Outreach in Los Angeles

The Los Angeles Intergroup 12th Step Committee meets quarterly to carry the message to the sexual compulsive who still suffers. The core members are the coordinators for Hospitals, Institutions & Professionals (HIP); Legal Outreach; Public Information; and Workshops. The rest of the committee is made up of other interested SCA members.

As HIP Coordinator (Hospitals, Institutions & Professionals), I participated in the quarterly 12th Step Committee meeting on October 12th. We discussed strategies for getting SCA outreach materials into local LGBT Pride Festivals by putting our materials at a booth run by a relevant institution such as the Sexual Recovery Institute, the Center for Sexual Health, or Del Amo Hospital. Anyone with connections to one of these or a similar institution with a booth at Pride should let me know so we can plan to follow up. (scalosangeles.org/contact)

Our other current HIP project is to put together a mailing to about 100 local mental health facilities. Several volunteers have started looking up addresses to make a mailing database. We plan to mail a batch of letters at the next quarterly 12th Step Committee meeting tentatively scheduled for Saturday, January 11th at 11am at Plummer Park, West Hollywood, California.

Zoe, LA Intergroup

St. Louis plans 5th annual retreat

The fifth annual retreat will be held at the Marianist Center on November 15th – 17th, 2013. Payment is due by Nov. 1. 

Special Guest: 

Robert Weiss, LCSW, CSAT-S, is a UCLA MSW graduate and personal trainee of Dr. Patrick Carnes. He founded The Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles in 1995. He is author of Cruise Control: Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men, and co-author with Dr. Jennifer Schneider of both Untangling the Web: Sex, Porn, and Fantasy Obsession in the Internet Age and the upcoming 2013 release, Closer Together, Further Apart: The Effect of Technology and the Internet on Sex, Intimacy and Relationships, along with numerous peer-reviewed articles and chapters.

Read the brochure for more information. 

DC Fall Retreat

The SCA-DC Annual Fall retreat will be held October 11-13, 2013, at the historic Claymont Mansion in Charlestown, WV. The retreat begins with dinner on Friday and ends mid-day on Sunday. The weekend is full of meetings, workshops, guest speakers, hiking, fellowship, yoga, relaxation and great food. The retreat is a great place for SCA members to fellowship with other members and to share their experience, strength and hope.

The registration brochure for the Fall Retreat is now available. Feel free to print the brochure and mail your payment with the registration form to SCA. [Download Brochure]

Payments are due by Oct. 4. For further information, see http://www.sca-dc.org/events.html

Los Angeles to celebrate 40 years

“40 Fabulous & Fun” is the theme of an event in November to celebrate 40 years of SCA in Los Angeles. Mark your calendar and spread the word …

UPDATE: The celebration will take place from 7-8:30 p.m. Feel free to come early to help set up or to enjoy fellowship. While there will not be a request for a $20 donation, there will be a 7th Tradition collection.

WHEN: Nov. 9, 2013, 5-9 p.m.

WHERE: Plummer Park, Great Hall, 7377 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90046

COST: $20 donation

WHAT TO EXPECT:

  • Meeting
  • Guest Speaker
  • Panel with 20 years Experience, Strength and Hop
  • A question-and-answer period
  • Fabulous food/cake

Please download and distribute the flier.

New Outreach chair for ISO

I am pleased to announce that the Executive Committee, acting on behalf of ISO between annual face-to-face meetings, has voted Russell P. of Chicago into the Outreach Committee Chair service position.  Russell is currently serving as Chair of the Chicago Intergroup of SCA as well as having held other local service positions, so he is well suited to join the ISO Executive Committee to help us all carry the message to the addict who still suffers.  This action will be placed on the 2014 ISO agenda for affirmation by the delegates.  The Executive Committee will be working to support Russell as he moves into this position and will assist him in reaching out to current members of the Outreach Committee.  Please help me in welcoming Russell to ISO service.

 

In service,

John S.

ISO Chair

Recovery weekend in Paris

DASA, the French version of Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, will be holding its seventh annual convention on Oct. 19-20 in Paris. It will offer workshops, speaker meetings, a cafeteria, a meditation space, and literature. While it will mostly be conducted in French, there will be one 90-minute meeting in English on Saturday, Oct. 19, at 4 pm. 

DASA, which offers meetings daily in French and has occasionally had English-language meetings, requests an admission fee of 15 euros for the conference. More information is at http://dasafrance.free.fr/

A visit to Berlin

It was Friday the 13th and my flight to Berlin was about to take off. I’m not superstitious, but …

I’m the regional coordinator for SCA’s International Service Organization for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (or EMEA). What that means is that if anyone (individual member, meeting, or intergroup) has an issue with ISO, I’m the liaison. I’m fortunate to live in Paris, and I’ve been to meetings in Belgium and the U.K. (though the London meetings have since folded). I’ve corresponded by e-mail with people from throughout the EMEA region, but I had never been to an SCA meeting in Berlin.

There are four meetings there now, all conducted in German, a language I studied a bit in high school and college, but that was a long time ago. I knew there was a Friday evening meeting at the gay community center, Mann-O-Meter, but just a week earlier I had sent an e-mail to some locals telling them I’m planning to come — with no response. Well, actually, I did get a reply from Wayne, who used to be our Oslo contact and then moved to Berlin … but his reply was that he was moving permanently to Barcelona and would not be in Berlin.

So I had no idea what to expect. I hoped the meeting would be held as scheduled, at 6 pm, and my hotel was a five-minute walk away. So I got there about 5:30 and walked around the neighborhood a bit. It turned out that it was the weekend of the Berlin Folsom Street Fair, a tiny version of the San Francisco event, and some people asked me if I was in town for the wild parties. No …

So back to Mann-O-Meter, which was quite a nice place. It has a small bar with snacks and drinks at very reasonable prices, free Wi-Fi, and of course all the normal listings of events. It also has a meeting room off to the side, which was empty at 5:55, and no sign of anyone who might be waiting to enter. Sigh.

But just then there was some commotion. Somebody went over to the welcome desk and exchanged a few words of welcome in German, picked up some literature, and entered the meeting room. A couple of others joined him, so I went in, making four of us. I said I would be speaking in English, which one of them, replying in English, said would be fine. Soon the meeting began with a Serenity Prayer, Statement of Purpose, and all the recognizable form of an SCA meeting anywhere, but in German. I found it quite comforting to pass around a Four-Fold with the Steps, even though I didn’t read aloud. Soon a fifth member joined us, and we did a reading from the Little Blue Book on the Sexual Recovery Plan. I was able to follow along with their pamphlet, and even though I didn’t understand a lot of the words, I was familiar enough with the literature that I knew what was happening.

At one point during the meeting the chair admonished a member not to read a news magazine while others were sharing, that the focus of the meeting was SCA and not what was happening outside the rooms. The member put his magazine away, and we all said a Serenity Prayer and resumed. In the middle of the hour, we collected a Seventh Tradition and heard announcements. I mentioned that I was the European liaison from ISO. Someone had an anniversary and we all applauded. No different from other meetings I’ve been to.

There were some variants, of course. Only part of the literature has been translated. The Four-Fold has been split into two pamphlets, sold at 20 cents each. I bought one of everything they had, including the part of the Little Blue Book about the recovery plan and a translation of For the Newcomer. They have a committee working on more translations, which I have been in touch with. Their website is http://sca-berlin.org/

At the end of the meeting, another Serenity Prayer. Then the treasurer tallied up the Seventh Tradition contributions and recorded them in a ledger. We shook hands and said our goodbyes, some in German, some in English. It was a good start to a good and sober weekend.

In service,

John F.