LAA
Love
Addicts Anonymous
Start
Your Own Meeting
Greetings!
and thank you for your interest is starting a Love Addicts Anonymous
meeting. There is no perfect way to start a meeting. You just
need the willingness to start small and build on what you have.
Remember that LAA is a 12-Step program and that you have a Higher
Power to guide you.
To
start, you must select a time and place. The place can be anywhere.
Some people start in their living rooms. Some people find a donated
space in a church or hospital. Others pay rent.
Having
said this, I must warn you that meetings which are not linked
to some kind of local community recovery center do not last more
than six months (the tenure of the founding secretary). This is
because the word is not getting out. Most cities have some kind
of recovery center that houses other 12-Step programs. This is
ideal. Flyers can be posted in a location where they will be seen
constantly. You can also visit SLAA meetings and ask if you can
announce the separation of love addicts from sex addicts in LAA.
You will have to be very diplomatic.
Once
you find a time and location, you have to advertise the meeting.
You can post flyers all over town. In the first LAA meeting in
Oakland we put flyers in an Oakland Recovery Center, where all
kinds of 12-step programs meet, and that is how we got our first
members. Most of them transferred over from a SLAA meeting held
at the same time.
Our
early members also spread the word at other 12-step meetings they
attended like AA, O.A. and CoDA. Keep your flyers handy and pass
them out to everyone you meet, or make up some inexpensive business
cards to pass out. (Vista Print has free cards.)You can also send
the press release to local newspapers. Some of them may want to
do a story on LAA.
The
Suggested Meeting Format has evolved through trial and error.
We will provide you with an electronic version if you want. If
you are unhappy with this format, you can create your own.
We recommend keeping the 10-minute reading. We have found
that the discussion following the reading is rich with emotion
and insight because of what has been read. Choose any book you
want from the Annotated Reading List.
Note
from Susan P. LAA was founded to give love addicts their own home.
If you are new to recovery for love addiction don't worry. If
your meeting follows the suggested format, you will see that you
are reading from a book for 10 minutes and that this will be the
topic. So you learn and discuss at the same time. So even if the
meeting goes off topic you will always be learning and not just
venting.
After
months in the program you will understand love addiction. This
is how I studied the book of Alcholics Anonymous. I learned
a new page every week at the literature meeting. That is about
the right absorption rate for me. A little bit at a time.
Don't
forget to
notify us of your meeting.
PDF
files you will need to start your meeting.
