Dear Essay, I am an incarcerated SA member due to my lust/pornography addiction. By the grace of God and SA I have been sober since Dec 11, 2019. I have been very blessed to remain in contact with my SA sponsor allowing me to complete the Steps and start working on the Traditions. I know many sexaholics in prison are not as blessed as I am. First of all,  I want to thank you so much for providing meetings in print via the Essay magazine which...

What was the fellowship like in my early days of recovery? According to what I remember and knew, it was: certainly not ideal! We had no published literature but used pdfs and printouts. We didn’t have SA materials to work on the Steps but used materials from other communities. Multiple years sobriety was something unusual. We were learning to use the Steps and didn’t know much about the mysterious traditions.  There were no women...

I came to my first SA meeting in Karlsruhe, Germany, on Sunday, May 26, 1985. I was one of three newcomers at a meeting of 20 men and women. As newcomers we were required to give a brief First Step in the form of answering set questions. Before I came to the meeting, I threw out my pornography. I also threw out phone numbers and addresses of women I knew from other 12-Step fellowships. I stopped acting out sexually. I date my sexual sobriety to...

Masoud: Hello, I’m Masoud, a grateful recovering sexaholic. I have been sober for 17 years and 11 months. I am not a member of any other twelve-step fellowship. I have chosen, for this session, to share my experience of Step 11, how to improve my conscious contact with my Higher Power.  Conscious contact with my Higher Power helps so much to stabilise my recovery, to deepen my recovery. My work, in the context of a Twelve-Step programme, to...

Grief was foreign to me. I had not experienced it as close as I did until my Dad passed away in June 2021. We were planning for a Father’s Day lunch just two days before he had an accident that caused some head injuries. Three days later, we were now planning for his funeral. At the time of his death, I had just finished my steps 4 & 5 and was working on steps 6&7 with my sponsor.  My experience throughout the time of his death is...

This Aussie Old-timer    …… I came into the SA movement in 1999 and by the Grace of God and numerous miracles have stayed physically sexually sober since that day. Whilst Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in Akron, USA in 1935 by two hopeless alcoholics, Sexaholics Anonymous did not come into existence until 1979 by Roy K (1927- 2009). Sexaholics Anonymous did not emerge in Australia until about 1988 in Wentworthville, Sydney and a group...