July 6, 2026 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the inauguration of the SCA online meetings and, stemming from them, the Online Intergroup.
In fact, this month sees Online Intergroup celebrating all of:
- 30 years of online meetings.
- 15 years of telephone meetings.
- 5 plus years of their own, independent website.
The Online Intergroup is the original provider of electronic meetings to the SCA Fellowship, they provide online and telephone meetings, and do not hold any in-person or hybrid meetings.
The Online Intergroup’s online meetings are traditional message board meetings, also known as discussion forums, where members post shares and other members can reply later, where allowed. They are not chat rooms, with real time interactions between participants, but asynchronous platforms.
The Topic Meeting, our oldest meeting, began on July 6, 1996. Organized by John F. of New York and later Paris, the online meetings grew out of the establishment of the main SCA website, SCA-Recovery.org. The first poster was SCA Co-founder Frank H. of New York. He suggested that the new online meeting should have a topic, and the meeting became the Online Topic Meeting. Typically, the meeting has had two topics per month over the years, but we currently have a monthly topic. This month’s topic is a golden oldie, Step One. We are now posting an extract from recovery literature on the topic for members to reflect on as well. Members share on the topic for themselves, and are asked not to comment on what others have said.
The Feedback Meeting, for more general sharing on SCA-related subjects, soon followed the start of the Topic Meeting, and allows feedback from other members. Its formal name is the “Feedback for Recovery Meeting.” It quickly became and remains the most visited online meeting. Feedback is not advice or criticism. It can simply mean identifying with the poster, sharing words of encouragement, or relaying program slogans or tools that have helped the responder. Through these discussions, we deepen our understanding of the subjects raised in order to further our recovery.
The Acting In Meeting is our newest meeting, some 5 years old, and is where members can share experience, strength and hope on subjects relating to acting-in behaviors connected with sexual compulsion as they choose. Again, feedback is not advice or criticism. Broad expressions of acting in can be things like the compulsive avoidance of sex or sexual anorexia, fear and avoidance of intimacy, romantic obsession, love addiction, obsessive preoccupation with sexual or romantic fantasy, over-exercising, social anxiety, social anorexia and similar issues. For some, this might involve sexual codependency, such as a person not paying attention to what they want, or do not want, sexually.
There are other areas of our site separate from the online meetings, such as the Recovery Lounge for socializing and fellowship, and the Chips & Medallions Area where members celebrating a recovery anniversary can request and be awarded a chip or medallion.
Online Intergroup also hosted some very popular daily IRC (Internet Relay Chat) meetings for a number of years, starting in 1999, but those closed down in around 2008.
In July, 2011, Online Intergroup began putting on weekly telephone meetings, beginning on Sundays but soon expanding to Wednesdays and Fridays as well by April, 2014. All three phone meetings are still being held weekly. These are voice calls offered through a telephone and internet conferencing service that is free to members, barring exceptional cases where charges may apply depending on the dial-in number called by the member, if they are not participating via the app online. July 17, 2026 marks the fifteenth anniversary of the telephone meetings.
Online Intergroup hosted its meetings on the main SCA website for 24 years, until June, 2020, when we moved to a separate website. We maintained our original site format for several months, then inaugurated our brand new, independent, modern, custom-designed and custom-built website on September 30, 2020. This hosts all of the above online meetings and the sign-up information and mechanism for the telephone meetings, together with copious recovery resources.
All of our meetings can be reached via our website:
Online Intergroup experienced some challenging years during and after the pandemic with the transition from our previous telephone conferencing service to our current, newer-generation one, and persistent technical difficulties with the registration system for the online meetings, but we have now put those behind us and are up-to-date on member registrations and general site functioning. Next on the agenda is to update some texts and restore some degraded content on the site, for which work is getting underway. We are also aiming to add content and return to some planned parts of the website that did not get completed previously.
All SCA members and all those with a desire to recover from sexual compulsion worldwide are welcome to join our meetings. Online Intergroup has had its ups and down over the years, and our meetings are generally smaller and quieter than they have been historically, but we are set on maintaining, restoring and growing our recovery community. We are happy to have reached these milestones in carrying the SCA message of recovery, and look forward to arriving at many more in the coming years!
Happy anniversary to all online and telephone meeting members, past and present!
