In July 1985, a man loaned me a copy of an earlier version of the White Book. I read it twice in two weeks. My mind was numbed by remnants of the lust drug, and I couldn’t take in a lot of it. But what I remember is the tremendous feeling of hope I felt after decades of misery and failure.

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.

I first met Roy—at a distance—when I attended my first international convention in Oklahoma City in December 1985. I had about four months of sobriety back then. Someone pointed Roy out to me but I did not formally introduce myself.

The first I heard of Roy’s death was from a message on my voicemail. I felt a sudden and deep sadness to hear of his passing. 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.

I would like to share my memories of Roy K., who was perhaps second only to my father in influencing my life for the better.

When I was asked if I wanted to share anything with the GDA, I thought about it and welcomed the opportunity. First, Iris and I ask God’s richest blessing on all who have expressed concern and have offered prayer. We bless you. I love this very special fellowship of the Spirit, which on the personal relationship level can go so very deep as we “bear one another’s burdens” and so fulfill the law of love. Thank you!

I had just arrived at the Nashville airport when I got a voicemail from Jim. The message was “I just got back from the doctor and he told me I have six months to live.” Jim was dead within two weeks. After receiving the message, I immediately called him. I told him how much I loved him and how he was always the brother I never felt I really had.

Today the world is adrift on a sea of rapidly shifting mores. Change is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. The last eighty years have surpassed the rate of change of the last eight thousand, and the last thirty have probably surpassed it all. Every aspect of our lives and sexual thinking are affected.

My sobriety date is January 1, 1991. The longer I am sober, the more I need a meeting because I am close to a relapse. Why, you may ask? Well, there are a lot of new people, but not a lot of people with long-term recovery. That tells me that I am closer than ever to relapse. What I have been doing has been working for me, so I keep doing it.

Recently my sponsor in another 12-Step program pointed out a sentence in the Big Book that I hadn’t paid special attention to before. It comes in Chapter 11, A Vision For You. The reading has to do, in part, with events surrounding a business trip by Bill W., the co-founder of AA, when he was just six months sober.

I believe that Steps One and Two are by far the hardest Steps, because they require no work—only belief and conviction born out of suffering. I was deluded about my understanding of Steps One and Two for many years. I hadn’t suffered enough, I hadn’t believed enough, and my conviction to change was weak.

As a teenager, I was pushed into treatment. I learned about Twelve Step programs there and worked my way through Step Five, but it was only the barest of beginnings and I really didn’t understand how the Steps worked. I loved the program, the history, the meetings, the instant friends everywhere, and the fellowship. I took on many service jobs. My understanding of recovery was to go to lots of meetings, participate in the fellowship, and have fun.

I suffer from a sort of hyper-vigilance. Something in me wants to identify and define every object, every person, every angle and surface in my physical environment. My ears are open; my eyes are taking in the very texture of things around me. This drive to know everything that’s going on around me could be a useful trait if I were Batman and dwelt in Gotham City.

In early recovery, sexual dreams were a new and scary experience. Prior to sobriety, I had only experienced one “wet dream.” It occurred early in what turned out to be eleven and half years of celibacy. The only SA program literature available at the time seemed to indicate that these dreams were a loss of sobriety, so I re-set my sobriety date each time one occurred.

Although I have discovered a number of people I had harmed who did not appear in my Fourth Step, the list of people against whom I held resentments was an excellent place to begin. I had to remember that in the Eighth Step I was merely making the list.

I am a grateful recovering sexaholic and an orthodox Jew. I have been obsessed with sex and lust almost as long as I can remember. I can recall at age twelve, sitting in the bathroom in Israel, playing with myself. By age thirteen, I was masturbating compulsively.

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.

My name is ____________________ (fill in the blank). I have a disease/disorder/dysfunction/addiction/mental illness (whatever you want to call it) where my brain tells me I should:

What has stuck in my mind and simply won’t let go since our last phone call is the term “sexual nurturing” as something being supplied by your spouse. I’d like to share my thoughts and maybe learn some things when we talk further on the subject.

I was a lady and ladies just aren’t sex addicts. So I told myself when I thought of joining SA. No, I didn’t have that problem; it was my ex-boyfriend’s problem. The sexual behaviors that we argued about doing were not the problem. He just needed to stop taking care of his ex-wife.