“Attending SAA meetings starts us on a new way of life. But while the SAA fellowship supports our recovery, the actual work of recovery is described in the Twelve Steps. Meetings are forums for learning how to integrate the steps into our lives. Working the Twelve Steps leads to a spiritual transformation that results in sustainable relief from our addiction.”
— Sex Addicts Anonymous, p. 20
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.
These steps are the heart of our program. They contain a depth that we could hardly have guessed when we started. Over time, we establish a relationship with a Power greater than ourselves, each of us coming to an understanding of a Higher Power that is personal for us.
The SAA program offers a spiritual solution to our addiction, without requiring adherence to any specific set of beliefs or practices.
But the steps are more than a series of exercises. They provide basic principles for living. Most of us find opportunities on a daily basis to apply one or more of the steps to some challenge in our life. Over time, the spiritual principles in the steps become integrated into our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. We find that we are not only working the steps — we are living them.
Excerpted from Sex Addicts Anonymous pages 21 and following.
