IN THE CURRENT MAGAZINE

I’m Michael T., grateful to be sexually sober since April 10, 2011. SA has given me a better life than I could ever have imagined. I no longer fear everyone and everything. I no longer regret the past; I use my past as a tool to be helpful to others. I can practice patience and tolerance, and be a part of society. I learned all of these things from SA.

I am a low-bottom sex drunk who has been sober now for 29 years. Yet today I’m writing about a most glorious spiritual journey that I only recently made. The purpose of my journey was to bring the message of recovery and the miracle of my sobriety to fellow sexaholics throughout Europe.

I’m grateful that I was led to SA about a year before I got married. Otherwise, I believe I would be in a horrible place today, and my family might have been torn apart. But even though I found SA before I got married, my behavior caused my family much grief.

I’m Tom, a recovering sexaholic, grateful for seven years of sobriety—although as they say, I’m never grateful enough! I know that I must continue to work the SA program.

During my years in SA, I’ve been both a sponsor and a sponsee. My drawing below is about both of those experiences.

I was raised in an alcoholic home that was fraught with violence, incest, and molestation. In the past six months, my older brother and my twin sister both passed away. They were finally at peace (although they never found recovery).

In the years of my addiction, I liked to play in chess tournaments—but my self-worth was attached to how I fared in a tournament. When I won, I felt great. When I lost I felt like a failure. I would feel depressed, inadequate, and insecure. I believed I did not belong at a chess tournament; that the members should revoke my membership and ban me from the game for life.

I was on my way to an SA International Convention, less than a half an hour from home, when the traffic started to back up. I was already fighting a resentment about the traffic problems I usually encounter when I drive to this particular city. I was becoming more and more frustrated, certain I would be late. I had committed to speak on a 3:00 p.m. panel discussion of how to develop a deeper relationship with my Higher Power!

A few years ago I was having lunch with a sponsee while he shared his Fifth Step with me. One thing he struggled with, he said, was perfectionism, a character defect—rooted in a deep sense of inferiority—that he felt his father had passed on to him.

My first SA sponsor, Frank S. (also known as Francis), passed away on Sunday, March 3rd at the ripe old age of 90, about one month away from his 91st birthday. I first met Frank in early December 2000, around 6:30 on a Saturday morning in San Diego He was 78 at the time, and he had just returned earlier that week from visiting China.