Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous traces its origins to a single individual – a man in his twenties living in the Boston area who had years earlier achieved sobriety from alcohol through Alcoholics Anonymous, only to discover that compulsive sexual and romantic behavior had continued to consume his life. Despite working the Twelve Steps and being active in A.A., he found himself trapped in obsessive entanglements, unable to remain faithful to his marriage, and powerless to end affairs even when he desperately wanted to. The parallels to alcoholism were unmistakable to him: loss of control, progressive consequences, and a pattern that persisted regardless of his intentions.
In September 1976, facing what he described as a genuine crisis of sanity, he made a decisive break from his most consuming relationship and entered a period of full withdrawal – not just from that specific person, but from all compulsive sexual and romantic behavior. The months that followed were marked by intense emotional pain, identity crisis, and repeated temptation, but also by a growing sense of dignity and self-knowledge he had never before experienced. He kept a running journal of his thoughts and feelings, leaned on his existing A.A. community where he could, and gradually began to recognize the specific behaviors that had fueled his addiction.
By December 1976, convinced that lasting recovery would require the fellowship of others who truly understood this particular affliction, he began sharing his story openly – at A.A. meetings, in conversations, and in the community around him. Out of those conversations, a small group of four people – two men and two women, each with their own distinct but recognizable pattern of compulsive sexual and emotional behavior – gathered in his Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment on December 28, 1976, for the first meeting of what they were calling Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. They structured it on the model of Alcoholics Anonymous, sharing their stories without holding anything back. That first meeting lasted about three hours.
Early Growth and Struggle
Growth was slow and fragile in the early years. The fellowship met monthly at first, and many people came in the grip of a crisis, found some relief, and drifted away once the immediate pain subsided. By late 1977, a second member had gone through his own genuine withdrawal and recovery, confirming that what the founder had experienced was replicable. Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, S.L.A.A. grew steadily by word of mouth, expanding from a single meeting in the Boston area to groups on the West Coast and eventually to meetings in a number of U.S. cities.
Incorporation and the First Conference
In 1980, S.L.A.A. adopted a motion to incorporate in Massachusetts, a step that would eventually require formal governance structures. Massachusetts law required annual officer elections, which helped catalyze the creation of more organized fellowship-wide services. On January 14, 1984, eighteen people gathered at Grace Episcopal Church in Newton, Massachusetts, for the first formal Fellowship-Wide Services Conference. At that meeting, the group decided to publish Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, the S.L.A.A. Basic Text, formed a committee to develop a compensation plan for the book’s authors and editors, and voted to change language in the Twelfth Step. A financial report from that inaugural year showed just $1,115 in donations and $663 in expenses – a modest but meaningful start.
The Board of Trustees
In 1983, the Board of Trustees of the Augustine Fellowship, S.L.A.A., Fellowship-Wide Services, Inc. was formally established to oversee the fellowship’s legal and operational affairs. In its earliest days, the Board was extremely small – at one point consisting of only the co-founder himself, due to the difficulty of finding members with sufficient sobriety. He made a special trip to the West Coast in 1987 to broaden the Board’s geographical reach, and the effort succeeded in establishing representation from both coasts.
Those early Board meetings, held four times a year by telephone, addressed foundational questions: obtaining tax-exempt status, securing copyright permissions from Alcoholics Anonymous World Services for adapted versions of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, planning the first General Service Conference, and determining the Board’s appropriate processes. One early policy, established in 1983, required keeping written records of all meetings, capturing the substance of discussions and summaries of votes, and keeping Board meetings closed except when a fellowship member requested to present a matter in person. Originally known as the Board of Directors, the body was renamed the Board of Trustees in 1989 to reflect the Twelve Traditions principle of trusted servanthood.
The Board grew over time, ranging from as few as one member to as many as nine, which became its full complement. Sobriety requirements for trustees, originally set at six months of continuous self-defined sobriety, were raised to one year in 1986 and then to three years in 1990. Meeting frequency increased as well, and in 1989, the Board began holding an additional in-person meeting each year alongside its regular conference call schedule.
The Basic Text
Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, the S.L.A.A. Basic Text – drawn from the lived experiences of the fellowship’s early members – was approved as official S.L.A.A. literature at the 1984 Conference and published in 1986. The co-founder had made completing the Basic Text a personal priority, understanding that the message needed to be preserved in writing, regardless of what might become of the service’s structure. Its publication was timed to coincide with S.L.A.A.’s tenth anniversary, celebrated at the January 1987 Fellowship-Wide Services Conference. The book’s release significantly increased demand for literature, and Board volunteers helped manage the small F.W.S. office, then located in a church attic in Newton, Massachusetts, answering letters and filling orders.
Maturing into a National Organization
The transition of Board responsibility following the 1986 Conference marked what those involved described as a sign of maturity – S.L.A.A. becoming a national organization capable of governing itself. Through the early 1990s, the fellowship continued to grow, and its operational infrastructure deepened. The F.W.S. office moved to a new, larger location in the same area and hired full-time staff. The Board expanded its committee structure to handle the growing range of fellowship business, eventually establishing thirteen standing committees – later consolidated to three in 2003 as part of a strategic planning process – covering governance, finance, and public relations.
The annual fellowship gathering also evolved. Originally called the “F.W.S. Conference,” it was renamed the S.L.A.A. Annual Business Conference/Meeting (ABC/M). Beginning in 1990–1991, a separate recovery-focused gathering, the S.L.A.A. International Recovery Convention was established alongside it. The host city began rotating by geographic region to encourage broader participation, and in 1996, the fellowship approved a Travel Equalization Fund to help offset higher travel costs for members attending from greater distances.
Into the 21st Century
In 2006, the F.W.S. office relocated from Boston, Massachusetts to San Antonio, Texas. In 2013, the Annual Business Conference approved a motion to reincorporate in Texas. Because Texas and Massachusetts law did not permit a straightforward reincorporation or merger, the organization formed a new Texas corporation and formally transferred its assets. The process concluded in 2015, when The Augustine Fellowship, S.L.A.A., Fellowship-Wide Services, Inc. became the new Texas corporation and the original Massachusetts corporation was dissolved.
S.L.A.A. was well on its way to becoming a truly global fellowship.
S.L.A.A. Today
What began with four people in a Cambridge apartment has grown into a worldwide fellowship. As of July 1, 2026, S.L.A.A. includes more than 70 Intergroups, more than 2,000 registered Groups across nearly 60 countries. The service structure – described visually as an inverted triangle, with ultimate authority residing in the collective conscience of the fellowship’s membership – flows from individual groups through intergroups to the Annual Business Conference and the Board of Trustees.
At its core, the history of S.L.A.A. is the story of people who found that the Twelve Step model could be applied to a form of suffering that had no name when the fellowship was founded, and who, in finding each other, discovered that recovery was possible!
F.W.S. appreciates the work of the S.L.A.A. 50th Anniversary IRC team who contributed to this history, including archivist Rita H., trustee Chris D., webmaster John D., and founding member Rich H.
