Imagine living in a small, plain white-walled cell for ten years with an addiction to lust. Imagine life with no help, no one to confide in and no hope of breaking out of physical, emotional, and spiritual hell.

I often feel helpless in the face of what my godchildren share with me, but despite this I often feel that they help me a lot in my recovery. Unintentionally, they give me ideas that strengthen me. One of those ideas is the importance of service.

I’m a recovering sexaholic and I’m making a program call.” These words are a bit harder to say from the inside of a jail cell. Nevertheless, even while in here I can get current, I can reach out, and I can get out of isolation—just by writing this letter. Even though I’m stuck in a cell 21 to 23 hours each day, I still have the tools to grow in recovery and have a positive sobriety—by doing all I can for the sexaholic who still suffers.

My name is Tucson Ray and I’m a multiple addict including sex addiction. I have been a sex addict since I reached puberty. I discovered masturbation and I couldn’t stop. I masturbated virtually every day, sometimes many times a day, all through my teen years. When I got to age twenty-one, I thought a wife was going to fix me.

While in prison, some of my fellows and I found that we all spoke fondly of one particular board game from our youth. After recounting past glories, we sought to obtain a copy of the game. But the game requires dice, and prisons frown heavily on gambling, so our request to have a copy of the game was denied. With time in abundance (after all, we were in prison), we decided to create our own copy of the game from memory.

Over three sober decades in SA there have been quite a few pieces of “bad news” for we sexaholics. They all arise, like our entire program, from our experience, strength and hope. Each issue of Essay under Practical Tools we’ll share some pieces of “bad news”:
• If I am disturbed, the problem is in me. I’d rather be serene than right.

When I started in SA, I was still talking about the struggle and fight against lust. That made all the sense in the world to me at that time. I figured if I didn’t struggle against lusting and the desires, obsessions, and compulsions, there’s no way I could ever stop my acting out. I was wrong.

Hi, I’m Wendi, sexaholic in Colorado with progressive victory over lust since November 7, 2011.

In Single and Serene she found freedom and meaning in accepting her status — have you had similar experience with acceptance?

Our St. Louis SA community misses our good friend Wally F. He died suddenly of a heart attack on May 12, 2019. Those who attended the SA convention in St. Louis last summer might remember Wally as the M.C. for the convention.

Dear Essay readers:
This issue of Essay includes many stories on “SA At 40 Years!” We have sixteen extra pages in this issue with a broad-brush review of the origin, growth, structure, and some significant SA personalities upon whose shoulders we stand today. For which, as one member says, we can never be sufficiently grateful.

When we issue the revised edition of “Recovery Continues,” I suggest “Recovery Continues Continuing.”

Abused by her uncle at the age of four, she began using sex to battle loneliness and rejection. But when it became a behavior she could no longer control, *Talitha K. scoured the net for help. After an online test, Talitha realized that she is a sex addict.

I am Kristina from Germany and sober since March 2016 – one day at a time by the grace of my loving Higher Power. When I worked Step 2 with ‘Step into Action’ I wrote something about my Higher Power. As I search for many years in several religions where I could belong to, I found something very very important about “god of my understanding” who gives me strength: for ME it is a SHE most of the time.

I love making candy. As with any interest of mine, it grew into a real passion. People encouraged me to create a candy business, which I tried…and failed. (I’m not a very good businessman.) It was during this period of time, though, that I was experimenting on various recipes and frequently offered samples (and made sales) to folks at work, Church, in our neighborhood and at meetings.

I am humbled by the out-pouring of love given to me on my 30th year anniversary. Sometimes I believe I am a fraud. Maybe one of those fantasies were not a fantasy and I did act out? Maybe one of those wet dreams were not really a wet dream?

I viewed men as toys or saviors but never as human beings. They filled my time until I found THE ONE who became my god. The fear of not being loved or accepted drove me into depression, misery and fear of abandonment. I believed that the ONE would fix me and fulfill my fantasies and dreams. But each time I sank deeper into a living hell, taking the abuse and telling myself that I was the problem.

There was a sexaholic walking down the street. He’d been there before, but this time, as he was walking, he met God. Now God had something in His hand and it looked good to the sexaholic.

SA has grown so much in the last forty years it’s hard to know where to begin. From its humble beginnings in Los Angeles, CA, SA has exploded into an International Fellowship. Today, SA is comprised of twelve regions with four within Europe and the Middle East and our newest region in Central and South America.

The Europe and Middle East Region (EMER) of Sexaholics Anonymous (SA) was formed on 8th December 2011 by the vote of five SA Intergroups — in Flanders (Belgium), Ireland, Israel, Netherlands and UK. Six more — Finland, Francophonia (Be/Fr/Lux), Poland, Russia, Slovakia and Spain — have since joined and one (Israel) has left to form a Region of its own.