We need stories from regular SA members with uninterrupted sobriety of one year or more according to our SA concept of sexual sobriety. This means no sexual experience with the self or others other than the spouse and progressive victory over lust for at least one year.
☆Get the word out to all who qualify, especially the “oldtimers.” If at all possible, please submit your stories typewritten, double-spaced, and submit two xerox copies (retain your original). Send to the SA office at POB 300, Simi Valley, CA 93062.
We’re thinking about publishing some in a collection or with the SA literature, and we’re anxious to see what we have now that we’re older and have more recovery under our belts.
Remember not to confuse your story with your First Step inventory. The idea is not only “What it was like,” so the sexaholics out there can identify, but recovery—physical, spiritual, emotional, and conjugal.
Let’s get sober stories from the whole spectrum; consider the following three broad categories:
1. Stories that represent the varieties of our sexaholism: male, female, single, married, homosexual, masturbation, prostitution, relationships, etc.
2. Stories that tell how members got sober and stay sober.
3. Stories that go beyond sexual sobriety into aspects of recovery and healing in victory over defects, relationships with spouse, family, and others, and increasing personal serenity, emotional sobriety, and improving our “conscious contact with God.”
We should not merely be giving people more of what they already have—a description of what we did in the disease. If we’re still that close to our disease, maybe we shouldn’t be writing our story.
Some Thoughts on Stories
Let me use you as a sounding board on this subject.
Look at the stories in the OA and AA Big Books. For the most part, they seem weighted mostly to “What it used to be like” and “What happened.” “What it’s like now” is sometimes but a word or two. What is the overall effect of this over time as the fellowship grows? Does this not tend to lock in the literature—the program as written—and limit it to the confines of that stage of experience? Do not the stories tend to freeze the concept of recovery to mere abstinence from food or alcohol? Individual members may be experiencing spiritual, emotional, and conjugal growth beyond that point—as indeed the 12&12 encourages—but the world and ongoing members don’t see much of this in the stories. In the case of OA, the stories are the book. Thus the stories become the definitive statement of the OA and AA programs for the world, newcomers, and members alike.
Look at the changes in stories in the second edition of the Big Book of AA: only eight stories are retained from the first edition and thirty new ones added. In the current third edition, seventeen stories are carried over from the second edition and thirteen new ones added. The stated purpose for this was “to represent the current membership of Alcoholics Anonymous more accurately, and thereby to reach more alcoholics.” (page xii) The story section headings reflect this: “Pioneers of AA,” “They Stopped in Time,” and “They Lost Nearly All.” The intent was to represent various elements in the membership, so that more alcoholics would identify and want in. The second and third editions thus merely added new categories of people, not levels of experience and growth. This is fine for newcomers, but what about members, for whom “This book has become the basic text…”? (AA Big Book page xi)
The question is, Should the “basic text” of Sexaholics Anonymous stay at entry level? How do we grow beyond the level of the original set of stories without having a continuing revelation of program in the lives of those in whom God is working? How do we grow deeper, as we apparently must with our malady, without the model of deepening personal and conjugal experience to pull us forward?
Look at how more is being revealed to us in the odyssey of our continuing Discovery: Since only July of 1981, see how much we’ve been learning about our malady, sexaholism; how much more about the meaning of sexual sobriety; more about how to get sober (or not get sober); more about our basic human natures; increasingly about the role of our defects in the malady and in recovery; how much more about positive sobriety; so much more about rediscovering the meaning of marriage, conjugal sobriety, and single sobriety. We’re just beginning to see that sexual sobriety is just the beginning.
Thus it would appear that our SA stories should reflect our growing SA experience and not unwittingly help freeze the program in writing at some arbitrary and premature level. How can we best learn from the experiences of those programs which have gone before us? And how can we best learn from our own dynamic experience? That’s the question.
There’s an interesting article from the January 1958 issue of the AA Grapevine, which is a reprint of an older letter Bill W. wrote titled “The Next Frontier—Emotional Sobriety.”
“I think that many oldsters who have put our AA ‘Booze Cure’ to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA—the development of much more real maturity and balance…in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God.”
We don’t even seem to be able to get the “Lust Cure” without improving “our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God.” (I’m beginning to see why I should be grateful to be a recovering sexaholic; what beautiful fringe benefits!)
The question is whether we should find some way of publishing our stories that will serve the growing, more-being-revealed situation and not lock ourselves into entry-level experience in the literature. In a sense, are we not moving rather rapidly in our continuing Discovery? Dare we lock ourselves into some premature early-stage level? We may not want to give newcomers “Stories II” or “Stories III,” but then again, why not let them make the choice as to their own “entry level”—what pulls them into the program and on to recovery, healing, and spiritual and relational growth?
☆ This is your opportunity for inputs on this crucial matter. (Sober members only, please.)
