IN THE CURRENT MAGAZINE

I first came to SA in October 2004—the same date I started consulting for my current employer. My work requires me to travel to China. My start in SA kept me sexually sober for the next two years, while travelling to China every five weeks, for about two weeks at a time.

My name is Neal (aka “Pepe” in Spanish). I’m a grateful recovering sexaholic. This past year, my work sent me to Spain for seven months, and then to Zambia and Malawi for another month.

In late December 2007, I received a flyer along with my copy of ESSAY, announcing the July 2008 International Convention to be held in Akron, Ohio. The flyer identified the Convention theme as “Welcome Home.”

Recently, I celebrated one year of SA sobriety—after more than 11 years in this program. I turned 62 last week, and I’m still married after 36 years.

Dear SAICO and the SA fellowship: Our group would like to express our sincere appreciation for the services you all provide on a global level to those who require help from SA. Your help has been a tremendous blessing to us as well as to me personally.

I’m the type of sexaholic who likes to do everything by myself. I started my own business, did my own accounting, and wrote my own contracts. When I play music, I only want to play my music. I don’t want or need any help because I can do it all by myself!

For me, lust is an attitude. It begins with a desire to covet. It is a desire to take (even if only mentally) something that is not mine to take. My acting out always begins with lust. Why? Because I am powerless over lust. I do not have the ability to control it.

About five years ago, my sponsor in another fellowship talked with me about Step Eleven. This was before I found SA, and I was busy imposing my self-will on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was the epitome of “half measures availed us nothing”—nothing except for maybe a check mark on Steps One through Ten, indicating I had completed them.

At the beginning of Sexaholics Anonymous (15), the narrator says in part: “Then one night out of nowhere a prostitute jumped into my car . . .” (emphasis added). I used to think that my own behaviors occurred “out of nowhere.”

Often when I’m in an SA meeting, I’m not really listening to the words of the readings. I’ve probably heard the words “Many of us felt inadequate, unworthy, alone, and afraid . . .” (SA 203, “The Problem”) a thousand times. But one day, the meaning of these words really hit me: