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Sex Addicts Anonymous with Readings

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Sex Addicts Anonymous with Readings SAA Meeting Format **The secretary or leader’s lines have been highlighted in blue*** Hello. My name is _______________ and I am a recovering sex addict. Welcome to the Wednesday, 8 pm meeting of Sex Addicts Anonymous. This is a closed SAA meeting only for those seeking recovery from sexually compulsive behavior. In this meeting, we say “Thank You” in lieu of clapping. I have said that I am a sex addict. Are there any other sex addicts present? Would someone please read the Preamble? Preamble Sex Addicts Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may recover from sexual addiction. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop our compulsive sexual behavior. SAA is not affiliated with any sect, denomination or outside enterprise. Our group is self-supporting through its own contributions. SAA is not group therapy or sex therapy; rather, it is a program of recovery from sexual addiction based on our 12 steps and 12 traditions. SAA has no affiliation with Alcoholics Anonymous although our group is based on the principles of AA. Our primary purpose is to abstain from sexually compulsive behavior and to help others achieve abstinence. Are there any newcomers who are new to the SAA program? Not to embarrass you but so that we can get to know you better, would you please give us your first name only? Please join me in the Serenity Prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen. Would someone please read the Twelve Steps? The Twelve Steps of SAA 1. We admitted we were powerless over our compulsive 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 all our activities. Would someone please read the Abstinence Statement? Abstinence Statement Our primary purpose is to abstain from sexually compulsive behavior and to help others achieve abstinence. In line with this purpose we feel that a brief statement regarding the meaning of abstinence is needed. First we define abstinence in terms of behavior rather than mental states. Just as AA focuses on the behavior of drinking and as OA focuses on the behavior of overeating, so SAA focuses on the behavior of compulsive sexual acting out. The lust of the mind may take years to drain away as one works the 12 steps of recovery. Abstinence from the destructive and addictive behaviors however, can begin today, and is the foundation upon which all subsequent personal growth depends. Secondly, abstinence may be different for each person, depending upon which behaviors are compulsive and lead to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. Some addicts can engage in sexual behaviors from which other addicts find they must abstain. In SAA we leave the choice up to the individual. Finally, abstinence does not imply the complete elimination of sexuality from one’s life, whether married or single, rather it lays out a foundation for a new approach to sex and relationships that is non compulsive and non-destructive. Such an approach is possible to all who earnestly desire it. Would someone please read Acceptance? Acceptance Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation- some fact of my life-unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my sex addiction, I could not stay abstinent; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes. We will now take 3 minutes of silent meditation. The leader will now share for 5 minutes. We will now have open sharing. Please limit your pitch to 4 minutes. The timer will sound when you have one minute left. Please use the remaining minute to wrap up. No cross talk or feedback please. If you feel that someone is getting too explicit during their share you may so signal by raising your hand. (At 8:45) Are there any newcomers who want to share, who haven’t shared already? Any burning desires (2 minutes each)? (At 8:55) Our Seventh Tradition states that we are self supporting through our own contributions. We will now pass the baskets for group and intergroup. While the baskets are passed we will read the Twelve Traditions. The Twelve Traditions 1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon SAA unity. 2. For our group purpose there is but one authority -- a loving God as may be expressed in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern. 3. The only requirement for SAA membership is a desire to stop our compulsive sexual behavior. 4. Each group should be autonomous, except in matters affecting other groups or SAA as a whole. 5. Each group has but one primary purpose – to carry its message to the sex addict who still suffers. 6. An SAA group ought never endorse, finance or lend the SAA name to any outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose. 7. Every SAA 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. SAA, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve. 10. SAA has no opinion on outside issues; hence the SAA 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, television and films. 12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities. We will now have secretary’s announcements. Will someone please read the closing statement? Closing Statement In closing, we would like to say that the opinions expressed here were strictly those of the person who gave them. What you heard was spoken in confidence and should be treated as confidential. Keep it within the walls of this room and the confines of your mind. A few words to those of us who haven’t been here long. Whatever your problems, there are those among us who have had them too. If you keep an open mind, you will find help. We aren’t perfect. The welcome we give you may not reflect the warmth we have in our hearts for you. If you keep coming back you will find that, though you may not like all of us, you will love us in a special way, the same way we already love you. Talk to one another and reason things out, but let us not gossip or criticize each other. Instead, let the understanding, love and peace of the program grow in each of us one day at a time. Will someone please read The Promises? The Promises If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self- seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
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