At an international conference sometime in the early 1990s, I was standing at the entrance of the hotel restaurant and I noticed some papers lying by the cash register. I picked them up and read: "Desire for Sobriety: daily renewal with sobriety partners." I thought, hmmm, probably this wasn't meant to be left by the cash register. I looked around the almost empty dining room and saw Jim E. and Harry B.
The word from the S.A. members around the country is unity. We’re being welded together in a fellowship of recovery. Men and women are getting sober! Coming out of themselves into the light, and making contact with other members. Coming to. Becoming part of the healing process of each other’s lives. That’s good news.
This magazine cover presented Roy K. with the possibility that for his sexual acting out there might be hope in a 12 Step program:
I had three prayers before I got sober in AA in 2003. They were: 1. “God, give me what I want.” 2. “God, please make this person do what I want.” 3. “God, if you get me out of this one I promise I’ll never do it again.”
A recent issue of the AA magazine Grapevine drew my attention when I read something close to “Coincidence is God’s way of staying amazing.” After seeing that I remembered, “Half measures availed us nothing.... We asked His protection and care with complete abandon.”
I am approaching a milestone in my recovery. It’s not an anniversary “birth date” so much as an oddity of my sobriety date and the Gregorian calendar. I am about to achieve 7 years, 7 months, and 7 days of sobriety, if I choose to follow God’s will again for the next few days. Oddly enough, again due to a calendar oddity, it will also be 2,777 days of continuous sobriety.
At the Madrid convention I was prompted to share one of my early surrender experiences relating to Roy K.’s 18 suggested ways of surrendering lust hits and gaining daily progressive victory over lust.
I have met newcomers at SA meetings who have bristled at the description of sexual addiction as a disease. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) does not list it. The CDC doesn’t recognize it. It’s missing from disease lists everywhere. One newcomer said to me defiantly, “It’s not a disease. You’re just a terrible person.”
Over three sober decades in SA there have been quite a few pieces of “bad news” for we sexaholics. They all arise, like our entire program, from our experience, strength and hope. Each issue of Essay under Practical Tools we’ll share some pieces of “bad news”: • If you’ve ever been sober for 24 hours, you have all the tools you need to be sober the rest of your life – One Day At A Time.
Although I’ve been sexually sober since August 4, 2018, lust dreams have been part of my life since I discovered masturbation at age 12.
