1. Have you ever thought you needed help for your sexual thinking or behaviour?
2. That you’d be better off if you didn’t keep “giving in”?
3. That sex or stimuli are controlling you?
4. Have you ever tried to stop or limit doing what you felt was wrong in your sexual behaviour?
5. Do you resort to sex to escape, relieve anxiety, or because you can’t cope?
6. Do you feel guilt, remorse or depression afterward?
7. Has your pursuit of sex become more compulsive?
8. Does it interfere with relations with your spouse?
9. Do you have to resort to images or memories during sex?
10. Does an irresistible impulse arise when the other party makes the overtures or sex is offered?
11. Do you keep going from one “relationship” or lover to another?
12. Do you feel the “right relationship” would help you stop lusting, masturbating, or being so promiscuous?
13. Do you have a destructive need – a desperate sexual or emotional need for someone?
14. Does pursuit of sex make you careless for yourself or the welfare of your family or others?
15. Has your effectiveness or concentration decreased as sex has become more compulsive?
16. Do you lose time from work for it?
17. Do you turn to a lower environment when pursuing sex?
18. Do you want to get away from the sex partner as soon as possible after the act?
19. Although your spouse is sexually compatible, do you still masturbate or have sex with others?
20. Have you ever been arrested for a sex-related offence?

In defining sobriety, we do not speak for those outside of Sexaholics Anonymous. Sexual sobriety for sexaholics of our type means no sex with ourselves and no sex with any partner other than the spouse. In SA’s sobriety definition, the term “spouse” refers to one’s partner in a marriage between a man and a woman. Sexual sobriety also means progressive freedom from the many forms of sexual thinking and stimulation and lust that enter our lives. This freedom is found by remaining sober and by using our Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions in our daily lives.

Our collective experience is that sexual sobriety will free us from a compulsive need to be sexual. We seek to the instinct for sexual intimacy to its proper place for reproduction and maintaining healthy ties with a spouse. When we stopped entertaining lust and sexual stimulation, the need to be obsessively sexual left us.

SA is not a form of sex therapy or group therapy. SA meetings are conducted by SA members using our meeting guidelines. There are no professional leaders at an SA meeting. SA is a program of recovery from lust and sexual addiction based on the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Whatever problems we bring to SA, we share a common solution – the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of recovery practiced in fellowship on the foundation of sexual sobriety.

All who believe they may have a problem with lust are welcome to attend SA closed meetings and may consider themselves members if they say they have a desire to stop lusting and become sexually sober.

SA meetings are free. There are no dues or fees for membership. We pass a ‘basket’ at meetings for donations to pay for rent, literature, coffee, etc. In the spirit of our Seventh Tradition, we are self-supporting through our own contributions.

SA is for those who have lost control of this area of their lives. We come to SA because we cannot stop, whatever our forms of sexual behaviour might be. We no longer have the ability to choose to stop.

You have to come to the realization for yourself. Recognizing our own powerlessness is what we call “working the First Step.” As the First Step states, “We admitted we were powerless over lust — that our lives had become unmanageable.”

It takes time and often a lot of pain to admit we are defeated. Sooner or later, we say something like, “I give up!” or “I need help!” or “I can’t do this by myself any more!” Each of these statements is an admission of powerlessness.

That is why it does not work when we try to get sober for somebody else like a family member or employer. We have to admit defeat to ourselves and we have to seek help for ourselves.

Yes, it is possible. There are sober members of SA all over the world, both single and married. Together we can get sober and stay sober in SA, as we work the program one day at a time.

While there are no absolutes in the SA programme, we can share with you what we know about getting sober. We go to meetings; we work the Steps; we use the literature (both SA and AA); we have sponsors to whom we talk on a regular basis. Many of us have come to trust in a Higher Power who keeps us sober.

Contact SA. Check your directory for a local number or contact the SA International Central Office.

Go to SA meetings, meetings and more meetings.

Talk to sober sexaholics and ask them how they got sober.

Use our program literature: brochures, Sexaholics Anonymous, Recovery Continues, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. Read our fellowship newsletter Essay.

Get a sponsor. This is someone whose sobriety is attractive to you. Call your sponsor on a regular basis — every day if possible. Ask for suggestions.

WORK THE STEPS. your sponsor will show you how.

Get a list of telephone numbers. Start calling other members to surrender your sexual and lust temptations and to make a contact whenever you feel anxious or panicky. Pray. In the morning, ask your Higher Power to keep you sober “just for today.” Say “thank you” at night for your day of sexual sobriety. Pray whenever you get hit with lust.

In defining sobriety, we do not speak for those outside Sexaholics Anonymous. We can only speak for ourselves. Thus, for the married sexaholic, sexual sobriety means having no form of sex with self or with persons other than the spouse. In SA’s sobriety definition, the term “spouse” refers to one’s partner in a marriage between a man and a woman. For the unmarried sexaholic, sexual sobriety means freedom from sex of any kind. And for all of us, single and married alike, sexual sobriety also includes progressive victory over lust. (SA p191-192).

The only requirement for SA membership is a desire to stop lusting and become sexually sober according to the SA sobriety definition.

Any two or more sexaholics gathered together for SA sobriety according to the SA sobriety definition may call themselves an SA group. Meetings that do not adhere to and follow Sexaholics Anonymous’ sobriety statement as set forth in the foregoing Statement of Principle adopted by the General Delegate Assembly in 2010 are not SA meetings and shall not call them- selves SA meetings.

1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends on SA unity.
2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
3. The only requirement for membership is a de- sire to stop lusting and become sexually sober.
4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or Sexaholics Anonymous as a whole.
5. Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry its message to the sexaholic who still suffers.
6. An SA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the SA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of mon- ey, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
7. Every SA group ought to be fully self- supporting, declining outside contributions.
8. Sexaholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
9. SA, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
10. Sexaholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the SA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attrac- tion rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, films, and TV.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

1. We admitted that we were powerless over lust— that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater thanourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives overto the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory ofourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to anotherhuman being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all thesedefects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, andbecame willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people whereverpossible, except when to do so would injure themor others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when wewere wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improveour conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to sexaholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.