Coming out of my SA meeting last night, I felt like I never wanted to go back. I get this feeling again and again there. A spirit of temporizing, playing around with lust and masturbation. “But not to orgasm, mind you.” Of course…. (Yet there was one in the meeting who set his clock back for going to the kind of flesh flurry he used to go to!) This group is a closed system, all to itself. I feel like I have to get inside that closed system. And I so want to be one with a fellowship! I picked up the spirit of that meeting in a dream last night and found myself with the same attitude: “It’ll be okay if I have sex or ejaculate; I’m only doing it in a dream.” I don’t want to go back to that meeting because I have to be one in spirit with a group, and I don’t want to be one with that spirit! If I put all of my own feelings (call them prejudices) down, if I let my barriers down to be part of instead of apart from, I’ll be infected with the spirit that’s loose there. What can I do?

I am a 40 year old male who is incarcerated because of indecent liberties with a child. I knew I was sick but could not find help. When she told, I was forced to find help as I had so long needed. I have thanked her often for telling. I found SA in Kansas City and the first night after hearing the Problem and the Solution, I knew that’s where I belonged. I found a therapist who was well acquainted with sexual addiction and one of the first things she asked was if I had heard of SA. I was proud to tell her I was already going three nights each week. She told me it was an excellent group. I was driving 55 miles one way, but it was well worth it. I have been sexually sober since December 4, 1989 and am proud of it. Masturbation was a big addiction that I didn’t think could ever be stopped, but through SA I have been happily away from it. I know my complete honesty with myself and others has been a great help but I also know my Higher Power has carried me through the tough times. Thank you so much for being there in KC. I can’t believe the total honesty of the people involved and I sure miss them.

Aloha. I have found an entrance into a vast part of myself through the fellowship of SA. Problems that have been hidden behind shame and denial are not as impossible as I thought to deal with, with the help from SA. There are only a few of us over here, and they all left some 50 days ago. But with a few books and meeting package I have stayed, with the help from my sponsor in California and friends at his meetings, sexually sober for 67 days to date by God’s Grace! I never thought I could do it and now I know I can’t. Surrendering the first thought and exercising my free will to guide my following thoughts has taken some of the wind out of the sails of my addictions. Alone on a rock in the middle of the Pacific. Recovery is working my life.

Just a thank you for my recovery and my pregnancy conceived in sobriety with my husband! This would have never happened without SA.

I’m writing for several reasons. I am thankful and in awe of my sobriety date which dates to June 7, 1990. I am in awe, I say, and grateful because my reality seemed to be that acting out and lustful thinking seemed to be as inevitable as night following day. Today, thanks to the program with its necessary and fruitful sobriety statement and the fellowship, my prayers do lead to reprieve by the power of God.

The three months leave in Portland area attending three meetings per week and the Baltimore conference seemed to have brought about a spiritual awakening, for which I am very grateful after four years nine months in the program. Thank you all who have contributed to this awakening.

When I came into SA, I needed the tough definition. I still do. It agrees with my values and beliefs. I was a homosexual ever since I can remember, and I hated it. It opposed my standards. My life was unmanageable. I started seeking help at the age of 19 years. I’m 40 now. I need SA. They say there will always be SA. Thank God. They say it’ll all work out…. I’m getting wonderful results from the program.

I have been a member of [another sex addiction fellowship] for awhile and have had a hard time following the program. For the last year I have been reading my copy of the Sexaholics Anonymous “white book” and I’ve finally realized what was missing from my program! The definition of my bottom-line behavior. I need the fellowship of SA to help me stop acting out on all sexual lust levels.

Thank you very much to the SA office in CA and for our prison coordinator. Together you have put me back on the right path. You all have done a great job. I will take the knowledge I have learned on with me as I go on parole in Iowa. I am looking forward to joining a group in Iowa. Thank you again for all you are doing for people who need help in this day and age. I wish I knew of the organization while I was on the streets before coming to prison. God bless you all.

Through the grace of God, the program, and the fellowship in program, I am currently sober eight days. What a miracle.

I have been a member of the SA fellowship since January 12, 1989. I am a pornography addict and, with the exception of a couple slips over the last nearly two years, am able to say that God, through SA, is giving me victory one day at a time! This has been a life saver for me. As a minister in an evangelical church, I stood to lose everything if I didn’t get help. I owe my all to God and His provision to sex addicts like me through SA.

Last week I celebrated two years of sobriety and told the group that I don’t feel “better than” anyone else in the group. I’m just as powerless and defenseless against lust (of myself) today as I was the first day I walked into the program. I’m in the program not because I’m achieving sobriety, but because I am powerless. Sometimes I feel totally and absolutely powerless (to the extreme) because, in fact, I am powerless. When I came into the program my problem was not my mother, father, sister, brother, etc. It was “me”; and that is still true today. And so it goes… It leads me to share my favorable reactions to some of the things you said in the last ESSAY and the two separate sheets “Where Do We Go from Here?” After what I said above, I’ve come to believe after two years of sobriety that a Power greater than myself returns me to Sanity.…

I have read the October edition of ESSAY and it is wonderful to hear of the successful recovery from sexually self-destructive thinking and behavior through the fellowship of Sexaholics Anonymous. Praise God! It was my sexually “stinking” thinking and behavior in which I acted upon, thus I became a perpetrator to my victim. I want this fellowship to understand the real trauma I have inflicted to my victim’s life and the seriousness in which I pursue to repair the damage. Fornication, adultery, drunkenness, and other so called pleasures, which God condemns, was a burden and stunted my ability to be obedient to the laws of God and man. My heart was convicted until I honestly confessed all the garbage in me to God through Jesus Christ, and the members of the fellowship in SA. I now have the responsibility to carry the message to others who suffer and show a willingness for change and continuous recovery. The victory is ours if we want it badly enough and are willing to change.

I have been struggling with my addiction for years now. My addiction led me to abusing my daughter and I spent two years in prison. I have had nine months once before. I am currently experiencing some serenity and am the chairman of a Saturday morning group. There is not a lot of sobriety in Utah County. Salt Lake County has a large group and a lot of support. I like to keep in touch with them and go to their Monday newcomer’s group about once a month. I pray that my higher power will guide me and I know that he will as I learn step by step through all twelve to surrender. I have a control problem and am wanting to learn to share the responsibilities with the whole group. I have been reading in the SA book the guidelines and we are not following them exactly. I would like any additional guidance you can give me. We do have another group on Wednesdays, but sobriety seems to come hard in a little valley which seems so afraid of all addictions. I don’t feel that I am just rationalizing, but it is easy for me, as it is with all of us, to do.

I just had my fourth birthday November 19!