Welcome to the Members Share section of our website.
Here members of Sexaholics Anonymous share their experience, strength and hope. There are stories for everyone, from all walks of life. We hope that you can find inspiration from these shares.
Please always remember that the Member Shares are not official literature of Sexaholics Anonymous, they remain the personal opinions of their respective authors.
For me, a review of the day is a definite part of my daily Step Ten and Step Eleven work, as suggested in the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous. The AA Big Book (page 84) describes Step Ten as follows:...
Am I living the solution? Sometimes I wonder whether I am honestly looking for a recovery solution--or is it just that I’m bothered that I'm not getting my way? I came from a very rigid religious background. Every time the church...
Television is something I simply cannot watch. I discovered this very early in lust recovery in Sexaholics Anonymous. Even if my motives were good--and even if the shows I wanted to watch were of good quality--there were just too many sick images (...
My journey to Sexaholics Anonymous began eight years ago, in a 12 Step fellowship for food addiction. I thought that I only had one problem: I could not lose weight. I thought that if I could only lose weight, everything would be...
For me sexual sobriety must be love based. Since I began my Sexaholics Anonymous recovery in April 2012, my sobriety has gone through a transformation from fear based to love based. At the very beginning, I was white knuckling; that is, my sobriety was based on...
"Selfishness--self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Alcoholics Anonymous Chapter 5
Selfishness remains...
In our book Sexaholics Anonymous (also known as The White Book), there is an entire section on Mixed Meetings, which discusses who should be allowed into our meetings. This section is appropriately titled "Mixed Meetings" [see The White Book...
Explicit sharing is something I seldom do in Sexaholics Anonymous; in fact I don't always share lust with others at all. Most often, I first surrender my lust to God and then, if I don’t feel free from lust, I'll make a call to a program friend. However, I am often able to let go of the explicit...
A very well-known, long-time sufferer from lust addiction and old timer in Sexaholics Anonymous was very sick. He was huffing oxygen to stay alive. He called his sponsor to tell him how sick he felt. His sponsor suggested that he reach out to a...
Lately, my wife has been disconnecting herself from me but I am staying sexually sober. During the past couple of weeks, it's gotten to the point where my wife is telling me that she's...
On pages 206-207 in the “White Book” of Sexaholics Anonymous, there is a lengthy quote from the Alcoholics Anonymous “Big Book,” titled "From Chapter Five Of Alcoholics Anonymous." Those pages end with a...
When a sober Sexaholics Anonymous member shares the good, the bad, and the ugly--in other words when he becomes gut honest--I sharpen my ears, and my thirsty soul drinks what it was always looking for: the human connection. I don’t need to feel subhuman or superhuman, but just one amidst the...
One of the things I love about SA recovery is that it is a program designed by addicts for addicts that really works. So, for instance, a selfish, self-centred person like I am can come into the program of Sexaholics Anonymous and put my recovery ahead of every other person or consideration and...
Today, thanks to SA, my sponsees, my sponsor and my Higher Power, I ran from lust temptations as from fire. OK, this was 30 seconds later than I should have, so I'm extra sensitive to lust today. I'm still powerless over lust, the Internet, my thinking, my emotions, and life itself.
But...
When I was working Step Four with my sponsor, he suggested that I pick one particular person, institution, or principle at a time and write up an inventory to share with him specifically about that one person. This was a lot of hard but very good work that...
I wept nearly every day for a year in my early Sexaholics Anonymous recovery. I had a lot of sadness in my heart, which lust had kept hidden from me all my life. I had to overcome my old thinking that "men don't cry," because crying is God's way of relieving the pain of loss, and I had...
I’ve been going through some fears around leaving work, and I wanted to share them with my Sexaholics Anonymous community. So I wrote a letter to God, to read to you all:
Dear Loving Father, Remove my selfish, self-centered, and dishonest thinking. Fill me with Your love, and help me...
I want to surrender my right to be right and remember to be humble instead. I'm in Europe now, having flown here for two days, and then I will turn around and travel back to the US with my wife and daughter--from whom I've been separated for over a year. They are coming for a month, and this is...
In early recovery, I tried to be successful academically, to stay clean and sober (or at least not let others know that I wasn't clean and sober), to keep my family and friends satisfied, to....and so on.
I felt like a juggler who was juggling too many problems! Actually I was just...
I would like to share my experience, strength, and hope related to disclosure (that is, letting others know about my past sexual addictive behaviors), from the basis of having much practice over the last twelve years of recovery and relapse, in disclosing both in the big and the small things....
Last week I had a couple of really bad days in my marriage, and I was amazed by how strongly the flashbacks and crazy obsessions came back! I felt I was in real danger of sexually acting-out. I have heard from old timers that:
"When you think lust is gone and everything is quiet, lust is...
I want to share my gratitude to God for answering my prayers and helping me to be productive at work today and not surf the web--and thus for helping me to stay sexually sober today. As I work the programme of Sexaholics Anonymous, including working the Twelve Steps, I am actually starting to...
Last week I had a couple of really bad days in my marriage, and I was amazed by how extremely strongly the flashbacks and crazy sexual obsessions came on! I felt that I was getting into danger of sexually acting out. As I have heard many times from Sexaholics Anonymous oldtimers:
"...
At my first SA meeting, the man who became my first sponsor told me that I needed to stop masturbating. I was shocked! In my view, masturbation was the only thing that kept me from doing the really dangerous things that I might otherwise have done. My habit kept me sane, I thought. It...
One of the greatest gifts of the Sexaholics Anonymous program is that I’ve learned I can take life one day at a time. I don't need to be sexually sober forever; I just need to be sober today. My Higher Power, Who has protected me from the full consequences of my lust in the past, also watches...
When I first came to Sexaholics Anonymous, I needed to give up many things in order to find sexual sobriety, recovery, and freedom from lust:
Finding a Sexaholics Anonymous sponsor was a bit intimidating for me at first, but I have found that it is essential to working the SA Twelve Steps. Perhaps the only thing worse in recovery than NOT working the Steps is to attempt to work them on my own. I know this, because I tried to do it...
Last Monday, I found that I had some extra money in my bank account, so I decided to share a bit of it with some charity organizations. This was not easy for me, because my ego told me that I needed the money more than the poor people who I planned to support. But I let that thought go, and I...
I'm grateful to have a group of fellow Sexaholics, so that I can share my powerlessness over lust with them. I’ve been feeling useless lately at work, having just switched departments, and then having trouble getting up to speed. The lack of validation at work leaves a gaping hole inside of me....
