Becoming the Man He Wants Me to Be
As a shy and overweight teenager, I retreated into a secret world of masturbation. This covered feelings I couldn’t handle and made me feel good about myself. It was my first drug: medication through masturbation.
Physical Healing from Sexaholism
The Solution states that “We saw that our problem was threefold: physical, emotional and spiritual. Healing had to come about in all three.” A number of us have found that the emotional and spiritual are well dealt with in meetings and in the literature, but that there is not much discussion on the physical aspect of recovery.
Group News
Just wanted to send you a note about our area’s “Sharing of the Fellowship” retreat May 31. This was our fourth annual retreat and it was an especially wonderful experience of fellowship and recovery.
Ten Years of Anonyme Sexaholiker in Bonn, Germany
Soon after I got out of the Clinic in Bad Herrenalb in 1986, I moved to Bonn. I knew there was a male and a female SA member there and I got in touch with them. After speaking to my church minister, we had a meeting room. Thus, our first SA meeting took place on November 26, 1986 in Bonn.
Feedback Corner
As requested in the March 1997 issue of the Essay, below are some ideas for increasing the distribution of the Essay.
The Hardest Lesson is Surrender
I know the discouragement and self-doubt of sitting in a meeting room by myself over and over again and waiting for someone to come. Then when they came, I spent years being discouraged at the people who didn’t stay. In our early days in Bozeman, one other member who had often been the only other person in the meeting, said, “Why aren’t people staying?” I was finally able to laugh and ask him back, “Why would a person be crazy enough to walk into a meeting with us two lunatics and want what we have?” It takes time to have enough to offer people to stay.
Examining my Motives for Starting an SA Meeting
In the wake of the new focus on book study meetings a few years ago, I wanted to start such a meeting Thursday night, a night when there were no meetings in my metropolitan area. Admittedly, I wanted it near where I lived as well, but other SA members did live in the vicinity. I approached the church that I attended and was given permission to use a classroom for the meeting.
Commitment to Service
Service is important, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it is usually more difficult to relapse when giving service than when not. However, “service” is not a sure fire “cure” for relapse, but it certainly helps.
I Could Not Attain Sobriety on my Own
I write this to express my gratitude to my Higher Power and SA for the gift of sexual sobriety. It has been a goal all my life but I could not attain it on my own, no matter how I tried. God knows how hard I tried! I grew up in an alcoholic home with a lot of violence. My father was an alcoholic who never got into recovery. My mother was a devout Irish Catholic who taught us children to be loving, decent and above all, to be chaste. I could not live up to that and consequently, I was prey to a lot of shame and guilt as I grew up.
Progressive Victory Over Lust
Two years into the program and growing more and more cocky about my power over myself, during my first major crisis I slipped into my old patterns. Caught by the trance leading up to masturbation, I ended two years of what I would now call abstinence. In the carelessness brought on by thinking I was in control, I acted out.
