These last couple of weeks I feel I have begun to understand what surrender really means. I thank God that I never stopped going to the meetings. And I thank God and SA that when I was finally hurting enough to really give up, He and the Fellowship were there for me, and the love and support carried me through withdrawal.

We’ve started a new group in Neenah, WI with 6 to 8 regular members each week! (A group is also going to start in Green Bay soon. Along with Appleton, that makes three for this area.) Also, how would our new group formally register with the Central Office?

We send this check with our best wishes and gratitude from SA in Reykjavik. Our group here is 5-7 members and is very strong.… I am very grateful for SA and what it has done for me. I did not know what my problem was until I met an SA member. One thing I know, without God I can’t stay sober. As a matter of fact, I can’t do anything if I don’t turn my life to God and trust him for my life.

“It was a great conference…the oldtimers meeting was inspiring. It was also comforting to me to see how much solid sobriety we have… It was relaxing to be in such a group.”

In case you’ve been wondering why this issue of ESSAY is late (even with our non-schedule), you should know that letters, phone calls, and literature orders have also been running late. There was a bit of a crisis when our new secretary left without giving notice. Nan was unavailable to come back in and pinch hit until now, so we did the best we could with volunteer help from the local fellowship.

It was certainly helpful for me to get in touch with some of the resentments I still had left concerning my brother in “…” and how praying for a forgiving spirit is certainly helping me feel better about all of this. I have also been able to let go of digging out anymore from my past concerning the sexual abuse situations.

To date we have 30 inmates who want to join the SA group when it gets completely organized.

I have recently been incarcerated on a sexual crime. Within the correctional institution that I have been placed is a Sexaholics Anonymous program. I have gone to a meeting and was advised to obtain your white book on SA. It would help me a great deal to overcome my problem as I need to do.

THANK YOU so much for your response to my call. Your timing and willingness to help are deeply appreciated. With God’s help, a corner has been turned, and with God’s help, the grace will continue to come to take me one step at a time, one day at a time.

The following two member contributions seemed to lend themselves to the above subject. We might consider this as a regular ESSAY feature if others want to answer the same question. (Please include your current length of uninterrupted SA sexual sobriety with your one-paragraph answer to this question.)

Recently we lost one of our members due to a tragic auto accident. He will be missed by all of those who loved him including all of his S.A. brothers here.

I cannot begin to adequately express our gratitude for the literature which your office sent to the men…this December. The meeting book and the ESSAY pamphlets were quickly snapped up at our regular Monday night meeting. We have 19 men actively involved in the S.A. program here at “…” and we are growing constantly.

“Institutions remain cumbersome, easily seduced by their own self-interest, preoccupied with their own survival. It’s a melancholy and ubiquitous fact of life that once an ideal, any ideal, becomes institutionalized, confusion sets in between the accomplishment of the ideal and the aggrandizement of the institution.”

Dear Fellow SAs,
I thought it might be helpful to let you know what our group from West L.A. is doing in response to the financial challenge facing our Central Office. We know that SA as a whole is working on ways to meet this challenge, and whatever recommendations are adopted, we here will seek to support them. However, we feel that whatever we can do in the meantime will be helpful.

We may be experiencing something significant in SA. The Maryland Marathon and Mid-Western Regional reports (elsewhere in this issue) state that the most powerful session of the day (October 18th and 4th) was when, under example of the leader, those members who chose, “gave away their top plate.” As far as we know, this first took place in the Warm Beach, Washington convention last year. In each of these three cases, it was reported by several to have been the most potent or meaningful experience of the get-together.

The largest expense in the SA Central Office is our non-sexaholic secretary’s salary (without whose very efficient help Roy would be totally lost). No SA members are paid for their volunteer work.

This is how a sexaholic in prison feels. For many of them there, prison time is spent in lockup for fear that they will be killed by the other inmates. If a sexaholic is found out in prison, he is in big trouble, for the most hated crime in prison is the child abuser or wife abuser.

…I have recently finished my 4th and 5th Steps, which is a wonderful feeling, and my lust seems to have lessened for now considerably. I am now trying to work on getting to know my wife again and repair the damage there.

The SA group in Grand Junction meets twice a week.… Our group is studying the book and Steps on Thursday and discussion meeting on Monday.…

Miracles are certainly happening here in Nashville. Last night we had 16 people at our SA meeting. We broke into two groups and then after an hour we met altogether for ½ hour beginners meeting.…