Dear Roy, I read with great interest your recent article “The Luster’s Fear of Dying” in the [Spring 1999] issue of the Essay. Personally I have witnessed this extreme fear of dying while undergoing the detox process of God’s powerful grace acting deeply in my being and restoring sanity. The entire body is visited as well as the soul during this spiritual experience leading to new freedom and joy. I am really indebted to SA for the experience.
It started about eight years ago when several men who were awaiting sentencing began attending local SA meetings. Although I suspected they were attending the meetings in an attempt to influence the court, I gradually learned this was not the primary motivation of all of them.
My story of sexual sobriety is like an exodus story. In May 1997, I left familiar surroundings and boarded a flight to Rome. On that day I surrendered everything to God—my addiction to lust, my life and work as a priest, my objects of sexual obsession and emotional dependency, lustful movies, pornography, inappropriate touching of minors and women on public transports, having to resign from a job of trust, loss of trust, dignity and direction, and a cancelled schedule for psychiatric treatment.
For me, the concept of SA surrender calls to mind the image of a balloon being inflated. As air surges into the balloon, a battle begins. The air, called lust, says, “Ever see a balloon burst? It doesn’t have a small, neat hole in it. It is totally blown apart. I’m going to burst you into tatters and shreds.”
I have been sober in SA for a little over four years. I would like to share some things that have worked for me as a single sexaholic:
Every time we say—and it sounds contradictory, doesn’t it?—we are trudging the Road of Happy Destiny, trudging sounds like a burdensome sort of thing, and Happy Destiny a bit odd, too. And every time we say that, which is at every meeting, there’s a sort of a snicker, or you feel a heaviness, or there’s a bit of a smile as you say “trudging the Road of Happy Destiny.”
We want to thank all members who have helped us to carry the SA message to sexaholics in correctional institutions. Progress is being made, as comparisons of the last two years demonstrate:
At the SA International Conference in Sacramento in January, the SA General Delegate Assembly reported on the results of a survey of SA groups on the question of whether the SA sobriety definition needed clarification. [See “Newark Motions Implemented” in Dec. 1998 Essay, p. 12, for background.]
The Third Step prayer reads: “God, I offer myself to Thee—to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of Life. May I do Thy will always!” (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 63).
The high point of the Sacramento conference for me came when my friend Alex* asked me to attend a check meeting. He was dealing with the difficulty of a separation from his wife and had sought the counsel of an old-timer who had many years of experience with check meetings. The old-timer offered to lead the meeting and gave Alex the names of some women to ask as well.
