, they drove hundreds of miles to come to my graduation and at the end of the ceremony, instead of finding them, I went back to my dorm and I was sitting there with a boy that I hadn't even acted out with him. But I don't know, I guess I was thinking of him as my boyfriend at the time. I was sitting there with a boy and they had to come and find me. And that was just so painful. And again, I was numb. I was just numb. My father was so angry that he just left and went home. And we had planned to go on a little trip to visit one of my college friends. My mom stayed with me, but I just didn't even get it. And then recently I discovered among some things that I have for my parents have both passed away, my mother's Christmas notes that she sent for many years in the 1970s. And just reading them was astonishing. Like my dad was having all these physical problems and all these things were happening and I had no clue. I didn't even tune into their lives. And I still can do that. So I just got a very strange message that I changed my language to Arabic, but I don't think I did. So anyway, I think you get the picture. You get the picture of what this program has done for me. Freedom two. I'll talk about freedom two. For this program, I might have thought freedom two meant freedom to get married, always be confident, always know what I'm doing, you know, right off into the sunset. But when I was preparing this talk, I realized my freedom two is a whole lot of different other kinds of things. Freedom to remember always that I'm powerless. That is the source of my freedom. Freedom for a total change of perspective, freedom to live with integrity. Now I don't go around telling people at my church that I'm in this program. So in that sense, I'm not, I'm hiding, so to speak, but I'm not hiding from you. And I'm not hiding within myself in terms of what is who I am and what my reality is. You could come to my house at any time and I would not have to hide what I was doing. And that is amazing and amazing freedom. Yeah, five minutes more ago. Oh, God. Okay. Freedom to face my feelings a little bit more. I'm still not really good with facing feelings. I had to give up Facebook recently because I was just going there to just between activities to kind of escape. Freedom to pursue creative activities because I used to do five minutes of preparation and then I would act out and that was the end of that. Freedom to live a life of usefulness, service. I haven't done so much service outside of the meetings I go to in recent years. I haven't been to conferences in recent years, but I did do a lot of service over time. And today, as we all know, talking to a sponsor is just lifts my spirits, lifts my heart. And I can also do service outside of these meetings. Freedom to grow closer to God and to receive God's help. Freedom to grow, to try to maintain conscious contact with God again. I'm not so great at that every minute of the day, but I am trying and I am getting better. Freedom to make amends. Freedom to be a little bit less selfish. Freedom to ask for help, freedom to talk to others. Yesterday, I looked at a couple of people, their bodies in a way that was not just neutral interest. Let's put it that way. And I prayed and prayed and prayed to please remove these images. Finally, I texted my sponsor and even just a text without a phone call just took away the power. So I don't know how my parents lived without really talking to other people. I have to talk. It takes a village to just keep me vertical. And so I'm freedom to have a fellowship and talk to others. Freedom to be a little more vulnerable. Freedom to be. Now, if I had a partner from listening to other people who are married, I think I would grow much faster, but I don't. So I grow through things at church, interactions with people, just daily life. Do I still sometimes have longings and even physical desires and attractions? Yes. Jess Ellen used to say, "It's not that I don't have lust, it's that I turn to God quicker." And when these things have come up, this program gives me so many tools, prayer, sponsor, meetings, and talking to myself down. It's not so much lately, I mean, in the last few years, but sometimes I've said to myself, "Look, Margot, a lot of people in the world don't have a home to live in. They don't have enough food and they're sick, so you can do without a little acting out." But freedom to care about others or at least take the actions of love. Freedom to pass for normal. Most of the people in my life today don't know about my past. Freedom to be grateful. I think gratitude is such a beautiful feeling and I didn't have that before. And freedom to surrender looks, resentments, and all kinds of things. Freedom to read literature, go to meetings. And the most important thing for me is to stay sober. So I don't want to give the impression that for me, recovery means I never have lust hits. I never have resentments. I'm going to have plenty of those. I'm not perfect, but the important thing I think, the important message that I have for me is whatever I'm going through, I don't have to act out. And that is the bottom line because all of that stuff passes and I'm not alone and there's always someone I can share with. And if I just don't act out, I have a chance. I don't ever want to open that door to acting out. And the way I stay in that frame of mind is by showing up every day to work the program. So I'll just say quickly, maybe my time is up by now. I'm not sure. I've got a little bit more time. Okay. I'll just say what I do. When I first got sober, I had a sobriety renewal partner and we would do this renewals five days a week. And there was only one meeting here in where I live. So we went to that meeting. She died from cancer and that was really a blow. But anyway, today I'm in a lot of programs. So my whole life is kind of encompassed with program, but what I do for this program is when the alarm goes off in the morning, I roll out of bed onto my knees. And I say the first three prayers, first three steps as a prayer. And then I have a bunch of daily readers that I read and two of them belong to this program, recovery continues and step the daily reprieve, is that the meditation book, yeah. And I think that I have that name wrong, even though I read it every day, but let's see. And those really, really helped me. I can wake up in the worst mood and just reading all those meditation books just puts me back in line with principles that I want to live by. And it was actually David M, who I heard say in a meeting that he reads every day, a page from recovery continues and that's what got me started. The real connection. Thank you, Iris. Lately the last few months, then I've done, I've started doing a yoga practice, the woman sends a video. After that, I sometimes I either do two way prayer or I meditate just breathing for seven or 12 minutes, something like that. I call my sponsor every day. I get sponsey call every calls every day. I talk to my sponsor every once a week. I make calls when I need to. I listen to podcasts, I come on this meeting, I have a home group where we go through the big book and I forgot to say that in the early in the middle 90s, I got involved in this big step group called the big book step study, which is a special way of doing the steps that originated on Cape Cod is called the high-end its method. And that has really, that really changed my perspective so much, because I had no idea how I was operating before. So that as I call the steps world peace, because when I do a 10th step or an 11th step, and especially if I read it to someone, I'm diffusing, I'm seeing my dishonesty, I'm seeing the truth of the situation, and I don't have to, you know, act out on it in terms of the other people that I might be resenting or afraid of. So anyway, I think I better stop. I'm just so grateful for this program. I'm so grateful to be sober. Well, go. You're all set. Okay. Thanks so much Jerome, and with that all pass. Thanks for you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Marco. Thank you, Marco. Thank you, Marco. Let's see you, Marco. Thank you for that. Thank you so much for the show. I really appreciate it. Two quick questions for you. So we'll tackle it for both. One, how do we practice to infer warnings and anything you've heard that's encouraging to you lately. And then, too, you mentioned David M and Roy Kay and some of their, you know, encouragements along the way. Are there any other, you know, bits you've gotten from other line time numbers like you that really helps. So just curious on to a prayer and things. Thanks one. Did you say you'd like to know about two-way prayer or you do two-way prayer? Oh, yeah. Oh, I'd love to know how you do like specifically, how do you do two-way prayer in the mornings? Oh, okay. So I was in a group for two years that read this book by Wally P, who's the one who started this whole thing. He actually interviewed a man who knew Bill and who was involved in the early Oxford group. And so I was in that group and there's a flyer in that book about how to do it. And so I just listen, I ask God to what would God like me to know or be or do, or I ask about a specific situation. Now I have a prayer partner who gets all these incredible messages from God. And they're just such a loving and so directive. And I've just had to struggle with envy of her all over the years. I usually get a laundry list of do this, do that. Although the other day, what I did get was before each activity asks for help and after each activity, say thank you. And I'm a workaholic, so that was kind of challenging. But I did it for that day and it was absolutely fabulous. In terms of other things that people have said, I might have to think about that. I can't think right now. I'm sorry, Daniel. That's okay. Thanks so much. Okay. Thanks for the question, Margot. Thanks for your answer there. I'm Priscilla. Hey, Margot. Thank you so much for your share. And thank you, Nancy, for reminding me that Margot was going to be speaking today. I guess one of the things I'd like to say to you, Margot, it's not so much a question, but thank you for the reminder, being more mindful, I start every morning with the third step prayer and a gratitude list. And I would like to incorporate more into more mindfulness during the day. And just, I guess maybe the question would be, do you have any suggestions on, like, for me, nature is a way to connect with God. Do you have any other suggestions on a way to kind of get that mindfulness going a little bit more? Well, I do have a prayer that I say often right before my meals, and it takes about three minutes. And it's a prayer of praising and then some affirmations that really helps. I do have, I do pray before my creative activity preparation that I do. And that really helps. I do do a 10th step or whatever at night with a gratitude list and writing out any resentments and fears. Sometimes if there's nothing really strong in my feelings about it, I might not write, write it out every time, but I do also have an 11th step buddy who I talk to three mornings a week and we turn over our gratitude fears and resentments. I try to take like a 10 minute nap or a rest often in the day, and I find that very helpful. And I do usually, that do usually does involve prayer as well, just a short prayer. But I don't think I'm a poster child for connecting to God. It's really been a long, long journey. And I have some thoughts about why that is, but I don't really know for sure. But I know that I'm a lot closer than I used to be. So I think the pausing is really helpful, just stopping my body. And also, yeah, it was really helpful the other day when I asked for help before activities. And the prayer in the big book says we pause when agitated or doubtful. I usually add certain when agitated, doubtful or certain, because I can usually think that I know what I'm doing. It's much better if I ask God for help. And then from this meeting, from someone who talked in this meeting, oh gosh, I'm talking too long, I got, she talked about doing the second step from the step into action. And instead of saying, God is this that and the other, she said, God, you, she said you, she addressed God directly, you are loving, you are compassionate, you are kind, you are merciful, you are with me. I like that saying that a few days lately. I said that a lot before this prayer, preparing for this qualification. That has really made it hard. So like that. Thanks, Margot. Thank you, Margot. You're not talking too long. We are here to hear your experience, strength and hope. Amir. Yep. Do you hear me? Yeah. Okay. Hey. Thanks, Margot. Really appreciated. I identify 100% with everything you said. It's amazing. I really identify with what you said about, I need a village to keep you vertical. So I still have the same need. And I identify with them a lot with the idea I started the program, maybe Fuzzy, I don't know what to do. I just joined the program and, you know, fun fact, I stayed sober for a year without finishing the steps just by attending meetings and listening to my sponsor. You know, I appreciate if you can shed some light about you move from, you know, I call this shaky start in the program, then moving to the rock bed, also right. Yep. Thank you. Yeah, sure. Yeah, it was kind of a crisis. So I would think I was sober for eight years in this program through the tools, which is very important. And then like I said, my co-sponsor died. And then my, I started dating this guy and it got a little bit dicey. And so I was, I felt depressed, like I felt like I had never met a 12-step program. And that is when somebody told me about this step group, which had started fairly, just a little while before then. And so that was the transition. It was not, I didn't just wake up one morning and say, gee, I think I'll do some step work. No. It was out of pain. Yeah. And I'm really glad the answer was there. Thanks. Thanks, Margo. Now we have Brandon. Yeah. Thank you for letting me share. Thank you, Nancy, for your service, Jerome, for timekeeping, and Margo for your share. It's very uplifting and was important for me to hear. I think this is a God message for me. So I appreciate it. In the white book, it says, let us define our own sobriety definitions and watch the rationalizations come to life. And then in one of the speaker tapes of Harvey, he says that essay is probably more lenient than the other S fellowships as far as sobriety definition and that we could act out in other ways without masturbating or committing adultery and still call ourselves sober. So to me, it's like a bottom line issue. What's your bottom line? Can you talk about how you came about your bottom line behaviors and any type of rationalization that's you told your name? Okay. Any rationalizations you might have told yourself in early recovery to say you're still technically sober. Thank you. I'll pass. That's a good question. I'm not really familiar with the other S programs, but I do agree that there's a lot of leniency in a certain way in our program, although it is part of our program progressive victory over lust. I guess I was just desperate enough that I didn't hedge the bottom line at all. I didn't do. I mean, I've had to recover from things like chatting people up and dependency and stuff like that. In terms of our real bottom line of acting out, I guess when I started dating this fellow in the early 90s, I didn't have a sponsor. The program in our area was not that strong. So I guess I was thinking I was kind of on my own in terms of how to conduct a dating relationship. So I was on my own in that sense, but I don't think that I was rationalizing it. I don't know. Maybe I'm not aware of it. But anyway, thanks for the question. Thanks, Marigal. This has been wonderful. I think we have time for one more short question. Helma. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, everyone. I want to ask this question that as a woman, are you doing with the feeling of loneliness now in your life? Or when you think about situations that you would get sick or need extra help? What do you do for this situation? Mm-hmm. Yes. I feel lonely sometimes. As I say to myself, "Well, you could be partnered with someone that you can't stand." I kind of draw up these other scenarios. I have a therapist, and that really is helpful. I have a church community that is very nurturing to me, and sometimes I make calls. When I'm really, really lonely, I don't make calls usually because there's nothing the other person can say is my sense of it. I pray, and I know that my commitment, my intention is not to act out, and it does pass. I have a certain, I mean, I've never lived with anyone. I've never been married, so I have a certain feeling of being left out of a certain big part of life, but that seems to be my path. And I'm in the state of mind I'm in right now because of all of you, it's okay. Thank you. I would like to thank you for listening to this episode of The Daily Reprieve, the best source for experience, strength, and hope for essay members. Please subscribe to this podcast to be alerted of new episodes. Please show your support by donating to The Daily Reprieve by going to donate.the Daily Reprieve.com and choosing either monthly donations or a one-time donation by clicking donate now. Thank you for listening, and stay tuned for the next episode of The Daily Reprieve. [music]