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.
