Here’s the short version of how this website got its name. The first essay I ever wrote about addiction recovery and the first one to make it on this website was entitled “Sitting in a Rowboat Throwing Marbles at a Battleship.” I ended up giving my first book that same title. If you haven’t read the essay or the book, however, rowboats and marbles probably don’t seem to have anything at all to do with Latter-day Saints and the porn epidemic that is wiping out LDS families as well as others.
E
arly in recovery (spring 2010), I started attending lots of meetings of Sexaholics Anonymous–several a week. For the first time in decades, I began to understand what fueled my compulsive sexual behavior. I learned and came to believe that addiction was a massive problem for me; it was not just a few bad habits that I merely had to adjust with some willpower. I grew in recovery and I grew in sexual sobriety for the first time ever! I had found the solution in Sexaholics Anonymous.
The more I learned about addiction, the more I saw how I had battled it for my entire life with willpower–and got crushed every time. As I was sitting there one day contemplating why addiction had fooled me for so long, I saw in my mind’s eye a little five-year-old boy sitting in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean. Kind of like Life of Pi only without the tiger. This lonely child was scared witless and clutched a handful of marbles.
Suddenly, a giant battleship steams into view and deliberately steers towards the little boy. It’s clear that the battleship intends to crush and drown him. Every time the battleship passes, the five-year hurls some of his marbles at the ship’s hull. He is trying to sink the battleship by throwing marbles at it!
If I had to describe this picture in one word, it would be “pathetic.” The little boy is so overwhelmed that only an act of God can save him. Nothing else on this earth can do anything for him. I cried when I finally recognized that I was that little five-year-old boy. From my first exposure to pornography, I had been fighting it–but it turns out that I was in a rowboat throwing marbles and Satan was in the battleship’s bridge biding his time until the day when his ship would slice the rowboat in half and the little boy wouldn’t come for air anymore.
When someone asks me nowadays how I see addiction, I tell them the story of the rowboat, the marbles, the battleship and the five-year-old boy. I don’t stand a chance on my own. That’s how I see addiction. I also understand that those marbles are my sad, childish efforts to overcome my addiction on my own, in secrecy and isolation. It really is pathetic.
What makes this vision bearable to me is knowing that in fact Heavenly Father is mindful of that little boy in the rowboat. He has provided a solution to the problem of my addiction–and most importantly, he has pointed me in the direction of other recovering addicts (in Sexaholics Anonymous) who can help me get my little rowboat out of the pathway of this battleship. God and these other recovering addicts are doing for me what I could not do on my own.
I continue to ask myself as I work my recovery: Are you doing what Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ require of you in your recovery, or are you sitting alone in your rowboat throwing marbles at a battleship? I don’t want to be alone anymore and I don’t want to throw marbles anymore either. Because of a loving Heavenly Father who led me to a solution to addiction, I no longer have to.
If you’re LDS, addiction recovery starts with an admission that this thing is bigger than you are by far and you need help from those who have experience in overcoming addictions.
I began attending SA in 2005 – after over 30 years of marble throwing at battleships. I also attended LDS Family Services PASG groups. Both contributed to my recovery but in different ways. Because I am in a position now to establish additional PASG groups, please tell me what you would change about PASG groups to help them be more effective in contributing to participants’ sobriety. OK? Many thanks!
1. Start using the White Book of Sexaholics Anonymous (SA), the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12×12 in meetings. Addicts need milk and meat. They need to understand the particulars of their addiction. They need to understand what lust is and how it permeates their lives. They need to learn to spot the triggers–many of which have nothing to do with sex or porn. They need to learn the connection between emotions and self-medicating. The biggest disappointment I hear voiced about the Church’s Addiction Recovery Program (ARP) and Pornography Addiction Support Group (PASG) is that they’re “just one more fast and testimony meeting.” Using those books would add enormous substance to the meetings. As a corollary, make it clear that understanding and overcoming addiction requires more than reading scriptures, Ensign articles and the ARP manual.
2. Establish a clear sobriety definition. The SA definition seems to be the best one I’ve heard so for: “No sex with self or any person other than spouse; and progressive victory over lust.” Also, establish a clear definition of “addiction.” Is it a disease or merely a bad habit? There are a lot of guys in PASG who think they just have a bad habit that 12 meetings in 12 weeks are going to cure. We all need to get on the same page on that one.
3. Make it clear that for many if not most addicts, one meeting a week is not sufficient. Those who have the most success in overcoming sex and pornography addiction attend several meetings weekly, make daily phone calls to others in recovery, have a sponsor and make recovery a life-and-death priority.
4. In addition to the three books listed above, add three other books to a strongly-suggested reading list: Sitting in a Rowboat Throwing Marbles at a Battleship (rowboatandmarbles.org), Understanding Pornography and Sexual Addiction (SALifeline.org) and He Restoreth My Soul by Dr. Don Hilton. The first two books are available as free downloads. The third book is a real eye-opener that ought to be required reading for every leader and parent in the Church.
5. Encourage “cross-pollination” with other 12 Step groups. My experience and that as expressed by many others is that the most-effective ARP meetings are the ones attended by Latter-day Saints who also attend 12 Step groups outside the Church that are specific to their particular addiction. One of my friends refers to ARP as “12 Step Lite.” She believes that the best recovery program might involve attendance at ARP to help Latter-day Saints get used to the idea of 12 Step meetings and then receiving encouragement at the ARP meetings to also attend the addiction-specific groups outside the Church. She likes the idea of both, rather than one or the other. Sounds like you do, too.
6. Caution participants that zealous expressions of faith in Jesus Christ are important but not sufficient for recovery from addiction. I’ve been to a lot of PASG meetings where the goal seems to be to out-testify everyone else about how much you love Jesus. Frankly, they sound too much like the revival meetings of born-again Christians–especially where it’s the same thing week after week.
7. Encourage all the service missionaries who run the meetings to educate themselves about addiction by reading more than the scriptures, the Ensign and the ARP manual; to keep in mind that if they aren’t themselves recovering addicts, their presence in the meetings can have a dampening effect on honest sharing if they aren’t careful; and to avoid “cross-talk” and lecturing participants about how “more faith in the Savior” is going to fix things.
I wish you well. Please let me know how the new meetings are working out.