Albuquerque, NM

SA is alive in Albuquerque with four meetings per week and about 20 to 30 participating members. A few members have more than two years and several have a year of sexual sobriety. In summer 1990, the four groups and particularly newcomers to all the groups found they did not know who attended the other meetings, where collections went, who ran the phone line, P.O. Box or Central Office contacts. This led to the formation of an intergroup to facilitate communication, to handle collections and pay phone, post office, rent, literature and other expenses, give our local program more organization, and do 12-step or other work. Traditionally this had been done by the few long-term members who did the work mainly because no one else would.

We established meeting format for intergroup, set up tax exempt status and a bank account, elected an intergroup treasurer and literature person and began discussing issues and topics relevant to SA and the traditions. Intergroup officers were to serve for one year and have ideally at least one year of sobriety. My year as intergroup representative is now ending and a new rep is taking my place.

We have chosen to have our phone line operated as a voice mail system through the phone company so we have a listing in the phone book. This also solves the problem of inappropriate calls coming to member homes. This works fairly well except sometimes we have problems returning calls or responding to the person answering the phone. Anonymity is taken very seriously here. We have no open meetings by group conscience and prefer to do some minor screening before giving out meeting times or locations. Although some people may be scared off by our machine or chosen procedure, I believe those who really want the program will find us. When starting the service we anticipated about 1 to 3 calls a day but we started receiving 10 or more per day, mostly prank calls. This added expense may force us to close the line. How have other groups handled phone lines and prank calls? Any information on how to reach out to those who need our program without bringing abuse upon ourselves would help our personal program.

Finally, I’m going to be moving to Northern California and will no longer be an Albuquerque contact person. A new contact will be provided to Central Office soon. God bless our program. It saved my life.