Earl was our mentor, sponsor, and guide. Earl started SA on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. People from New Orleans to Mobile came to these meetings. He sponsored several of us as we continued to work our programs. Earl established a light that few of us expect to achieve. He attended national meetings and had years of sobriety; yet, he fought for each day just like the rest of us.

This Step is the beginning of a life-long process of self-appraisal and accountability. If you continue in this journey, you will have many more opportunities to review your conduct, motives and shortcomings, and take action to change. I rarely listen to a sponsee’s 5th Step without discovering another example of how my defects of character injured me or someone I love.

I was well on my way to being an addict by age eleven. Pre-puberty masturbation was already a regular part of my life and it wanted more and more. By age thirteen, I was experimenting with sexual activity with my younger sister. We feared being caught and punished, so we stopped.

I can hardly believe that I have been in SA for an entire year. More unbelievable is that I have been sober the entire time. My sponsor always reminds me that it is truly a miracle. My sponsor is right; it is truly a miracle.

Tonight, as I walked my dog, I learned a lesson in recovery. She’s still as hyper as a puppy at three years of age. Most of her time is spent either in a kennel or the small duplex we rent. I try to walk her around the block several times every day. I use a long retractable leash to let her roam a bit but keep her safe. Often she will end up at the end of the leash.

My name is K. and I am a sexaholic. My story began in a small suburban town, a wealthy suburb of New York City. We were a large Christian family and my father was a Marine Corps Captain in World War II. My father grew up on the “wrong side of the tracks” and he was determined that all his children would succeed in the professional world.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free…” (Emma Lazarus)
I sought for thirty years for relief from my addiction through my church. My guilt and shame were too great. I felt that no one at church would ever understand, much less accept me.

Many people lose their sobriety or relapse back into lust and sexual addiction. Most of us have learned that relapse is a process that happens over a period of time. Slowly we let our priority of sober and lust-free thinking and acting be replaced by other things. Then we become ripe for relapse.

“I am not affected by other people’s criticism because I am not affected by other people’s praise.”
Praise is wonderful. There are few greater joys than the affirmation and applause of my fellows. But what happens when the cheering stops? Where do I find my sense of self-worth when others fail to notice my good deeds?

Hi, my name is Mike, and I’m a sexaholic. I can still remember the first time I said that at an SA meeting. My palms were sweaty, my heart was pounding, my throat had a lump in it, and I could hardly speak—pretty much the same reaction I used to get each time I approached a prostitute, or did any of my addictive sexual behaviors.

Dear ESSAY Reader,
We keep working on improving our “meeting in print” with your help. Subscriptions to the ESSAY are now available through the SAICO website store, Publications page, at (www.sa.org) Our intention is to make copies of the ESSAY available on-line soon for reproduction in other formats such as the international A4 paper size. Check the SAICO on-line store for availability.

Currently there are a number of prisons across the country that have SA meetings. However, we do not have information on all of them.

This I need to learn.

As so often happens, some of my most profound revelations originate in the most insignificant things—that is, if I listen to that gentle voice of intuition and wisdom.

Have you been in recovery for a while and find you’re facing new, baffling difficulties that your current program isn’t adequately addressing? Or do you feel like your recovery has slowed down and you can’t shift out of first gear? If so, perhaps it’s time to revisit the Fourth Step.

My name is ____________________ (fill in the blank). I have a disease/disorder/dysfunction/addiction/mental illness (whatever you want to call it) where my brain tells me I should:

Having a sponsor and working the Steps are good; but, for me an accountability circle seems to work the best. I need people who are like me, who I can check in with hourly, daily, and weekly to keep current in my recovery. This helps me through the highs and lows of life.

We are people who have a problem with our sexual thoughts or behaviors. Our experience is that we are addicted to lust and to compulsive sexual acts. For this reason we call ourselves Sexaholics. Practically none of us accepted at first that we were addicted. However, as we listened to others who said they were sexaholics, we came to believe that we do have a common problem and that we have a solution.

This line comes from an old Simon and Garfunkel song and it describes what happens to me whenever I have a slip in the program. Each time I slip, I slide further away from my Higher Power. I do believe it is possible to have a program without slips. That was the theme of the Colorado Evergreen conference this year: “Recovery without Relapse.”

This is the best day of my life! Not because I am here sharing my story with you, not because of any anniversary or birthday. It is the best day of my life, because this is all I have… TODAY.