Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous

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Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) is a twelve-step program for people recovering from sex addiction and love addiction. SLAA was founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1977, by a musician who was also a member of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Though he had been a member of AA for many years, he consistently acted out and was serially unfaithful to his wife. He founded SLAA as an attempt to stop his compulsive sexual behavior.[1][2][3] SLAA is also sometimes known as the Augustine Fellowship, because early members saw much of their shared symptoms described by St. Augustine of Hippo in his work Confessions.[4] COSLAA is SLAA's auxiliary organization for family members and friends of sex addicts.

SLAA encourages members to identify their own "bottom-line behaviors." The organization identifies these behaviors as "any sexual or emotional act, no matter what its initial impulse may be, which leads to loss of control over rate, frequency, or duration of its occurrence or recurrence, resulting in spiritual, mental, physical, emotional, and moral destruction of oneself and others." Maintaining "sobriety" in the SLAA program requires abstaining from one's bottom-line behaviors. However, these behaviors are never "set in stone" and may change as SLAA members continue in the program.[2] SLAA recommends that members confine their sexual activity to monogamous relationships and that they avoid anonymous sex, casual sex, one-night stands etc. An important part of the recovery program in SLAA is developing the ability to have a healthy committed relationship.[1] To aid the achievement of this goal, SLAA discourages sexual anorexia, and the emotional and social deprivation that accompanies it.[5]

SLAA publishes the book Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, it is approved by the organization for use in their fellowship.[6]

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[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Griffin-Shelley, Eric (1994). Adolescent Sex and Love Addicts. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger. ISBN 0275946819. OCLC 29843754. 
  2. ^ a b Griffin-Shelley, Eric (1997). Sex and Love: Addiction, Treatment and Recovery. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger. ISBN 027596065X. OCLC 22662376. 
  3. ^ Irvine, Janice M. (Winter 1993). "Regulated Passions: The Invention of Inhibited Sexual Desire and Sex Addiction". Social Text 37: 203–226. doi:10.2307/466269. ISSN 0164-2472. 
  4. ^ Terry, Jennifer; Urla, Jacqueline (1995). Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253209757. OCLC 42854482. 
  5. ^ Carnes, Patrick J.; Moriarity, Joseph (1997). Sexual Anorexia: Overcoming Sexual Self-hatred. Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden. ISBN 1568381441. OCLC 45733339. 
  6. ^ Augustine Fellowship (June 1986). Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. Augustine Fellowship. ISBN 0961570113. OCLC 13004050. 

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