The first characteristic that makes face-to-face meetings attractive for me is openness and honesty. During the meetings there is an “evil monkey” inside my head, constantly whispering to me, telling me how different I should be to the person that I am, whom I should compare myself to, and what other people think of me. But I am not the person the monkey describes.

When I think of meetings, I think of something that my sponsor said early in our relationship: “Recovery in SA is like a three-legged stool, you have to have a sponsor, the Steps and the fellowship in order for the stool to remain standing.” Meetings are where the fellowship happens.

When I came to SA in 2006, we were holding the meetings in the building of a foundation where a fellow member worked, but soon after it closed and we had to move. For about a year we were meeting in a park, sometimes in the rain, sometimes in the sun. Then we moved to the garage of another foundation, which also closed its doors soon thereafter.

Two months ago, a member told me that several members of our fellowship were angry with me. I told the situation in a very long audio message to my sponsor. He suggested to me to shut up for a while and to not speak in meetings. He also told me that he had experienced that himself, which had been a very enriching experience for him.

When I hit my bottom on April 16, 2014, I didn’t know if my wife would stay with me after I disclosed to her my double life between my family and my secret lust garden. I was not only mentally and spiritually sick but also physically ill because of acting-in. I suffered from terrible pain.

I have no doubt that if every SA meeting was conducted along the lines as prescribed in our White Book (185-187), our fellowship would have thousands of strong meetings globally and many, many thousands of members with strong recovery.

There I was sitting at an AA meeting in early Feb ‘84, when a man announced he was starting an SA group in Nashville, TN. I surrendered six weeks later when I met at his apartment for my first SA meeting. Soon we outgrew his apartment and moved to my office building.

I came into SA in 1987 in Los Angeles. I attended meetings, went to international conferences, had three sponsors in succession, made as many as four phone calls every day and followed directions from those three sponsors. I was never sober for the first six years.

Sometimes when I am on edge, I want to take in lust to calm myself. I obviously can’t look at porn or masturbate (or act out with another person). Because I would lose my sobriety and I’d have to disclose my actions to my wife. So my disease whispers in my ear that a “euphoric recall” is the perfect answer. I tell myself, “This will take the edge off my anxiety – and I haven’t taken any action of lust.”

Can I differentiate the true from the false? In my disease, I never thought about that question prior to recovery. It simply did not matter. I am a pleasure seeker. What makes me happy or comfortable was what was important. In recovery, I have the opportunity to examine my beliefs and ask the God of my understanding to help me see the truth.

The February edition announced a new practical tool called “The Game.” After a successful pilot project in November with six teams of four members each, The Game was kicked off for the worldwide fellowship on April 4.

One of the most effective Practical Tools is HUMOR.
A man in a hot air balloon realized he was completely lost. He was overwhelmed, in despair and utter bewilderment. He saw a person on the ground and yelled down to him, “Can you help me? I don’t know where I am.”

Those of us with a little experience in recovery know the various strategies of the “18-Wheeler” for dealing with a lust hit (SA 157). I would like to add a “Number Zero” to the list. I have learned through prayer and through discussion with my daily sobriety renewal partner that part of the power of a lust hit is in the belief that the object of my lust has something I do not.

Recently, I was exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19. I had symptoms, so I called my physician who referred me to a “drive thru” test site for the virus. After the test was conducted, I promptly pulled my car into a parking lot while gripping the steering wheel, feeling so alone and afraid.

All my life I have been surrounded by loved ones with fatal and sometimes incurable diseases. The first person I knew to pass away from a disease was a three-year-old girl named Amy, who died of leukemia. My mother just finished chemotherapy for B-cell Lymphoma.

Hamed describes how he wasn’t making enough use of the tools, hadn’t told everything, didn’t really work the Steps, had his own interpretation of the sobriety definition, etc.

I love how simple this program is. Being someone who overthinks, I start obsessing over what I need to do about this or that. If I make a mistake or don’t do something, I immediately think I’m going off the rails into a relapse. None of that is true. We are practicing 24 hour living. I can start my day over at any time. I can make adjustments to get back on course.

Dear Essay readers,
Our Fellowship continues to attract more and more young people from all over the world—men and women who learn from the experience of those who have gone before them and do not have to descend so deep in the bottomless abyss of the addiction. You can devour their stories under the heading “Young & Sober in SA.”

SA holds an International Convention twice a year in January and July. Each convention is organized and run by a local Intergroup with help from the International Conventions Committee (ICC).

The pandemic has fundamentally changed the way members connect with each other. Where once a long-established home group might receive an occasional visit from an out-of-town member, nowadays members routinely pick and choose meetings from across the globe, “Zooming” or dialing in at the touch of a button. While this technology is a blessing, there are concerns that it might undermine the familiar structure of the SA fellowship; concerns too that this technology can be open to misuse.