When I first came into recovery in January 2004, my counselor recommended that I attend a Twelve Step group. The only group in Columbia at the time was another “S” fellowship, so that’s where I went. Then the wife of one of our members founded an S-Anon group when they moved here from North Carolina. My wife began attending S-Anon, and one day she came home with a flyer for the Mountain SA Spring Marathon in Asheville. We attended, and I came back raving about it. So a member of our group who had been an SA member in Washington, D.C., asked if I would like to help him start an SA meeting in Columbia, and I agreed.

There were four of us at first. My friend found a meeting place, and he invited two other attendees from the other “S” group. Then one member moved away and another fell away, so we were down to two.

We met in an art gallery next to a bar/strip club on the local “prostitution highway.” The meetings were preceded by turning the nude paintings backwards. What a great venue for launching a new SA meeting! But it worked. The group grew slowly but steadily. Then after a couple of years, the owner sold his gallery.

We relocated to an Episcopal church that had a Twelve Step house on its property. The only open night was Monday, which was when the Boy Scouts met next door. After the church leaders consulted with the scout leaders—and we promised that we would not “hang around” after the meeting—the church reluctantly granted us tentative permission to meet there.

After a few more years, the church tore down our meeting place to make room for an addition. No problem—the scouts were moved inside the church, and their house became the Twelve Step house. Then the bombshell dropped. The church announced plans for a multi-use building that would have a separate meeting place for Twelve Step groups, and it would be inaccessible to other areas. Unlike all of the other groups, we were told that our SA group should look for an alternate meeting place before the new building opened.

Fortunately, there were other SA groups in Columbia by then, and we received permission to meet at one of their facilities. At the time, we had groups meeting three nights a week, a meeting every workday at noon, and an early morning meeting once a week. And just recently we started a Saturday morning meeting, making a total of 10 meetings in 10 years. It is now possible to attend SA here every day of the week.

How did we do it? To paraphrase the White Book, “We didn’t—God did” (SA 158), with the support of several counselors and pastors in the area. At this time, by the grace of God, we have a thriving SA population of 40 members here in Columbia. So on February 7th, exactly 10 years after our first meeting, we had a party!! Followed by a meeting, of course….