12 Steps as Principles of Recovery from where I am Today
Dying: Admit I am powerless over lust; that my sex, sexuality, orientation and relational misconnection are unmanageable.
Dying: Admit I am powerless over lust; that my sex, sexuality, orientation and relational misconnection are unmanageable.
At a recent check-meeting on chronic slipping in our local group here in Somerset, I made a personal discovery which I would like to share, it made so much sense to me.
Getting sobriety in SA was a complicated job for me. First I had to attend meetings where I was told to listen and identify in anticipation of a time when I’d become willing to surrender my lust habit to God. Initially, I resisted this open-mindedness, thinking that I needed to lust to be me. In a year’s worth of meetings, listening to sober and unsober members, I began to realize the benefits of the sober lifestyle for those who had it. I grew enthusiastic about getting serenity, choice, and freedom from lust. One thing that particularly appealed to my ego at that time was that only a sober SA could lead meetings.
On February 4, 1995 the SF Bay area SA Intergroups hosted a half-day workshop on sponsorship. Its purpose was to raise consciousness about this vital aspect of recovery. The workshop saw sponsorship as the “oft neglected leg of the SA tripod” — 1) actively working SA’s Steps and Traditions, 2) regular and frequent attendance at SA meetings, 3) giving and receiving SA sponsorship.
Hi, my name is Gary G., and I’m a gratefully recovering sexaholic from Cleveland, OH. With the help of God and this Fellowship, I’ve been sexually sober since April 1993. I have been attending SA meetings regularly since November 1991. In early 1994, I joined with a group of SA members from northeast Ohio, who were attending SA meetings within two prisons near Cleveland.
During my six years with SA at the Central Office, this is the hardest letter to write. I feel as if I am severing a line so important to myself, yet I know we must always go forward and trust in God’s wisdom.
Hi, my name is Mike, and I’m a recovering sexaholic. And I’m grateful to be here sober tonight through God’s grace, and all of you people. A couple of years ago we had Thanksgiving dinner at my house for the first time. My whole family came. I figured I should say something before we all ate, but I knew there were lots of things going on in the family, so I didn’t know quite what to say.
My name is Harry, I’m a sexaholic. I’ve been sexually sober since February 3, 1986. Expressing my gratitude to God and the fellowship for my recovery will take the rest of my life, and beyond. Jess promised he would help me with this talk if I volunteered to give one, and so I volunteered, and he also said it might be good to prepare the talk and then have a trial run to see how it went….
Hi, my name is Mike B. and I’m a sexaholic. I’m on the SA Service Structure Committee… With the help of other SA’s, a service structure was written and later adopted during the January 1994 Rochester Conference Business Meeting. The work we wrote is in the June 1994 Essay. As stated, the SA group is the basic unit of the SA structure which will be represented in the Intergroup.
Greetings. I wanted to let you know what's happening in our group in Japan. We have a small group of four to six regular members. Two of us are foreigners, and the rest are Japanese. We all speak Japanese. I joined the group this January, and the meetings are held every Saturday afternoon, in English. In May, we started a meeting in Japanese one hour before the English-speaking meeting to attract more Japanese newcomers.