The SRA 12 Steps and 12 Traditions are the core of the SRA recovery program. SRA received permission from AA in 1991 to adapt these from Alcoholics Anonymous. By studying them and practicing them, many of us have been able to stop our destructive sexual behavior and begun to live rich and fulfilling lives.
We learn to use the steps by reading about them, discussing them at meetings (particularly “Step Meetings”) and talking about them with our sponsors and other members. The principles they embody are universal and applicable to everyone whatever his or her personal creed.
Follow the links in steps One through Seven below for in-depth commentary.
The 12 Steps of SRA
- We admitted we were powerless over our sexual obsessions—that our lives had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to those still suffering, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
The 12 Traditions of SRA
- Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon SRA unity.
- For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as God may be expressed in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
- The only requirement for SRA membership is a desire to stop compulsive sexual behavior.
- Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or SRA as a whole.
- Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry its message to those still suffering.
- An SRA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the SRA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
- Every SRA group ought to be fully self supporting, declining outside contributions.
- SRA should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
- SRA, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
- SRA has no opinion on outside issues; hence the SRA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
- Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV and films.
- Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
