IN THE CURRENT MAGAZINE

It took me a while to understand and put this into my daily program:

… the ex-problem [luster] who has found the solution, who is properly armed with facts about himself, can generally win the entire confidence of another [sexaholic] in a few hours. Until such an understanding is reached, little or nothing can be accomplished (AA 18).

Knowledge and pride have been big obstacles in my working the Program. “Knowing the Truth,” as mentioned in our White Book (SA 91), has been another obstacle. As I accumulated calendar sobriety, I was unsure why I kept feeling anxious about lust.

A while ago, a fellow in my home group went through a difficult time and wondered why God let it happen. This reminded me of something that happened for me about two years ago.

I came to SA in November 2007 and was granted the grace of sobriety from the first meeting. It was the beginning of SA in our country, we didn’t have SA books or materials, so we used the support of NA-program Step books and an NA-sponsor. I first got involved in SA-literature translation in 2008 when I was offered to translate SA-literature into my native language.

Before getting sober, I was not a book person. In fact, I had never read a book cover-to-cover. I almost finished one book in school because it took me into a fantasy world, away from reality. Most reading for me, though, was distressing and pointless.

At my first meeting of Sexaholics Anonymous, I heard someone read “The Problem,” and I knew that I was in the right place. In the White Book Roy wrote:

When I joined SA in the autumn of 2020, I was broken but willing to take direction. That’s because I was so desperate. Many years of experience in AA did afford me some advantages, though, including countless book study meetings and a good familiarity with the Big Book and the Twelve and Twelve. I even remembered some passages, like page 417 about acceptance, which I could still recite word for word. The stuff I memorised still serves as a kind of mental reference library.

I’ve had the pleasure of attending quite a few SA meetings since 2020 when I first joined the Fellowship. In some of those meetings, we used ESSAY magazine articles in our literature rotation. I’m writing this to highlight how two articles from the ESSAY were very impactful in meetings I attended.

In the beginning of the war, I was having another difficult night. I didn't sleep well. I was lying (trying to sleep) in my common hall on the cold floor. Many cruise missiles were at that night over my country. After sleeping just for a few hours, I woke up and was extremely tired in the morning; realizing that somehow I survived, while other people might have some injuries or even could have died.

ESSAY talked with Nancy S. from Columbus, Ohio, USA. She has been sober since December 15, 2004.

When she first encountered the Twelve Steps, she exclaimed, "What a great way to live!" Today, she has been sober in SA for almost twenty years, she’s actually living the Program like she said, and she’s an immense help to others in SA.