From where does your group get SA literature? Who provides informational packets to individuals trying to start a new group? Who helps the desperate sexaholic connect with a group, or another member? From whom can you obtain information about meetings and contacts when traveling? Who provides online registration for our International Conventions?

I fell hard into the Internet. There I found a world where forbidden things were freely available. At first, I enjoyed this secret place where there was no right or wrong. So I stayed there longer and longer each day. Before long, my seemingly harmless online meetings turned into infidelities. I cheated frequently, after more than fifteen years of faithful marriage.

From the time I was a kid I never liked teams. I didn’t want to lose because some teammate screwed up. If I messed up a bunch of people would hate me for making them lose. And if I’m the prime factor in helping a team win, the credit will be spread out among a bunch of others. By my logic it was better to solo have the credit and control of winning or losing.

In 1993, my wife and I led a church singles ministry. During a pool party at a single’s house while playing catch, my six-year-old son looked at me and said, “Daddy, why do you keep looking around? Why don’t you just play catch with me?” I believe that was the first time anyone spoke to me about my looking at the women around me.

My wife and I were babysitting two of our grandchildren for the weekend. On Saturday afternoon I was keeping my grandson company, lounging next to him on the couch with my legs up on a hassock as he watched his favorite television program.

The Finance Committee is in the process of issuing the service committees call for their proposed 2019 budget requests. These proposed budget requests are due April 1, 2018. The 2018 proposed budget is planned to be presented to the GDA Delegates at their face-to-face meeting at the July 2018 Saint Louis convention.

The story above says the Fourth Dimension unites improbable recovering sexaholics. Is that your experience, too?

I would be disappointed to stop using the original SA logo [Essay, February 2018] with its rich history and symbolism.

Dear Essay readers:
This issue of Essay includes many stories on Anonymity. The next issue in August will focus on the Twelve Traditions using the theme Relating with Others. Send in any stories or short articles on a Tradition that affects you. Let us hear from you at essay@sa.org!

Some SA Acronyms:
ODAAT – One Day At A Time

We know you know these Slogans: “One Day At a Time” “First Things First” “Easy Does It” “Keep It Simple”

I’m River W., a sober SA woman from Kansas City, Missouri. My sobriety date is August 26, 2015.

In the early recovery stages, the pain of my addiction was excruciating. Today I want to pay it forward, as others did for me. I discovered 12 essential keys that have contributed to my personal recovery.

At a convention recently, the speaker had a powerful message about comfort and change. Change often feels unnatural. We always revert to what feels comfortable.

Thirty years ago in SA I had an awful experience working on my Fourth Step. I focused solely on my defects of character and acting out behaviors. As I wrote I reacted in shame and acted out sexually. I couldn’t connect with any hope that I could get well or notice the hand of God working in my life. I was worse off after completing my Fourth Step than I was before I started it!

As a young man, he experienced the bondage of lust. Even becoming a priest didn’t solve the problem. But he came to SA, and found a new freedom when he got sober at the age of seventy.

I just finished a two-hour working session with a sponsee at a coffee shop. We were upstairs, mainly deserted, only one couple at the far end, who looked like they were down on their luck. I used the restroom and headed out when I noticed the gentleman that was upstairs coming down the stairs. I realized I had left my brand new cell phone on the sofa that he had just passed. I went and checked and it was gone.

Transcribed Talk from the SA/S-Anon International Convention — San Antonio, TX 1/12 – 14/18
Okay everyone. Wow! I’m Harvey A., sexaholic from Nashville, TN. I’ve been sexually sober thirty-three years and ten months. But there is someone in this room who has more sobriety and who is a pioneer of pioneers. To be a woman, and the oldest in sobriety basically, and to break these frontiers, Sylvia, would you stand? [Applause]

Are you willing to do what it takes?

I find the first two words of the Serenity Prayer crucial for me to focus on and never forget: “God grant.” It is another example of how God does for me what I cannot do for myself. I am powerless; He has all power. It’s also one of the early steps in learning some much needed humility, recognizing that this isn’t all about me, nor is my progress of my own doing.