These 12 suggestions were beneficial and very useful to me and our fellowship. I believe they have helped us to stay focused and committed to working the solution, like the first 100 members of AA did. I thought the fellowship might find it of interest.

SA has been meeting twice a week for 18 months now. By the grace of God, we have a solid core of sobriety and recovery, with two members over 12 months, two over six months, and three over three months. We focus strongly on the literature at each meeting, reading from the White Book the Twelve & Twelve, and the AA Big Book.

We are enjoying the new format and the expanded content of the Essay newsletter. The articles on successful SA meetings (focusing on the solution) and on sponsorship were especially welcomed. They offer constructive suggestions on how to strengthen and enhance our commitment to recovery.

Hi, my name is Marsha F. I am a gratefully recovering lustaholic from Cleveland, Ohio. I have been sexually sober since March of 1990, thanks to the grace of God and this fellowship. I am serving SA as the Corrections Committee (CC) Chairperson. A better description might be “prison coordinator.” The letters from prisoners that are received at Central Office are sent to me. I then attempt to find an SA contact on the “outside” to correspond with the prisoner.

MOTION: Moved that the COOC agrees to move the Central Office from Simi Valley, California. Carried unanimously. (Margo C./Paul S.)

I heartily support your line “…the fact remains that we could make a significant spiritual breakthrough were we to submit to the direction [of a sponsor] and carry it out without questioning.” That’s the key. Until I started doing that (and I only did that because I was desperate, and had begun to see the point) my self-will had me still in its grip. And it’s my self-will that leads me inevitably back to acting out, in some new guise or other.

I became willing to turn my life over to the care of God. My first time was when I first entered the program. Then I finally admitted that it was not up to me to define the bottom line. To really turn over to my sponsor—regular contact, honest sharing of my lust and resentment and regular work on the Steps is my next step.

My name is Mike B. and I’m a sexaholic. I’m writing to share my joy and gratitude for what the fellowship of SA has done and is doing for me. Why am I joyful? I have a reprieve, one day at a time, from my obsession with lust. Also, I’m grateful for the open forum provided in our Essay—much like the A.A. Grapevine. I’ve learned that my way to life, sobriety and recovery is not the only way. I am learning tolerance.

I would like to share a story with the members of this program—some I know, some I will meet and some I may never meet, but I share a common bond with each one of you. We are sexaholics and we care about each other’s sobriety.

I’d like to share something that happened to me after I’d been sexually sober for about seven months. I am just starting to experience life as a recovering sexaholic. Through God’s grace, my soul has been opened to a whole new way of living. At first, it was through not acting out. Then, as I got sober and my sobriety progressed, things began to get more positive. Today less of me is in the problem and more of me is in the solution.

We have begun the New Jersey-Delaware Valley SA Intergroup. Our fifth meeting will take place on May 22, and we are working on having an 800 number for phone inquiries.

I wanted to let you know what’s been happening in London, it’s all very exciting stuff… The meetings have been going very well. We now have five solution meetings going, four of which I am very involved in. I started one on Monday night and we changed the formats at the other meetings and a new meeting was started on Sunday morning, which is really nice.

Need: Often a sponsee will have a problem that does not readily yield to the sponsor’s efforts or is outside his or her knowledge or recovery experience or ability to deal with it. In such cases, there can be great wisdom and breakthrough by bringing the issue to a small, select group of trusted members, together, under God.

Call me every day, regardless of how you feel.

Value of Abstinence to the Sexaholic
1. To discover lust and its part in the relationship and to decouple lust from sex. Going into total sexual abstinence reveals the presence and nature of lust. Before, sex and lust were so intertwined we couldn’t see anything but the sex. Taking sex out of the picture reveals what’s really there. And it is this hidden component that must be seen and progressively overcome for true recovery.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the fellowship for its deep concern during the recent earthquake. Many of our members sustained terrible damage, and the total loss of their homes and possessions. And yet, these are some of the members calling Central Office to offer assistance if needed.

Sharing was, for many of us, the first gift of the program that we really felt. The meeting provided an island of safety where we felt we could open our darkest secrets to an understanding group of friends. In time, however, we have come to learn that our sharing is an integral part of our progressive victory over lust, both as individuals and as a group.

The measure we gave was the measure we got back… This timeless little phrase has never meant more to me than it does now.

Hello. I’m Harvey A., a sexaholic. I thought of all kinds of openings, but the one I want to say is how much I love my wife. She’s been having to bathe me, she’s been having to drive me, she had to put my socks on. This is a woman who … no woman should have to go through what she went through from my disease.

[One SA group’s guidelines for staying sober today; submitted at the January 1994 Rochester conference.]