Who We Are

 The Daily Reprieve Group is a men's meeting of Sex Addicts Anonymous in Dallas Texas.  SAA is an international fellowship for anyone who wants to escape from a sex life that is out of control.  The Daily Reprieve group is based firmly on the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous.  As we read the two primary texts of Alcoholics Anonymous, the books Alcoholics Anonymous (almost universally referred to simply as the Big Book) and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (usually called the Twelve and Twelve), recovery is a path to a God who redeems us.

 In our experience, meetings for sex addicts, whether under the rubric of Sex Addicts Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, Sexual Compulsives Anonymous or Sexaholics Anonymous, tend to fall into the trap of seeing sex addiction as a psychological problem rather than a spiritual disorder.  At least in part this problem arises because virtually all the books about addiction these days are written by psychologists and psychotherapists.  While we certainly admire the work of addiction therapists  – for they have helped many of us to get to the point where we could work the twelve steps –  one must remember that the people who write those books and perform therapeutic services have a financial interest in your seeing sex addiction as a psychological disorder.

 Psychotherapists can certainly help us better to understand ourselves and to deal with trauma in our past which may be distorting our vision of our Maker, but they cannot lead us to the spiritual awakening which is the unconditional promise of the Twelve Steps.  Many of us have tried to recover through psychotherapy, but we have had no success.  The Big Book on page 39 states that we will be absolutely unable to stop our addiction on the basis of self-knowledge.  Further, on pages 84 to 85 it says that the relief from our addiction will come, not by fighting it, not by swearing off, but automatically, through the grace of God, without any effort on our part other than working the steps and keeping our focus on God.  It tells us that what we really have is only a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.  That it occurs without our trying is indeed a miracle, but in working the Twelve Steps we learn how to approach the source of all miracles.

 While our approach is certainly not unique, it is different from the approach taken in most of the other SAA meetings we have attended.  We do not believe our meetings are group therapy, nor that they are no more than a forum for us to let out our feelings.  The Eighth Tradition states that we are forever nonprofessional, and this tradition means, among other things, that irrespective of what we may be on the outside, at our meetings none of us are professional therapists.  We are simply addicts drawn together by our shared suffering and our shared experience of a God who redeems us.   What we offer is a spiritual remedy for a spiritual disorder.

 In the sixteenth century, Saint Teresa of Avila felt that the order to which she belonged, the Carmelites, had drifted too far away from its principles and so she founded the Discalced Carmelites.  Discalced means barefoot, and Teresa felt that removing their sandals brought the Carmelites back to basics.  Sometimes we think of ourselves as the Discalced Sex Addicts Anonymous since we, too, are going back to the basics.  We hope you will join us.

For information on other meetings of SAA in the Dallas area, you may go to the website of the North Texas Intergroup of Sex Addicts Anonymous www.dfwsaa.org.  For further information on Sex Addicts Anonymous, you may go to its international website www.saa-recovery.org.