When our fellowship began, its initial members voted to make all approved Alcoholics Anonymous literature, approved SPAA literature. So, for our primary text, we rely on the Big Book of AA. Our fellowship is still young, but we are now beginning to produce our own materials. As new literature is written and approved by SPAA Intergroup, we will post it here.
What is Edging?
SPAA defines sobriety as: No sex with one’s self (masturbation), no sex outside of a committed relationship and no viewing of pornography.
Our experience has shown us that certain behaviors — though outside SPAA’s sobriety definition — can still give us a “hit” of our drug and often lead to the loss of our sobriety. We call these behaviors “edging.”
While engaged in edging, we once again experience our great obsession — believing the lie that we can control and enjoy these secret behaviors. Therefore, as with our acting out behaviors, we asked our Higher Power to remove our desire to edge.
Edging activities vary widely from member to member, but many of us identify with the following:
- Perusing social media apps and websites looking for arousing, non-pornographic images and videos (sometimes through the use of secret accounts).
- Coercing, nagging or guilting our committed partner into sexual activity.
- Looking for attractive people in public, then fantasizing about them, staring at their body parts or following them around. We’ve done this on foot and from our cars.
- Flirting with others when we are already in a committed relationship — either by paying them compliments, teasing, having inappropriate/intimate conversations or “turning on the charm.”
- Creating a list of “backup” partners in case things don’t work out in our current relationship.
- Watching R-rated movies (and other suggestive videos) or reading erotic literature, with the goal of arousal.
- Conveniently forgetting to mention we are already in a committed relationship when meeting a new, attractive person.
- Fantasizing — often by replaying our past sexual escapades or pornographic images we’ve seen (sometimes while having sex with our committed partner).
- Driving by known acting out locations.
This list is by no means exhaustive. It is recommended that each member work with their sponsor to establish a personalized, detailed edging definition for themselves and to stop keeping secrets about any of their edging behaviors. We offer this information to the newcomer so that they may learn from our experience, receive our strength, and gain hope.