For somebody who related to the reading “The Invisible Monster” in our book Recovery Continues, it is a miracle that I can share something on “Practicing Healthy Interactions in SA” today. I think the key word for me is “practice” as I will never be perfect and it is progress not perfection.

My first meeting was on October 11, 2011 and by the grace of God I’ve stayed sober since. In the beginning I found joy in my home group in Barcelona. I was the only woman with about five or six men. They were very nice to me and helped me to stay sober.

When I was three, I had to stay at the hospital due to pneumonia while my parents couldn’t be there with me, which was quite a traumatic experience. I knew the “touching game” from the nursery and knew it was a nice feeling.

The brochure Beginnings: Notes on the Origin and Early Growth of SA has become one of my favorite pieces of SA literature. Roy’s account of SA’s early history stresses that men and women together have been centrally involved in our fellowship’s development from the very start.

It was hard to have fun because I was so sensitive. When I came in, I didn’t know I was sensitive. I thought everyone else had problems and they were bothering me. I also thought everyone else should figure out in advance what would bother me (in order to avoid doing so). I was like a crab without shell, or an animal without skin … just “walking sensitivity.”

I started in SA as a young, widowed, single mom in June 2005. At that time there were three other women in my homegroup. Within a year, they were gone. My sponsor was one of them. She decided to go back out and try some more controlled lusting, my grand-sponsor moved, and the other woman quit coming because of health reasons.

Practicing healthy interactions in SA has been a passion of mine. I have known near my entire life that I am not good at relationships. My longing to find how to be relationally “normal” has been a lifelong seeking.

I am a female lust addict, my home group is in Munich, and I am grateful for 11 years and 4 month sobriety. I am grateful for the pioneers of the 12 step groups and proud to be part of it. I am especially grateful for Roy and his wife Iris, who recently passed away.

I am a gratefully recovering sexaholic living in California. My sobriety date is November 26, 2009. At my first SA meeting, there was one other woman in the room who had joined SA four months before. She became my first SA sponsor.

A lust drunk was stranded on a desert island with no lust hits or any other way of escaping his loneliness. One day he saw an old brown bottle washed up on the strand. He picked it up, dusted it off and at once, a genie appeared. “For joy, you have freed me!” cried the genie. “Ten thousand years I have spent in that bottle. For your pains, young man, I will gladly grant you three wishes for freeing me.”

Hello, my name is Ilona and I am a sexaholic. My sobriety date is January 14, 2016. When I walked into SA I was the only female in the room. This was expected, if at first, unsettling. I discussed this with my sponsor. She told me “What better way for your recovery being in a room of recovering men and learning to relate to them non-sexually?”

I found out when I started to sober up and get into recovery that part of not lusting required keeping physical boundaries. In my active addiction, I did not pay attention to this and had no idea that there are healthy boundaries. For me, this means no intimate hugging with men and women and making sure I have enough space around me to stand or sit.

I’m a sexaholic from Luxembourg, sober since May 31, 2004. My first SA meeting was at a convention in Germany in 1995. I was in a lot of pain and went after one of the meetings to one of the women and asked her to be my sponsor. She agreed.

In my mid-forties I found myself full of fear, uncertainty, and loneliness—not knowing why my life did not have the shades of color I saw in nature, the sunsets, the immensity of the flowers. I felt that I did not belong—that perhaps my Higher Power had made a mistake. Lust had always been there, but at a very high cost.

Dear New Brother,
The first thing I want you to know is that I will honor your anonymity; I will not use your name nor give you mine. At a large Saturday morning meeting of our 12-Step program your sponsor read your First Step letter. It resonated with me, and I want to give back to the fellowship by writing my share to you.

The author of Tough Love Changing Lives describes what made the change for him back in 1993. Apart from the Gift of Desperation, he had friends who cared enough for him to take him to a strong meeting, which he describes for us in detail.

The Feb 2021 issue had a cartoon of a male in recovery witnessing those of various religions squabbling over ‘who is in the right,’ and engaging in fisticuffs. The ‘observer’ stands aside, witnessing the fray. The message of freedom from anger and resentment could have been conveyed much better. Anger, in particular, is a complex issue. Rendering it so simply does not do justice to finding recovery from anger and rage.

Dear Essay readers,
We hope you find inspiration in this issue on how you can turn your local meetings into strong spiritual gatherings by reading contributions from fellows from all over the world. You can also find out which pieces of literature on meetings our fellowship has to your disposal.

The lockdown paradoxically brought our neighboring regions of Europe & the Middle East and the German-Speaking Region together in new ways.

The third Asia-Pacific Unity conference took place on Sunday April 25, 2021. The real purpose of this one-day conference is carrying the message and strengthening small groups through unity with others.