Service

“Personal service, one addict helping another, is the most essential way we carry our recovery message.”

— Sex Addicts Anonymous, p. 75

Service is a foundational principle of the Twelve Step Program, and opportunities for service abound at multiple levels.

We serve one another through friendship, sponsorship, and accountability. In this way we help each other recover.

We serve our local groups…

  • by making sure we have places to meet that are safe and comfortable.
  • by stocking program literature and supplies to be readily available for members.
  • by establishing and maintaining bank accounts, mailing addresses, telephone answering services, and perhaps local websites to make our meetings accessible to the addicts in our community who are still suffering.
  • by developing outreach programs for our own local area.

We serve the fellowship-at-large…

  • by maintaining a central office – the International Service Organization (ISO) of SAA – which provides a wide variety of services to benefit individual members and the fellowship as a whole, including publication of SAA literature and maintenance of this SAA website.
  • as delegates to the international convention, representing our local groups.
  • voluntarily on regional, national, and international boards and committees in support of the fellowship.

Service is, indeed, the engine that drives recovery from addiction at all levels within SAA.

Seventh Tradition

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2011 Annual Appeal to members

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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

Confidentiality Statement “Be advised that under Texas State law, disclosures of abuse or neglect of minors must be reported to the authorities. SAA staff can provide more information on reporting and disclosure issues.”

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.