The principles which had been worked out on the hard anvil of A.A. experience were to be our guiding principles. These principles had safeguarded the A.A. fellowship during a time when alcoholism was thoroughly stigmatized in society’s view. We believed that these same traditions would serve us equally well if we observed them. We knew that our “condition” of sex and love addiction was no less stigmatized, in contemporary society, than alcoholism had been in the 1930’s and 40’s. We needed to be protected both from adverse attention from the outside, and from that destructive inner demon: self-serving personal willfulness.

Our fellowship could survive only if we successfully negotiated both the external and internal threats. If we failed to recognize and meet these challenges, and our Fellowship collapsed, we knew that we, as individuals would probably not survive.

Each of A.A.’s Twelve Traditions were discussed, sometimes heatedly, and modified wherever necessary to fit the needs of our own Fellowship. Click here for the Twelve Traditions of S.L.A.A.

*Excerpted from © 1993 S.L.A.A. Basic Text, page 122