Are you ready for another caption challenge? We invite you to craft the perfect recovery caption for the cartoon below, centered on October’s theme, “Surrendering Shame.” If your caption makes us laugh, it will be featured in the October ESSAY edition. Don't miss out—the submission deadline is September 15. Send your entry to essay@sa.org. Unleash your creativity, and may the cleverest caption win!
For this June 2025 edition we welcome our newest amateur illustrator An. She has created this issue's Best Caption Contest Cartoon with August's theme: "Happy, Joyous, and ... Single."
Making recovery artwork helps my own recovery. This piece represents the journey of recovery as described in the Big Book. The figure in the center symbolizes a recovered individual with his own unique light and color. As each recovered member crosses through the gate of freedom, he carries his own colorful light, contributing to the collective glow of our souls.
It all started with a pinching pain I felt when doing my Fourth Step work over the past three months. I thought that I would be fine in time. For me, Step One had been the most difficult: seeing my disease from a very close distance and accepting my powerlessness over it and the unmanageability caused due to lust in my whole life.
Before joining SA I tried so many times to stop acting out but nothing worked for me, so I used to tell myself that there was no recovery when I heard stories about people who were in recovery. I thought of it as nothing!
Participation in conventions is one of the strongest recovery tools, which I was able to experience again last weekend, together with almost 50 fellows from seven countries. Beginning of January has become a priority in my diary since I first went to the Exeter winter convention last year.
If I had to choose one word to describe how I felt for most of my life, I would choose "disconnected." I had a hard time making friends in both kindergarten and school. There were many engaging ways to escape reality—creating stories in my head, adventure books, and video games.
This is Kathie S., sexaholic, about the Scottish convention, which I attended last weekend for the first time. I appreciated receiving the schedule well in advance, which helped me to feel less afraid of the unknown, indicating many old timers speaking, with much helpful experience.
Dear ESSAY, thank you for the wonderful suprise I received in the August edition on The Slogans. On p. 20 I unexpectedly found an article written by my sponsor with a picture of my cat “Milton” and an embroidery work I had sent her when I had been working on it.
Lust corrupted my childhood. I was violated when I was very young—an inappropriate act that distorted my perception of sexuality, reality, and love. For years afterward I went around with an aching, infinite emptiness inside me. I bandaged the pain with a blindfold and contented myself to live in darkness, like someone living down a deep water well.
