3 Important Mistakes to Avoid if You’re New to Sex Addicts Anonymous
Checking out the 12-Step program Sex Addicts Anonymous? Don’t make these mistakes—protect your privacy, anonymity, family, and future from predators in the circle.
There is definite healing power in personal accountability and the support of a group, no matter what type of vice or addiction you’re trying to overcome.
The structure of a program and community can be immensely helpful for personal growth. But not all programs are created equal.
SAA is a 12-Step recovery program that is committed to principles of nonprofessional guidance, and is open to anyone interested in combatting behaviors of sexual addiction in the public at large.
SAA groups are essentially accountable to only themselves (unless a particular group somehow interferes with other groups).
All SAA groups are also founded on the chief principle of personal anonymity. This protects individuals inside the circle during recovery. It also provides bad actors with cover for personal deception and abusive practices.
SAA groups are guided by the primary tradition that “group unity” takes priority over individual needs and safety.
It is up to individual members to protect themselves from visible and invisible cultures of abuse, because the group vote or group "conscience" outweighs your minority concern (Tradition 1).
SAA is a volunteer-led program with minimal structures beyond the Twelve Steps. By its very nature, Sex Addicts Anonymous attracts sexual predators, addicts, people perpetually struggling with episodes of relapse... and people with an agenda to “stop addictive sexual behavior” (Tradition 3).
The ambiguities and technicalities—the fine print and the subtext—of SAA's anonymity and membership standards leave members free to disguise themselves, and to misrepresent their full motives for participation.
Are they there to stop their own addiction, or yours?
While the “traditions” of SAA foster anonymity on the surface, they also create legalistic, technical loopholes that enable abusers to leverage a tradition of confidential expectation—as if what you say is protected speech or information.
Always remember that the SAA traditions are not legally binding.
People may do (and have done) anything they like with the information they obtain in the program, regardless of what program tradition, literature, or culture encourages.
So keep these three things in mind, and watch your Steps!
1. Protect your privacy and anonymity—even if it seems silly.
Even though the word "anonymous" is in the program name, there are all sorts of opportunities in the program to accidentally give away more information than you intend.
When making introductions, someone may casually offer their last name with the implicit expectation that you reciprocate, or ask to exchange phone numbers via smart phone.
Do not reciprocate by revealing your last name.
Avoid that person in the future, even if their slip seems innocent or accidental.
Always be very careful what information you give out, even if you feel like you are among friends or safe people.
The same goes for sharing your phone number.
Once you give someone just your phone number, smart phones will sometimes automatically volunteer your full contact information to new contacts (watch your Settings very carefully!).
Phones may automatically offer up your last name and profile picture (which may be reverse-searchable online), along with any email addresses or personal addresses you have saved in your contact information.
Some iPhones may also volunteer information like your birthday.
Consider buying a second $20-a-month pay-as-you-go phone, for giving out to recovery contacts, that is not connected to your entire life. Lots of people in the program are already doing this. Many of them are using false aliases as well.
Subscription-based image-recognition engines like Pimeyes can call up scores of images instantaneously, from every corner of the globe, using image-recognition software that can find even similar rather than identical pictures.
Even basic, free engines like Yandex do a decent job finding indexed pictures online (and lately, Yandex has been doing much better than Pimeyes).
If your social media or professional profiles are online, or your particular acting-out history has left an online footprint, volunteering your last name is a risk you can’t afford to take.
Likewise, watch what email addresses you give out.
If you use email to contact anyone in the program, consider creating an anonymized account for that purpose only.
And remember, email correspondence can contain digital breadcrumbs to your physical location, like your IP address. This isn’t a big deal by itself, unless you value your regional privacy, or want to keep your distance from law enforcement for any reason at all.
If you are in SAA, always use a VPN blocker to shield your IP address when you go online, whether or not you are visiting an SAA, COSA, or ISO website to look up documents, literature or other resources, meeting times, or links to online meetings.
Frequently clear your cookies, and use "private" browsing when possible.
Does that sound a little paranoid?
There are cottage industries heavily invested in gathering and selling your personal data, in ways you may not expect.
Cookies and website history already on your computer can provide the websites you visit with a clear map of your sexual and social interests, which may be catalogued and stored, matched to your IP address if it is not shielded, used to create a profile on you or your household. Resourceful businesses may acquire this information from vendors or caches, and then legally shared that information with their affiliates and employees. This happens more often than you imagine. I mean it happens all the time. Your online browsing history is really, genuinely for sale by private vendors, to private businesses and nonprofits, especially if they buy in bulk and triangulate your data.
This includes SAA affiliates who have a burning desire to stop your addictive sexual behaviors, or online storefronts with employees and moderators who are connected to the 12 Step communities.
If you value your online privacy, above all, do not use accountability software like Covenant Eyes with sponsors or accountability partners inside the SAA program.
These programs automatically create detailed maps of your daily online activities, even if you do not visit adult websites of any kind, and email them—daily—to your partner.
There is no law against sharing this information with anyone or any group, for any reason. If your daily online movements become public or semi-public, they may also be shared with any group in the world. Every website you visit, and every personal interest you have—from your medical interests, your sexual hobbies, your choices of entertainment, the websites you shop at, the political sites you visit, and so on—can become the shared knowledge of any collective group.
If this happens without your knowledge, the information could be used—by psychopaths or fanatics—to pressure you to conform to the will of the group, by implied threat, direct threat, or sheer humiliation. This type of hazing has happened many times in 12 Step programs of all sorts, but Covenant Eyes has amplified the tracking ability of large groups against unaware, good-faith members.
2. Don’t Give Out or List Your Real Phone Number.
Many SAA groups have phone lists that are essentially open to the public, are managed by volunteers who come and go, or are open to anyone who enters the group for the first time.
Do not put your real phone number on any list like this.
Anyone who obtains your real phone number may use it to look up any public information associated with that phone number, using free or cheap internet services, which may lead to your real name. This can connect you to your social media profiles, your legal history, your marital status and history, your places of registered address, your online footprint, your family members and their information, and more.
You don’t know where that phone list goes once the room empties out, or who comes into the rooms when you're not there, and who might get ahold of that list through a friend of a friend of a friend.
Additionally, calling in to phone meetings using your registered phone number may render your number visible to the meeting host or assistant.
PRO TIP: Daily “shares” of your addiction struggles you make at phone meetings may be recorded, in some states legally, without your consent.
Transcripts or detailed notes may be created and stored by anyone listening in, regardless of "traditions" around anonymity. Only some states require consent between parties before making recordings. No state forbids taking or sharing notes about meetings with outside parties.
Do not give out your real phone number to people you don’t know very well.
Consider buying a second, unregistered phone that is not linked to your name and address in an easily-traceable way.
Basic phone subscription services like this start at $20 a month or less.
You don’t want anyone in the rooms obtaining any of your traceable data, and pairing your online footprint, personal contacts, or acting-out histories in clever ways meant, especially when their real goal is to stop your "behaviors" in some unexpected, unasked-for way in the near future.
And you definitely don’t want a sexually-addicted predator social-media stalking you, if they have a relapse.
Don't contribute to any situation that exposes your sexual and social data to predation and exploitation, especially if that information leads back to your loved ones.
3. Don’t use apps, online services, paper checks, or automated checks to make donations.
If you are donating to SAA groups, or signing up to make regular Lifeline donations to the International Service Organization that runs Sex Addicts Anonymous, be especially careful in your method of payment. Bring small cash bills to meetings. Two dollars is more than enough to donate per session.
Apps like Paypal and Venmo may provide nonprofessional volunteer service-people—the men and women who collect and track donations for SAA—with your intimate personal information, such as your first and last name, connected email or profile pictures, or more.
That information may then be aggregated somewhere, unofficially, and may remain visible or accessible even after you leave the group.
Even if you know and trust the current volunteer who collects the checks, the next volunteer may be someone you don’t know.
They may have a different set of acting-out behaviors, which are riskier than you can imagine—perhaps they are also identity thieves, or sociopaths. Or they may be participating in the SAA program with the motive of combatting the sexually addictive behaviors of other people, and not their own.
Paying by check is an even riskier move than most online apps, as checks may provide a nonprofessional volunteer treasurer with your full name, address, and checking and routing numbers—information that can be used in extreme cases of identity theft, fraud, and worse.
Remember: harvesting basic membership data is not in any way illegal; selling that information is also not illegal. Neither is utilizing that information as part of unexpected or shocking treatments (sometimes called staged "spiritual emergencies" or "healing crises") in order to combat your form of addiction, whether or not you consented.
SAA is a volunteer-led nonprofit, with minimal accountability, where people practice complex psychotherapy without a license and no legal supervision, sometimes posturing as sincere and helpful sponsors.
Even if you do experience criminal abuse inside your Sex Addiction program, are you willing disregard all the pressure of your fellows, and go public with your membership in a program for sex addicts, in order to seek justice?
Recovering from sexually problematic behaviors is important, and a healthy road to take.
Don’t give up. Recovery and self-improvement is possible.
Be smart about how you move forward. Good luck!
