For Women

"Our fellowship is open to women and men, regardless of age, race, religion, ethnic background, marital status, or occupation. We welcome members of any sexual identity or orientation, whether they are gay, lesbian, straight, bisexual, or transgendered."

— Sex Addicts Anonymous, Introduction

A Welcome to Women Seeking Recovery

You have taken a brave step connecting to our web site devoted to women in recovery from sexual addiction. If you have a desire to stop addictive sexual behavior of any type, you are welcome here. We urge you to give our program a try. It has helped many other women of all ages, backgrounds and sexual orientations find recovery from sexual addiction.

Getting Started as a Woman in SAA

Meetings

We suggest coming to at least six live or telephone meetings in the first six weeks before deciding whether SAA is for you. Be gentle with yourself and give yourself time to listen to others stories and absorb the introductory literature. If you are like us, you did not get to where you are now overnight. It will also take time to orient your self to this program and this new way of life in recovery.

Sponsorship

One of the most vital aspects of our program is sponsorship. A sponsor is a person in the fellowship who acts as a guide to working the program of SAA, a fellow addict that you can rely upon for support. Ideally, a sponsor is abstinent from addictive sexual behavior, has worked the steps, and can teach you what he or she has learned from working the program. We can learn from a sponsor's experience, struggles, successes and mistakes. Our sponsor can help explain program fundamentals, such as how to define your sexual sobriety. Most importantly, sponsors guide us through the twelve steps.

Literature

One of the most important tools of recovery is literature. We have suggestions for literature on the literature tab at the top of this page. However we would like to point out a pamphlet entitled "A Special Welcome to the Woman Newcomer". This pamphlet contains information about attending mixed meetings, speaking at meetings, triggering others at meetings and being attracted to others at meetings just to name a few topics. We recommend you obtain this pamphlet along with all the other literature.

Seventh Tradition

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Contact Us

Phone

USA / Canada:
1-800-477-8191
elsewhere:
+1-713-869-4902

Postal mail

ISO of SAA
PO Box 70949
Houston, TX 77270 USA

Email

info@saa-recovery.org

The 12 Steps

  1. We admitted we were powerless over addictive sexual behavior - 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 God.
  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 God 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 God, praying only for knowledge of God's 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 other sex addicts and to practice these principles in our lives.

The 12 Traditions

  1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon S.A.A. unity.
  2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority — a loving God as expressed in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
  3. The only requirement for S.A.A. membership is a desire to stop addictive sexual behavior.
  4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or S.A.A. as a whole.
  5. Each group has but one primary purpose — to carry its message to the sex addict who still suffers.
  6. An S.A.A. group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the S.A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
  7. Every S.A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
  8. Sex Addicts Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
  9. S.A.A., as such, ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
  10. Sex Addicts Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the S.A.A. 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, TV, and films.
  12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.