Isolation Kills
In my addiction, I isolated. No real friends. No real connections.
In my addiction, I isolated. No real friends. No real connections.
Why do I do things the hard way? For example, the other day I was lying awake in bed and kept slipping into a sexually explicit fantasy. I would catch myself, stop, pray, find myself slipping back into it again, catch myself, stop, pray, and so on.
I believe I was a sexaholic at ten years old. I remember at that age undressing the girls in my classroom with my eyes. In my mind the girls were nothing more than robots.
Dear SA, My Sponsor by Mail suggested I write to SAICO to request being put on the mailing list to receive ESSAY. Receiving and reading it will help me, and I can also share it with our SA group here at the prison.
Because SA was so new when I came in, there were very few people with even one year’s sobriety. I wanted to hear from people who had a lot of experience, strength and hope in working the Steps. So I started attending a great AA Twelve and Twelve meeting.
Are you struggling as a lone woman in a meeting room full of men? We know how scary that can be! We need to be accessible to the newcomer as well as the old-timer woman. What can we do to help?
When I worked Step Eleven for the first time, this new way of praying was shocking. How could I pray without making requests for myself or others? But the Twelve and Twelve is very clear on this—we do not ask for specific things. Period.
One Year. Through no particular fault of my own, I recently celebrated one year of SA sobriety—one year of celibacy.
When I hit bottom somewhere around end of 1985, my marriage was over and my family was shattered. I was shamed, angry, resentful, and filled with desire for justice and revenge against all the others I was blaming for my situation. I was also aware that no solution was available to me.
At SAICO, we often ask, “How are things? How is the meeting? What is your group doing?” At times, the news is good. What a great day when we hear of a new group starting or another meeting forming! Sometimes the news is not so good. We don’t like to report about meetings closing, but it is a fact of life. Some meetings struggle and do not make it. Good news is to hear that the members make it, even if the meetings fail.