SA: To The Newcomer
Welcome to SA!
We are glad you are here. If you identify with us and think you may share our problem, we would like to share our solution with you. Newcomers like yourself often have a lot of questions about our program. This pamphlet will attempt to answer some of them.
What is SA?
We are a fellowship of men and women who share our experience, strength and hope with each other that we may solve our common problem of sexual addiction and help others to recover. Our primary purpose is to stay sexually sober and help other sexaholics to achieve sexual sobriety. (Adapted with permission from the AA Grapevine, Inc.)
What is Sexual Sobriety?
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. How Can I Stay Healthy Without Some Kind of Sexual Outlet? Our collective experience is that sexual sobriety will free us from a compulsive need to be sexual. We seek to restore 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.
Is SA Like Group Therapy?
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.
How Can I Become A Member?
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.
How Much Will It Cost Me To Join?
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.
I Admit I’ve Been Overdoing It With Sex.
Can’t I Just Cut Down a Little? 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 behavior might be. We no longer have the ability to choose to stop.
How Can I Tell If I’m Addicted?
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.
Test Yourself
Have you thought of getting help for your sexual thinking or behavior, or have others suggested that you do so? Have you tried to control or decrease sexual thoughts or behaviors and failed to do so? Do your sexual thoughts or behaviors interfere with your relations with your spouse or your responsibilities to others? Despite negative consequences of your sexual behaviors—humiliations, lies, diseases, jobs lost, arrests, divorces, or immoral acts—have you continued those behaviors? Have you ever been told you were a sexual addict or been arrested for a sex crime?
I Know I Cannot Stop on my Own. I’ve Tried Before And It Did Not Work. Are You Saying It Is Actually Possible?
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.
What Do I Have To Do To Get Sober?
While there are no absolutes in the SA program, 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.
Okay -- I’m Willing to Give It a Try. What Do I Do Next?
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.
Practice our program slogans:
First things first
Easy does it
One day at a time
Let go and let God
Keep it simple
Remember we were all newcomers once, and felt as you do today. Reach out and ask for help. Join us, for “we shall be with you in the Fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny. May God bless you and keep you— until then.”
(Alcoholics Anonymous, p.164. Used with permission.)
The Twelve Steps of Sexaholics Anonymous
1. We admitted we were powerless over lust—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our 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.
(The excerpts from Alcoholics Anonymous are printed with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (AAWS) Permission to reprint these excerpts does not mean that A.A.W.S. has reviewed or approved the contents of this publication, nor that A.A.W.S. necessarily agrees with the views expressed herein. A.A. is a program of recovery from alcoholism only - use of these excerpts in connection with programs which are patterned after A.A., but which address other problems, or in any other non A.A. context, does not imply otherwise. )
The Twelve Traditions of Sexaholics Anonymous
1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon 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 desire 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 money, 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 nonprofessional, 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 attraction 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.