The Europe and Middle East Region (EMER) of Sexaholics Anonymous (SA) was formed on 8th December 2011 by the vote of five SA Intergroups — in Flanders (Belgium), Ireland, Israel, Netherlands and UK. Six more — Finland, Francophonia (Be/Fr/Lux), Poland, Russia, Slovakia and Spain — have since joined and one (Israel) has left to form a Region of its own.

I had been in the program for several years before I finally met Roy K. I remember Roy’s passion for spreading in his conversations as well as his writing the message, his courage, and his principles.

For the past 25 and-a-half years, my life and my recovery have been interwoven with Roy’s. I was first introduced to the concept of sobriety through the SA brochure that he had written. Over the years this man was always available to talk to me and share with me his experience, strength, and hope of recovery.

I remember when I first met Roy, in 1983. He appeared nervous around me, but not nearly as nervous as I felt around him. I expected to find a number of sober women who could tell me how to stay sober. I found only a few women, and none of them had six months of sobriety in our program. In fact, I had the longest sobriety time behind Roy and Jess L.—and I only had one month!

Roy, this resolution of appreciation from the fellowship of Sexaholics Anonymous to you is long overdue. It is a humble attempt on the part of the General Delegate Assembly, as servants of SA, to put into words our sincere gratitude for your life and work on behalf of our Fellowship.

In the summer of 2001, I spoke with women in other 12 Step fellowships who identified themselves as having SA issues. At the time, only two women were active in SA groups in San Diego. Other women were reluctant to come to SA because the fellowship was mainly men. I began to think how lovely it would be to gather all of these women in one room so that they could hear that other women have similar issues.

Sex was the dominant thing in my mind from my earliest memory. I was deeply obsessed about what was under my cousins’ dresses from the time I was in first or second grade. Lots of kids tried to play doctor, but for me it was an intense preoccupation.

Today the world is adrift on a sea of rapidly shifting mores. Every aspect of our lives and sexual thinking is affected. Thousands of voices clamor for attention, preaching new “freedoms” of every kind. Was it not but a few years ago that “shacking up”—what the courts called “cohabitation”—was thought to be abnormal? Today it is called a “meaningful relationship” or having a “significant other.”

Recently a former sponsee came to me in a personal crisis. He was in a financial jam that I saw was clearly the consequences of his disease. I “let him have it,” for his own good of course, and with the best of intentions.

For years, SA outreach depended to a large extent on occasional visits outside the US by sober members, and regular telephone outreach in response to inquiries, carried out almost entirely by Roy K. The first task of Indrei R. and Jose-Maria R., as co-chairs of the International Committee, was to work out a modus operandi between ourselves as Roy’s successors and to set up a network of international contacts around the world.

Sexaholics Anonymous observed a major milestone in the convocation of the first Oversight Assembly on Friday, January 12, 1996. In attendance, were SA members with at least three years of sobriety, elected, or drawn, from the eight geographical regions: Northwest, Southwest, North-Midwest, South-Midwest, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and International.

At an international conference sometime in the early 1990s, I was standing at the entrance of the hotel restaurant and I noticed some papers lying by the cash register. I picked them up and read: “Desire for Sobriety: daily renewal with sobriety partners.” I thought, hmmm, probably this wasn’t meant to be left by the cash register. I looked around the almost empty dining room and saw Jim E. and Harry B.

I have been thinking about some of the old-timers that I have been blessed to know. When I came into the program in 1990 there were Roy K. and Jess L. and Harvey A. Being from Oklahoma and I was in meetings with her, I knew Sylvia J. There have been some other wonderful people.

As we are present in Germany since 1984 with the first SA group starting in Karlsruhe, we have already translated the majority of the English books, brochures and flyers into German and they are used as conference approved SA literature in German SA meetings.

My name is Roy and I’m a recovering sexaholic.
I’m very pleased to be here. The SA groups from the United States and Canada send their greetings and are with us here today. I have mixed feelings, very emotional feelings being here, and the feelings are all good — too good to be true.

The word from the S.A. members around the country is unity. We’re being welded together in a fellowship of recovery. Men and women are getting sober! Coming out of themselves into the light, and making contact with other members. Coming to. Becoming part of the healing process of each other’s lives. That’s good news.

This magazine cover presented Roy K. with the possibility that for his sexual acting out there might be hope in a 12 Step program:

I had three prayers before I got sober in AA in 2003. They were:
1. “God, give me what I want.”
2. “God, please make this person do what I want.”
3. “God, if you get me out of this one I promise I’ll never do it again.”

A recent issue of the AA magazine Grapevine drew my attention when I read something close to “Coincidence is God’s way of staying amazing.” After seeing that I remembered, “Half measures availed us nothing…. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon.”

I am approaching a milestone in my recovery. It’s not an anniversary “birth date” so much as an oddity of my sobriety date and the Gregorian calendar. I am about to achieve 7 years, 7 months, and 7 days of sobriety, if I choose to follow God’s will again for the next few days. Oddly enough, again due to a calendar oddity, it will also be 2,777 days of continuous sobriety.