My acting out includes masturbation with pornography, affairs, voyeurism, and anonymous sex with prostitutes. I’ve been attending SA meetings for six years, and only two weeks ago fully worked my “first” First Step. Based on my experience I’d have to say that meetings work. Period! I mean any 12-Step meetings.
My name is Alex. I’m a gratefully recovering sexaholic. By God’s grace and not by any human power at all, I have been free of the tyranny of lust since July 23, 1990.
My name is Dave and I’m a sexaholic. In discussing Working Paper #1 (“Practical Guidelines for Group Recovery”) with my group and with other sober members, I kept coming back to the most positive experience in my early sobriety, which represents for me a model of what a group should be. I would like to share it with the fellowship. I believe this was a gift directly from God to me.
These 12 suggestions were beneficial and very useful to me and our fellowship. I believe they have helped us to stay focused and committed to working the solution, like the first 100 members of AA did. I thought the fellowship might find it of interest.
I can hardly contain my enthusiasm for what is happening in SA, at least here. We had our first meeting last night under the “new format” and it was very powerful. (Not only that, it was 90 minutes instead of two hours — by group conscience) and everyone stayed afterwards for talking and fellowship.
The quality of sharing in meetings has been on my mind, off and on, for several months. I’ve been finding it increasingly frustrating when the sharing veers off from the topic introduced by the lead speaker.
As I read through the history of SA and of AA, one thing becomes very obvious. We are not helpless when problems arise at the meetings. We are not helpless precisely because we have the strength of the Higher Power to lead us, if we but seek His way and His will, and if we have the fellowship of one or two like-minded members.
As a recovering sexaholic, I am constantly amazed at how my perception of the world continues to clear up as I accrue more recovery and sobriety. Just the fact that I have been able to draw a distinction between recovery and sobriety is a testament to the fact that my “fog” has begun to lift. This simple separation has been key for me, for as we have all seen, and maybe even experienced, mere sobriety is just not enough if we are to truly be “happy, joyous and free.”
What led to the new solution-oriented program: “We got tired of the tidal wave of slipping.”
