Handling Travel

When travel requires us to leave the familiar comforts of home, friends, and meetings, even briefly, it is helpful to create a recovery plan.  We can often anticipate particular challenges we may face.  Prepare for your trip ahead of time with your sobriety in mind.  Some specific suggestions for travel include:

1. Attend SAA meetings or telemeetings.  To get information on either of these, contact the ISO or visit the SAA website at www.saa-recovery.org.  Although SAA has no affiliation with other twelve-step fellowships, some members choose to attend open meetings of other sex-related twelve-step groups, known as “S-Fellowships,” to work the Twelve Steps.  If no –S-Fellowship meetings are available, some members choose to attend other open twelve-step meetings, even if they are not sex-related.
2. Decide beforehand that you will avoid parts of town or people that might threaten your sobriety.
3. If television or the internet is a problem for you, request before you arrive that the television and/or the internet be removed or disconnected (Reference: Sexual Sobriety and the Internet pamphlet).
4. Discuss your travel plans with your sponsor.  You may also want to prearrange whatever contact you will need to support your recovery.
5. Make program phone calls and/or texts.  They will be even more important when you are out of town than when you are at home.
6. Book-end challenging events with phone calls and/or texts.
7. Before leaving, set up a daily recovery plan.  This might mean making agreements about prayer, meditation, literature, or other tools of SAA.

It is better to anticipate and plan for a difficult time, and find that the commitment of staying sober is manageable, than to throw ourselves headlong into a new situation without a safety net.

On occasion, some members of SAA have cut their travel plans short because the challenge of staying sober became too difficult.  Returning early is not a failure but an act of courage and self-care.  Ultimately, you and your sobriety are more important than whatever you might have wanted to accomplish during your trip.  Sobriety is the foundation upon which our lives are built.