The author of “Giving Time to My Family Is Service Too” describes how he had plenty of time to do SA service when he got sober in 2009 and was no longer filling up every spare minute with lust. He lists all the services he did in the first years of his recovery, services that are available for us to do too.
Many of us first experienced the joy of service in early recovery when we started giving back to our home group—turning up on time, sharing respectfully and honestly, helping set up the room and welcoming newcomers.
My job has nothing to do with graphic design, advertising, illustration of magazines, or anything like that ... years ago in my beginnings in SA I combined the design of the bulletin of my parish with sessions of consumption of chat and pornography ... only by a miracle of my Higher Power did I never by accident place a lust image in one of those newsletters... And, logically, the quality of my work was barely regular, the time invested twice as much as normal, I stayed up late and I used to be easily annoyed if someone criticized my work.
In my early days in SA I was single, had no job, no car, no money, and a lot of time. It was 2009, and because of the economic crisis I was unemployed. I attended three to four meetings a week, called my sponsor daily, wrote my Step work daily, and translated the whole White Book, Big Book, and Recovery Continues into my native language within a year.
The theme for the February edition of ESSAY is “The Joy of Service.”
Service is a critical part of recovery, but it is one of the most poorly understood Program concepts, in my opinion. I’ve been in the Program for 19 years, and for 17 of those years, my idea of service was flawed. I believed service was about helping addicts only. I did not see it extend outside of these boundaries.
Service is a critical part of any recovery program and is one of the most poorly understood parts of Sexaholics Anonymous. For seventeen years my idea of service was flawed and hindered my ability to stay sober. I thought that service was about being of service only to addicts. I am writing in order to help those who may have a similar understanding of service.
He sido una persona que a pesar de haber estudiado una carrera humanística siempre viví una vida en la que el centro de todo era yo. Yo no le servía a nadie. Más bien, y salvo pocas excepciones, me servía de todos y de todo.
A Polish SA meeting suggests that we might work Tradition 5 with a man-on-the-street approach. Słuźby is Polish for “service.”
“Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick.” My thoughts:
