IN THE CURRENT MAGAZINE

I suffer from a sort of hypervigilance. Something in me wants to identify and define every object, every person, every angle and surface in my physical environment. My ears are open; my eyes are taking in the very texture of things around me.

This summer I attended the SA International convention in Denver. While there I went to a baseball game. While there I talked with a man sitting beside me. After some baseball talk we got to what convention brought us to Denver.

One night, at our home group meeting we discussed the SA group’s Primary Purpose—to carry its message to the sexaholic who still suffers (Tradition 5). Someone commented how helpful it would be to have a visual explanation of the Steps to share with newcomers. Below is what we created, and it has helped many newcomers ever since.

When I am pushing my way and it’s not going the way I want it to, I stop and pay attention. If there is time, I take a walk in the woods, sit with my back to a tree, feel the ground and the roots for the grounding effect, look at the treetop for the spiritual connection and the trunk for my physical connection.

After my last act out, I have come to wonder if I am addicted to emotional pain. For an addict pain, along with most human instincts and feelings, can be skewed by a strange mental twist. Is pain that place of comfort or familiarity that I am inexplicably drawn to?

A few years into my recovery I found myself periodically delving into some very negative emotions. These incidences were sometimes triggered by things like dealing with difficult people, having to make difficult decisions when there seemed to be no good options, and trying to cope with marital difficulties.

After Step One in our book Sexaholic Anonymous on page 87 it says: “This is why ‘telling all’ is not taking the First Step. Such confession can be anything from boastful replay to anguished dumping or intellectual analysis. And even then, it’s not really ‘all’ and often is only surface material. In truth, we don’t ‘take’ the First Step; it takes us.

I learned about the sobriety definition (ludicrous!) and the Steps (no problem!) more than 20 years ago. In my head I completed them all in short order — until I became more desperate and got a sponsor. We agreed to work the Steps together.

By the grace of a loving HP SA was started in Iran by two sexaholics from Shiraz on 31 March 2003. The standard meeting readings had already been translated into Persian by an expatriate Iranian and these helped the new fellowship in Iran to adopt and apply the principles established by SA internationally.

Told by a Denver 2016 Conference SA speaker: What is the difference between a jet engine and a commercial airline pilot? When you get to the gate, the jet engine stops whining…