Service: Meeting Positions

Although I had finally gotten sober for several months, I was still very disturbed by old resentments and fears, and was dragging my feet on the Step I was supposedly working on. One day, after expressing frustration over my stagnation to my sponsor, he suggested that if I did some sort of service it would raise the ante in my program. I had no interest in this but was exasperated enough to at least give it a try. My sponsor suggested I volunteer to take over his job of doing the orientations for newcomers when the next service rotation came around. This I did. He clearly explained to me the purpose of orientations and how he did them. So with the job description in my head and on paper, I somewhat nervously waited for my first newcomer to show up.

After making sure the newcomer was there for his own sexual issues and not for some other purpose, I described the SA fellowship, the SA Twelve Step program of action, and the tools of the program. I also told him why I was there (the behaviors that brought me to SA) and invited him to share his story. Then we went to the regular meeting, after which I offered him an SA brochure, a meeting schedule, the phone list (including my number), and showed him the literature table.

I did this service for a long time—until someone else volunteered to take over, and it really helped put my recovery into overdrive. Explaining the program to someone else helped me to understand it better and reinforced exactly what it was that I was buying into myself. But telling my story to a fellow sufferer helped me the most, since it reminded me of where I had been, and made me feel grateful that I was no longer there and that I was recovering. Orientations also made me feel that I could use my handicap to help others feel welcomed, not so alone, and more hopeful. Whenever I did an orientation, I was reminded of how broken, frightened, and confused I was when I first walked into my SA orientation. This helps me to remember where I used to be, what I have done and continue to do to work the program’s plan of action, and how grateful I am that I can now just feel and share my feelings instead of having to act them out in shameful and self-destructive behaviors.

Service: Intergroup

I’m by nature and by preference a loner. I’ve never been one for serving on committees, taking minutes at meetings, or organizing activities involving other people. In my first five years in SA, I reluctantly attended only about three Intergroup meetings and couldn’t see any value in them for me personally. I was so focused on myself and my problems that it seemed to me all Intergroup did was try to find things to talk about just to keep busy.

Never mind the fact that my first, and very desperate, contact with SA was through the phone hotline, which is maintained by the Intergroup!

A few years later, I had begun to make progress in my recovery but still had many serious holes in the way I was working the program. I knew this because of how easily I became resentful and how recklessly I was playing with my boundaries. I remembered how much I had been helped by volunteering for the orientation service position. I still had no interest in the Intergroup, but that didn’t matter anymore. What mattered now was the fact that I was worried enough about the chances I was taking with my recovery that I knew that raising the ante again in my service would be some very good and needed medicine for me. So I jumped at the opportunity and became secretary of Intergroup, taking the minutes of the meetings and volunteering for many of the action items that came up.

It worked. The service helped me to start thinking and caring about people other than myself more than I ever had before, to share myself more with other people, and to see my personal recovery as part of a bigger picture. I also saw that the main purpose of Intergroup was outreach—“to carry the message” to people suffering the same affliction from which I had been rescued. The more I threw myself into Intergroup work, the less I lusted and the less I fed my resentments. I also started becoming more aware and mindful of the principles at the foundation of the SA program: honesty, accountability, hopefulness, trust in God’s care, acceptance, making restitution for harms caused, and being of help to fellow sufferers. I also saw how much the work of the group did help people to find meetings, to be strengthened by workshops, conventions, retreats and speaker meetings, and help counselors and clergy find SA for those in their care. Participation in Intergroup has helped me to grow in areas of closeness and cooperation with others that I would have feared and avoided, had my self-centeredness and lust not driven me further into the solution—for which I am very grateful.