Finding My SA Family
Dear Barbara, The service structure of SA would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your service to the Fellowship of SA as the editor of ESSAY. We would love to give you a standing ovation for your efforts. Since we know how much that would embarrass you, we will remind you that you can pull out this letter if you ever need to feel appreciated.
The year 2015 has been an eventful one for me, for my home group, and for the French-speaking Intergroup. I came to SA in March 2012, at a group located in Lille, France. My home group in Lille opened in 2009 and has grown steadily. This is the only SA group in France.
Early this year, I was invited by the EMER Regional Assembly to travel and give some talks to the fellowship, at the Poland Congress of SA/S-Anon (October 23-25), in Poznan, Poland; The First Annual SA/S-Anon Retreat in Lille, France (October 30-November 1); and the Fifth annual Russian-speaking SA Convention (November 6-8) in Moscow.
While attending the International Convention in Portland in January, I found myself saying to God that I was ready to be of service again. Shortly thereafter, I ran into an SA member living in Russia.
On February 10th, 2014, I learned that Randy had passed away from a heart attack a few days earlier, while on a holiday cruise with his wife. Randy would have had five years of sobriety on February 22, 2014. Randy’s life had quite an impact on me, and I have felt moved to share it.
When I attended my first SA meeting on June 7th, 2014, I finally learned what my problem was. Hearing “The Solution” brought me hope. During my last year of acting out, I had become a chronic marijuana user and daily drinker. I was high on something 24 hours a day, and I withdrew from lust, alcohol, and drugs all at the same time.
I’ve had a month of feeling low. I’ve got lots of excuses, such as changing jobs, loss of significant other relationship, family issues, and poor diet and exercise. It all adds up to excessive sleep and self-pity. Going back to my Fourth Step work, I can see my defects coming to life. No wonder sobriety has been a challenge.
In SA’s Step One, I admitted that I’m powerlessness over lust (not over a particular behavior), and the Third Tradition states that the only requirement for membership is “a desire to stop lusting and become sexually sober” (SA 209). Both the Step and the Tradition remind me that lust lies beneath my acting out behaviors.
I’ve learned a lot in the past seven-plus years that I’ve been in recovery. I’ve learned that knowledge (like half measures) avails me nothing. Primarily, it does not get me the one thing I cannot get on my own: sobriety.
May I never forget the sexaholic who still suffers. With just over one year of sobriety, the freedom I’m experiencing is indescribable. The freedom I have been blessed with is a gift that brings peace, joy, serenity, and an absence of the ravages of my disease.
