When I attended my first SA meeting on June 7th, 2014, I finally learned what my problem was. Hearing “The Solution” brought me hope. During my last year of acting out, I had become a chronic marijuana user and daily drinker. I was high on something 24 hours a day, and I withdrew from lust, alcohol, and drugs all at the same time.

I’ve had a month of feeling low. I’ve got lots of excuses, such as changing jobs, loss of significant other relationship, family issues, and poor diet and exercise. It all adds up to excessive sleep and self-pity. Going back to my Fourth Step work, I can see my defects coming to life. No wonder sobriety has been a challenge.

In SA’s Step One, I admitted that I’m powerlessness over lust (not over a particular behavior), and the Third Tradition states that the only requirement for membership is “a desire to stop lusting and become sexually sober” (SA 209). Both the Step and the Tradition remind me that lust lies beneath my acting out behaviors.

I’ve learned a lot in the past seven-plus years that I’ve been in recovery. I’ve learned that knowledge (like half measures) avails me nothing. Primarily, it does not get me the one thing I cannot get on my own: sobriety.

May I never forget the sexaholic who still suffers. With just over one year of sobriety, the freedom I’m experiencing is indescribable. The freedom I have been blessed with is a gift that brings peace, joy, serenity, and an absence of the ravages of my disease.

Five months before we retired, my wife and I made the last payment on what had been a sizeable debt for our family’s education loans. We thanked God as we sat next to each other on our love seat in our living room. We sat silently for a moment, each lost in our own thoughts. She was the first to speak and her words disturbed me. She asked, “Do you think we will ever buy my rings?”

I desperately wanted to have the SA/S-Anon marriage recovery story that one hears of from time to time in our rooms. I’ve probably read the “ending” (or better said, the “true beginning”) of the story in the White Book (SA 149-154) a dozen times or more. I would have done anything for that to be my story—but it has not been my story and it is not the experience, strength, and hope that I have to share.

My name is C. and I’m a gratefully recovering sexaholic from Ireland. Some years ago I heard an old-timer say at a convention that, before he was married, he knew a lot about lust but did not know much about sex. I identified with this because it is also true for me. Through SA I’ve learned that lust and sex are two entirely different things.

By the grace of God and the fellowship of SA, I have been sexually sober since August 1, 1985)—something for which I am frequently but never sufficiently grateful.

Dear Fellow SA Members:
The General Delegate Assembly (GDA) held its annual face-to-face meeting on July 24-25 in Chicago. Although the GDA meets quarterly, this is our only face-to-face meeting. Two full days of meetings resulted in action being taken on a multitude of agenda items.

I’m Barbara, a sexaholic, sober since December 12, 2001 and ESSAY Editor newsletter since March 2007. I’m grateful to the fellowship for allowing me to be of service all these years; this has been one of the biggest blessings of my recovery. Thus it is with much sadness that I must inform the fellowship that—because of ongoing health issues—I will be resigning as Editor after we publish the December 2015 issue.

Our path of recovery is illuminated when we reflect on our past, celebrate our progress, and share our experience, strength, and hope with others. We invite you to join members from all over the world as we gather in San Diego, CA for the SA International Convention, a spiritual weekend of Twelve Step reflection, celebration, and hope.

The third SA Colombia Congress, held in the city of Cali, was a wonderful event—a source of great joy! We enjoyed meeting many new members in person, and reconnecting with others. For several months beforehand, we met via Skype, and we held a preparation meeting in the city of Pereira in order to share ideas and plan for the Congress.

Wouldn’t it be great to attend a convention without leaving home? That’s exactly what some SA members around the world discovered when the EMER Convention in Birmingham, UK, was live-streamed on the Internet. More than 20 people are believed to have listened online, and numerous expressions of thanks and even delight were received.

In the personal story near the front of the White Book, the writer says, “Masturbation again” (SA 14). So here I am, with two years of SA sobriety, doing my Step One again, at my sponsor’s suggestion. The process was similar to the first time I did Step One, but this time it was more fruitful because I was not acting alone.

My name is Pablo and I’m a sexaholic. I attend the SA fellowship here in San Antonio—and it’s a great fellowship! I first came into SA two years ago, in November 2013, and I just turned 24 this week. Recovery has been a long journey for me since then. I’ve struggled with working the Steps and staying sober.

I have been a member of SA, and by the grace of God sexually sober, for the past seven years. My sobriety is not the product of my best thinking or willpower, because for 28 years I searched for sobriety but could not get one full day lust-free.

In May 2012, I found SA and became very curious about how the program worked. I got a sponsor right away, and she told me that one way to get myself out of my head—to stop thinking of myself—was to become involved and be of service.

I just left an SA meeting, where a young member’s share struck fear into my heart. He reminded me of my own past, and I was so profoundly moved that I felt compelled to share a bit of my story with him in the parking lot after the meeting.

Today I’m tired. My body aches from a long week, and I feel physically and emotionally exhausted. In many ways, I am experiencing the “HALT” (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) symptoms described in the White Book (34). Although I’ve been fasting as part of my religious practice, I’m not just hungry for food.