The First Step Inventory

After SA first went national in June of 1981, another member and I spent a month visiting groups trying to get started around the country. (What a marvelous time we had! And we both got unlimited air mileage for $398, another of those small “coincidences” that we have been party to since we launched out on “a wing and a prayer.”)

In one city we visited a group of men who were using the 12-Step program for their sexual problems who got going about the same time SA began, though independently. (Humbling thought. God seems to be telling us it’s not going to be personalities before principles!) This group was made up of psychologically oriented professionals. We happened on one of their First Step Inventory meetings; we’d never heard of such a thing. We saw problems with the way it was done but wondered if it could be of benefit to SA. I personally had reservations, but under prodding from my friend agreed we should try it. We were still very young and weren’t having much success at seeing people get and stay sexually sober. “Is there any way we can accelerate this thing,” I kept asking myself and others, even then. Progress in SA is SLOW.

In the ESSAY newsletter of November 1981 I introduced the First Step Inventory and asked for feedback on it. Since then, we’ve seen a few groups use it. As it turns out, groups using it have been changing their use of it over time, and this process of change still seems to be going on.

Recently, in the May 20th 1984 newsletter, I again asked for feedback on the First Step Inventory. I had been getting various signals that there had been problems. Based on the lack of response to that newsletter and some of the negative inputs I’d been getting, I decided to let the First Step Inventory be optional and announced this in the 20 August 1984 newsletter. Three pages in the SA booklet were changed, but the format was left in the Meeting Guide. The suggestion made after the fact to retain those three pages in an appendix would probably have been more appropriate at this time than straight deletion. Whatever… This has opened the Great Debate, which you are all invited to enter.

All entries must be submitted in writing and postmarked no later than midnight, January 1, 2001. Decision of the judges will not be final.

Seriously—just a little levity to wake up the troops—please submit your inputs in writing so they can be studied and made available to others.

My reasons for making it optional can best be summed up in some typical questions that are being asked and perhaps should be answered in the on-going debate:

Is it really working? Are people getting sexually sober faster and staying sober better with the First Step Inventory? Has everyone with negative responses to it spoken up? Has everyone with positive responses to it spoken up?

Is there proven reason for departing from time-tested AA practice? “Why not stick with Steps Four and Five as AA does and let our sexual story come out when it wants to or has to?” Are we, by adding a First Step Inventory, trying to fix something that already works?

Should we introduce the group therapy principle of modern psychology (the group feedback portion of the Inventory) into the natural spiritual process of the 12-Step program? Is this letting professionalism in the door? (This is the only aspect of our program that has such a tilt.)