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.…

…Another SA group has begun to meet in Lincroft, NJ, on Friday evenings at 8:30. It is held in a parish center.

Forty-seven attended, mostly from the Chicago and Milwaukee areas, but also including members from as far away as Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa, and California. St. Luke’s Lutheran Church was an ideal setting. (Mt. Prospect is the only city we know of where church names are added to city street signs. Wish we knew the history behind that.) Several SAA members attended, and we had marvelous rapport and unity with them.

Time’s running out for supersaver air fares for our next international convention in St. Louis December 5-7. We’re rushing this ESSAY out, hoping everyone can get in under the 30-day advanced notice required for discount air fares.

Periodically, things catch my attention in such a way that make me wonder whether SA is going through some sort of trend. Recently, it seems to me, many of us are becoming more aware of the true power of the disease.

The phone number for SA’s national Central Office in Simi Valley, California is (818) 704-9854. Due to our having only part-time office help, an answering machine is on a considerable portion of the time. But we do respond as soon as we can.

…I continue to go to meetings here in CT as well as NY. Sobriety frees me up inside; I’m less self-conscious. And strangely, time goes more quickly as I am more capable of getting involved in the demands of my profession without the burden of lust. Temptation is ever present; each time I have to decide—once again—and unite myself with my Higher Power.