2026 Participant Biographies

I am a lifelong transgender person, a victim of a highly abusive childhood, and an addict starting from age 10 but now in long-term recovery from addiction. I chose early in life to do whatever was needed to become a parent. I am college educated with a BS/CS. and an engineer through my entire career, now retired. I chose late in life to go into social and physical gender transition including HRT, GAS, and FFS over the past 7 years. I have been in anonymous, 12-Step recovery from alcoholism and sex addiction since 1989, almost half my life. I have been continuously abstinent from the use of alcohol, smoking tobacco, and sexual acting-out for 28 years now. I never used "drugs", legal or illegal. I almost lost my marriage, young children, and home because of my addictions. I lost my career but started a new and better career once in recovery from my addictions. I did lose my marriage, adult children, and home when I decided to go into gender transition and came out, but I am OK thanks to the support of fellow addicts in recovery, both cis and trans. Thru the decades I have been privileged to help other addicts move into and through recovery, and to speak to many different groups of non-addicts about recovery, and what recovery has done for me and other addicts I have known. I was a serious cave explorer before addiction took me down. I am a science and technology person, religiously Agnostic, but I nevertheless have a "God Place", that being Death Valley National Park. I have lived in Massachusetts since starting college, and I currently live in Boston with my two cats, and I have the great treasure of having some true friends. I remain anonymous on-line as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and also Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous.