LAA
Love Addicts Anonymous

History of LAA

Love Adddicts Anonymous was co-founded by Susan Peabody and Howard Gold in 2004.

Susan was counseling love addicts and she often sent them to SLAA. They reported that too many sex addicts were at the meetings and they wanted to be with other love adddicts. This was the purpose behind starting LAA as written in our Statement of Purpose.

Susan wrote the literature and created the website, and Howard took on the responsibility of facilitaring the first meeting on September 12, 2004. They met in Oakland, California. About 12 people attended.

In 2005, a business meeting endorsed the literature and decided that the format of LAA should include reading from a book chosen by each group. The purpose was to always have some information about recovery for those who were new, and to keep the focus on recovery as opposed to venting about the problem.

In 2006, Susan created the message for for LAA. It was small in the beginning but now it has 7,000 members.

In 2014, LAA became international. LAA was more popular around the world than in the United States.

In 2019 , the International Committee was formed to try to bring all the meetings together to make decisions. This is a work in progress.

In 2019, Susan wrote the first draft of the LAA Basic Text. It was revised according to the memebers wishes, and then approved. A vote was taken on the message board. It will be revised as we grow and can get more opinions. It is modeled on the AA Big Book with information in the begining and stories at the end.

In 2019 the South Africa LAA group created our logo .

Russia and South Africa our currently working on an LAA Step Workbook just for love addicts.

Howard has passed on, but as of 2020 Susan is still an active particpant as the administrator of the message board. She is also the webmaster. Service is part of the LAA committment. While other 12-Step programs are dwindling because of lack of service we are growing all over the world.

Susannah
Susan Peabody