The other day a friend called me with a question. He said that, at an SA meeting he attended the day before, he discovered that he had the most sobriety in the room. He asked me whether he could learn anything from a meeting where he has the most sobriety. I told him that—no matter how much sobriety I have—God is able to speak to me through other members with less sobriety.
Dear God, A simple and profound “Thank You” for this gift of sobriety (as defined in SA 191-193)—for in the middle of a daily task, I am struck with simple and utter gratitude for not having acted out for the past nine months.
Before I came to SA, lust was destroying my sense of self. My lust was always self-directed. I could fool myself into thinking I was finding fulfillment in an image or in another person, but only God could fill that hole in my soul.
My wife and I were putting away our Christmas tree this past December. It’s an artificial tree with lights wired into it, and it looks pretty in our front window at night. But packing it up for storage is a struggle.
I’m Mark, a sexaholic, and I’ve been sexually sober since April 27, 2002. I would like to share about the disease of sexaholism in my life—but mostly I would like to share about the solution I’ve found in SA. And I would like to tell my story by walking through the Steps.
The first SA/S-Anon New Zealand Conference was held on November 9, 2013 in Auckland. Attendees came from the New Zealand cities of Christchurch, Auckland, and Napier, plus some members from “across the ditch” in Australia. A good 24 people were present with equal numbers of SA and S-Anon members.
I just returned from the Russian-speaking Convention held in Moscow on November 22-24. What a great experience!
EMER held its first Regional Convention in Warsaw, Poland last October 25-27, with great results! We had approximately 152 participants, including 125 SA members (116 men and nine women) and 27 members of S-Anon. Of these, 117 participants were from Poland and 35 from other places in the world.
When I used to nourish lust thoughts, there was something going on inside me we might call spiritual fornication. Within my spirit I was shutting God out in rebellion, perverting the reality of the lust object to suit my sick need (splitting myself to create and then imagine that inner partner), and then having sex with her, which was really having sex with myself.
“Arrest and surrender in order to be set free—what a paradox!” (SA 83) Thus began my story of recovery on April 7, 1989, when my secret life lived in bondage to lust was shattered by an actual arrest, the resulting publicity, and the necessity of facing the literal question of whether to live or die.
