Call me every day, regardless of how you feel.

Certainly call me if you think you are going to slip—before you slip!

If you don’t reach me before you slip. keep making calls until you reach someone. Make actual contact. Leaving phone messages is not enough. You are not to go on a slip without calling.

Read at least four lines or so from either the AA Big Book, the 12 & 12, or the SA White Book every day, preferably first thing in the morning. We’ll talk about what you read in your daily phone call. Better to read a little and get something you can take away with you and use rather than going on and on.

We will be working the Steps. That’s what this program is. That’s how we recover. We work them and keep working them until they become principles instead of just Steps—principles that take hold in every area of our lives.

Read Step One in all three books preparatory to writing your First Step Inventory. Then start writing your First Step Inventory. Your sexual history. Focus on the patterns of your sexaholism, the progressive nature of your sexaholism, and the critical nature of your sexaholism, that is, where it has led you. Where had it taken you when you came in the door? Also, the focus is on the level of surrender. Are you done with it, ready to move on and let it go and recover from it? The sponsor should help keep you from merely reliving your sexual history. Instead, you’re sending it away. In sum, the First Step is seeing it, confessing it, and sending it away.

Take no more than 3 or 4 days to write your First Step. It may be painful to go through, so don’t spend too much time and get immersed in it or bogged down. If you get triggered, call me or someone else immediately. Some have slipped during writing their First Step. Keep it succinct, 5-8 pages max.

As soon as you’ve written it, you’ll read your First Step Inventory to me privately and we’ll go over it together. (The sponsor will try to see that the sponsee is not still in it, that it’s not triggering him, that he’s surrendering it. He’ll make sure he’s gone deeply enough and that we hear the powerlessness and that he’s done with it all and is willing to let it all go—surrender.)

Attend at least __ meetings per week, two or three, if not more. As many as you need to stay sober and comfortable. I’ll help you decide how many. Sobriety must come first in your life. Are you willing to go to any lengths to stay sober?

In your phone calls, I don’t want to hear a lot about what your day has been like, or what she or he did to you, etc. I do want to hear about what you’ve read that morning and how you apply it to yourself. Also, about every major lust temptation and resentment temptation and how you thought or acted wrongly about others.

After giving your First Step to me and we have decided you’re ready to give it away, make an appointment to give your First Step to your group or to a selected group of members to meet in fellowship at someone’s home. (In groups where there is little or no sobriety or recovery, or with sponsors who have insufficient recovery to discern when a sponsee’s First Step should not be given or is going off track, special measures may need to be taken. In such cases, a select group should help judge whether the sponsee is ready to give a First Step to the entire group. This could take the form of a check meeting [see “Check Meetings”]. This will protect the regular group meeting from cases where members might inflict on the meeting an ordeal of unsurrendered “dumping” or mere sexual replay. This can be not only toxic but shift focus from the solution onto the problem, destroying any value which giving the Step can have. First Steps can be wondrous examples of insight into powerlessness and surrender leading into recovery, as well as dreadful negative experiences for all concerned. Some people simply may not be ready to give their First Steps when they come into the program.)

I’m going to work the Steps with you. That’s what a sponsor does—help guide you through the Steps. You’ll soon see that it’s impossible to do them alone, and that isolation is a large part of our illness. We’ll be applying the Steps to every problem that comes up. That’s what I’m here for. You’ll have to make outreach calls to others in the program too, and that will evolve.

I’ll be asking you to join me and others in fellowship times after meetings or elsewhere so you can get to feel comfortable being part of instead of apart from. Fellowship outside of meetings is very important.

Repeat the same process for Step Two, except that normally you won’t be giving it to the group. Then read your Second Step to me and I’ll work on it with you. Same for the Third Step. When you read your Third to me, you’ll be working toward making the decision to actually turn your will and life over to God. If you’re ready and wish to do so, we can do this together in private. If you’re a religious person, you will come to see what areas of your life you have not actually surrendered in spite of your religious beliefs and rituals. (When I surrender my will and life that includes, for me, my sexuality, sex, marriage, and orientation.) “Are you now ready…?” If you’re not ready to turn your will and whole life over to God, we’ll keep going back to it. Prayer can now become part of our working together daily.

Now we move on to Step Four, the searching and fearless moral inventory, as outlined in the Big Book. We add a column to this chart: “What does this tell me about myself?” I’ll work with you on this.

And so on through each Step, one at a time. You’ll be reading the material on each Step in Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12 & 12, and Sexaholics Anonymous (the White Book) and working with me on doing it.

I’ll be asking you to write Fear and/or Gratitude lists on occasion, as well as other inventories, as things come up in your life. We may also be in check meetings together. I may have you write about some aspect of your life you have a need in, and we may call such a special check meeting for you.