Magazine

SEPTEMBER 1995

FEEDBACK ON WORKING PAPER

Download 1995.3-September-ESSAY.pdf

In Every Issue

What’s Going On in SA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Enjoy reading all the articles of the current magazine below.

Feedback on Working Paper
The working paper has hit the nail on the head. Thank you for naming the problem. When I first came into SA, I came into a very strong group. The group was my sponsor as there were no women sponsors available in SA. I knew I could stay sober going to this group every week. I came into the fellowship in March 1989. I had wanted SA sobriety for a long time before I knew that there was a group with this sobriety.

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Group News
The Sunday West SA group of Portland, Oregon is alive and well. Our fellowship has around ten attendees on any given Sunday night.

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Group News
In a ski-lodge on the side of a snow capped Mt. Kosciusko, Australia’s highest mountain, the first Australian SA Conference was held over the last weekend of April. … Members attended from Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, and Northern New South Wales. Greetings to the conference were received on tape from a loner in Brisbane and by letter from a member in prison.

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Group News
It has been such a long time since I last sent a letter to our SA Central Office. I thank God today for the willingness and the courage to write.

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I Can Only Keep What I Give Away—I Can Only Pass On What Was Given To Me
I went to meetings and tried to live in the Program. I got closer to God, talked “about” the Steps, called people up—and some things changed in my life—but I was still in control. Only after I came back from a four-month residential treatment program, when my current relationship fell apart, when I didn’t have a job anymore—when I was just confronted with myself and without my drug—only then could I finally surrender to the fact that I couldn’t manage my own life.

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I Thank God for the Program
I am a 47-year-old sexaholic, lustaholic, alcoholic inmate, serving a sentence of 18-80 years, for a variety of crimes. The majority of my life has been spent behind the walls of one institution after another. This is the only “home” I know. There was a sex crime involved in each one of my adult convictions (but I began acting out at the age of 13).

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Keeping it Simple
As I experience recovery, I’m finding that all the work I wanted countless others to do, I have to do myself. “The program is simple … keep the focus on myself … it works if I work it.” How many times have I heard those things! And it’s true! Over and over [I see that] simple works, and when I don’t keep it simple, I isolate and stay in my head and go nuts with resentments and anger, blocking what God is trying to tell me.

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Grief vs. Self-Pity
I used to think that the feelings of emptiness and loneliness I so often experienced in early sobriety were key amongst the triggers so inexorably leading me back to my drug — whether in sex with myself or to yet more of the same old relationships. Nowadays I am coming to see those feelings for what they really are, a sure sign that I have already acted out. Those feelings are not the cause of my acting out, but the result of it.

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Many Thanks for Your Support
I wanted to extend to the fellowship my heartfelt appreciation for all the love and support you have shown me upon the death of my husband. The concern you have expressed has only confirmed what I have begun to believe as I work in the Central Office… being part of SA is a wonderful place to be and a rewarding experience.

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How Does the SA Service Structure Work?
The service structure has evolved over the past several years, and has been designed to reflect SA’s unique purpose and requirements.

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