Do you speak Italian? Are you available and willing to sponsor and help the growth of the young Italian fellowship? SA in Italy started on 9 Feb 2017 with a Skype meeting which helped reach sexaholics in various regions of the country—and Italian-speakers residing abroad, too. A Twelve-Step workshop with some fifteen participants in November helped to strengthen the fellowship and reach out.
Since Russia’s Chief Narcologist Yevgeny Brune issued a letter of support to SA on June 27, 2016, the number of weekly meetings in Moscow has more than doubled to eleven.
I am grateful for six years of sobriety, starting October 10, 2011. It has been by the grace of God, the support of the fellowship, and a whole lot of work on my part.
I lost 8 years of sexual sobriety and was only able to regain it after discovering a mental health condition which had been undiagnosed since childhood. I had spent a lifetime in counselors’ offices trying to work out what was wrong with me. I came into SA, being one of the founding members of the program in my city. I got sober, worked the Steps, did service, sponsored others, immersed myself in the literature and conference recordings. But I wasn’t “happy, joyous, and free!”
Today is November 7th. Three full days after I celebrated my November 4th birthday I still have not gotten any text or phone call from my parents, brother, or my two children. I realize that I am an adult. I told myself over and over again that it was just another day. All my life I was told “a birthday is just another day.” I believed hoping for birthday wishes was selfish and to just move on.
Jesse became an expert — on the Steps! Here’s the Jesse Step Program: STEP 1: Powerless? “Yes, of course! I can’t stop myself.”
I left home at 21 and moved in with my boyfriend. I had been attending college full-time and had two part-time jobs, but I dropped out of school and work so I could spend more time acting out sexually. I felt a lot of shame, so I convinced my boyfriend to marry me. Sometimes we acted out by watching porn. When my husband wasn’t home, I would look at the porn and masturbate. We were both sex addicts, and we raged at each other daily. Lust killed our relationship.
I discovered lust around puberty through a porn magazine and quickly became addicted to masturbation and fantasy women in stories, pictures and eventually clips and movies from electronic sources.
I have to remember that my lust has not gone anywhere since I got into recovery. I’ve just been holding it at arm’s length. If I think I’ve got some sobriety so that now I can relax and I don’t need to work so hard to stay sober, my lust is right there ready to step back front and center in my life.
I am a technophobe, and clumsy at best when it comes to all the gadgets today. I miss the simple life of rotary phones and typewriters! I realize that technology neither caused my disease nor is responsible for my recovery.
