Dear Essay readers,
We thank our retiring editor David M. for his long and devoted service to the Essay, and his example to us. We start this new chapter off with an international editing team consisting of an Irish, UK/Israeli, Australian, 2 US and a Belgian/Spanish member.

First quarter results were promising. Fellowship contributions were back to budget levels. Literature sales were returning to normal. Then the Corona Virus struck in mid-March. There was no warning, no ramp up, no play book. Our meeting room lights were shut off, not dimmed, but just dark.

For two days last March, 54 brothers and sisters in recovery from all of the face-to-face meetings in Mexico, came together to share how we live our lives in sobriety.

I wrote this poem way back in ‘92. I go back to it often, and thought I might share it with my SA community.

Surrender. I was too strong for that. Too many people were counting on my strength. Too many people would be horrified and hurt if they knew what I had done. So many lies in those few thoughts.

I do try to use the tools of the program in my recovery. But, on a given day, when it comes to actually sitting down and getting started, I can barely bring myself to do it. Overwhelmed by guilt and by the fear that my sponsor will fire me, I used to manage a slow start into Step work maybe once or twice a week.

(1) Can I see that lack of power is my problem? As long as substances, lust, sexually acting out, and people are my higher power, I am a slave to them. I call it King Lust, but even clearer for me was King Marijuana which was my most dependent relationship of them all. He controlled my moves and was running the show completely wherever I was.

Over the years I’ve called my sponsor many times to surrender a woman’s body part or some annoying euphoric recall. He would respond, “That’s what we do. We are sexaholics and we are vulnerable to lust. It’s what we do next that matters. The key is surrendering our right to lust to God.”

My name is Keith. I am a grateful sexaholic. My SA sobriety date is 15 July 2012. Thank you for this opportunity to share my indebtedness and gratitude for SA to my SA family worldwide.

“I wanted so to break through and relate to other children … I was off somewhere hiding inside myself …” (SA 10)

Fourteen years ago I took a college course “Introduction To Translation 101.” A guide to the basic foundation of translating text from Arabic into English (and vice versa). Our professor told us that translation is a craft, which even if you master it, will never achieve the exact meaning that the original author was trying to say.

I got involved with the service of translating the literature into Italian over the past few years. This has mostly involved translations of the White Book, Step Into Action, and some program pamphlets. I’ve been one link in that chain: another fellow did the translation, while I revised the translated material, as required by the process we follow in SA in order to translate and then approve the work.

Those of us who’ve been in the SA India fellowship since 2014 tried to start working on a White Book translation many times over the past few years. It was paused due to the lack of participation. Initially we were frustrated; some even left SA. Over time, we learned that things happen best when we give it over to God.

I have been a sexaholic since early childhood. Since that time I have used sexual stimulation to mask the emptiness in my life. From the very outset it became an addiction – compulsive and progressive. My brain is wired now to expect sexual stimulation.

Four of us get together every Tuesday morning for an SA meeting. We are from four different ethnic backgrounds, working near the US-Mexico border.

Flanders (the northern part of Belgium) and the Netherlands share the same language: Dutch. The difference is like the difference between UK and US English. Same language, but a different pronunciation and some words are different, but well understood by the others.

I was 17 years old when I moved to the US. I was already a sexaholic back then, I just didn’t know it. I was one of the lucky kids who had parents that granted me the opportunity to study abroad. After only 3 years of zero limits, I ended up hitting rock bottom.

A few months back the opportunity came up to help to translate and diffuse our daily reading from ‘The Real Connection’ via WhatsApp into French. My mother tongue is English and I live in Nice in the south of France. I am seven and a half months sober, although I’ve known SA for between 25 and 30 years.

Over three sober decades in SA there have been quite a few pieces of “bad news” for me as a recovering sexaholic. They all arise, like my entire program, from my experience, strength, and hope:

One of the most effective Practical Tools is HUMOR.
Recently a sexaholic had a severe car accident. He had followed his sponsor’s suggestion to always look at his feet when he saw something that might trigger him.