Recently we had 80 people attending our Saturday morning meeting. Tears of joy welled in my eyes recalling the first meeting I attended over 32 years ago. There were only two of us. After the meeting my mind reviewed the activities we used that led us today to having at least 49 meetings a week in our area.
Here are the observations I have made which I believe led to the growth of SA in the Nashville area:
- Many of the early members maintained sobriety without relapse. There are at least three of us still attending meetings in Nashville who have over 30 years of sobriety. There are also two of our original group with approximately 30 years of sobriety who no longer live in Nashville but have helped build strong programs in the communities they moved to.
- We emphasized AA approved literature as our basic text with the SA materials as icing on the cake.
- Members were willing in those early years to break their anonymity to do significant outreach.
- For about a two-year span early in our history, once a week we put SA brochures in envelopes to send to social workers, psychologists and clergy in our community.
- We decided to put meeting locations on our answering machine to make it easier to find and attend our meetings.
- Our emphasis was on starting as many new meetings as we could. We emphasized having 6:30 a.m. as well as noon meetings so people who had families could be home in the evenings.
- We worked closely with sex therapists in the community.
- We brought meetings to alcohol and drug treatment centers.
- We fostered members attending regional and international conferences. We had scholarship funds to help people attend these conferences.
- We had social events for SA members.
- We emphasized sponsorship.
- We brought distant SA members with long term sobriety as guest speakers.
On a personal level I made a conscious effort, as the oldest sober member in the Nashville fellowship, to let go of trying “to run the show.” After my first few years of sobriety, I stopped attending Intergroup meetings so that my controlling character defect would not hamper the growth of our fellowship. Through trial and error I tried following Tradition 2 to become an “elder statesman” rather than a “bleeding deacon.”
I feel so blessed to have a Nashville SA recovery community that I can always depend on and I will never be sufficiently grateful for such a blessing.
Harvey A., Nashville, TN
