S.A. At 40 Years!
SA has grown so much in the last forty years it’s hard to know where to begin. From its humble beginnings in Los Angeles, CA, SA has exploded into an International Fellowship. Today, SA is comprised of twelve regions with four within Europe and the Middle East and our newest region in Central and South America.
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.
