I am a grateful recovering sexaholic and an orthodox Jew. I have been obsessed with sex and lust almost as long as I can remember. I can recall at age twelve, sitting in the bathroom in Israel, playing with myself. By age thirteen, I was masturbating compulsively.

My father died when I was eight. As a result, my mother felt she had to be the father in our home. She was strict and held unreasonably high expectations for me, both morally and academically. For example, she taught me that I was a bad person if I slept more than five or six hours a night, so I rarely had adequate rest. The atmosphere in my boyhood home was one of extremely rigorous religious observance. I believed that I was committing an enormous sin by acting out. After each bout, I felt very guilty and promised myself I would stop, but soon I would act out again, always again. I figured I was sinning anyway, so I could sin a little more.

At age twelve, I was pushed two years ahead of my classmates into high school, a private yeshiva ruled by an iron-fisted uncle. Since my high school was a boarding school I slept in a dorm. One Friday night during the first semester, a much older boy raped me. He did it again the following week. Later, the rapist took me aside and tried to talk to me about what he had done. I denied that anything had happened. Over my denial he told me that if I ever told anyone two things would happen: first, we would be blacklisted, blocking me from attending any good school in the future; second, he would kill himself—and his blood would be on my hands.

My schoolwork, which had always been excellent, began sinking. By the second semester my grades began to decline and I was skipping classes. I coped with my scholastic failure and my family’s shame by retreating even further into lust and fantasy.

At fourteen, having come to New York, I began cruising the streets of Manhattan looking at women, riding the subways for hours at night, sidling up to female strangers. I was skipping school to be out on the streets. Even when I was in class, my mind was elsewhere. I spent hours at the windows of the school looking across campus at women in their homes. Only my mother’s frantic string-pulling kept me from being expelled any number of times for not doing the work.

My strict religious upbringing taught me that my acting out was a grievous sin and that God would punish me severely. My intense guilt did not stop me. It pushed me further into fantasy and lust, into myself. I was convinced God hated me. In my self-hate, I acted out in nonsexual ways like stealing money and merchandise. I lost interest in my religious training and became completely disconnected from God as I had once understood Him.

At age sixteen, I confided this secret world of mine—with all its shame and remorse—to some of my religious leaders. The rabbis told me that my acting out was very wrong and that God would punish me severely. They sternly warned me to amend my evil ways. When I heard their words, I hated myself even more and lost all hope of ever attaining self-esteem.

One of the rabbis gave me his telephone number to call when I wanted to act out. I called him a few times, but I did not reach out to him consistently when I was tempted. He asked me why. I was too ashamed to admit that hearing him tell me how evil my acts were only drove me deeper into lusting, sexing, and stealing.

Before long, I pursued my lust into homosexual sex. It repelled me, but I did it anyway. I had sex every week or so with a college schoolmate—swearing it off after each episode and avoiding him until the next time we acted out. Of all the ways I acted out, I hated the gay life the worst, but my hatred couldn’t bring me to stop. My college sex partner told a rabbi about us. I was referred to a rabbi-counselor who told me that marriage would channel my urges into healthier, saner things. So, at age nineteen I married the second girl I ever dated. It was a marriage arranged according to our traditions. She was my first female sex partner, and she saved me—for about three weeks. We were well matched, and we enjoyed building a home together, but she wasn’t enough. I had to have more. Sex with my wife had opened the door to my next step down—prostitutes. I acted out with every kind of prostitute from high-class call girls to strung-out streetwalkers. I loved the danger.

When I was married, I planned to finish my rabbinical studies in four to five years, but my absenteeism got me kicked out of a succession of schools. I bought a car to have easier and faster access to prostitutes. I would disappear from the house for hours, telling my wife later that the car had broken down or something. I was back to cruising city streets, X-rated movies, and peep shows. I went to bath houses. One night while I was cruising in the middle of winter, someone stole my shoes and I had to make my way home in my stocking feet.

During the High Holy Days I left my in-laws’ house allegedly to visit a rabbi. That day as I was soliciting prostitutes, a pimp threw me out of my car and stole it. The police recovered the car and notified me. When my father-in-law and I went to the station to reclaim it, the sergeant told us the driver was claiming it as payment for sex.

I started making extreme religious promises to myself like, “If I masturbate, I will fast for the rest of the day.” I slept on my bedroom floor to atone for acting out. In a year’s time all my attempts at atonement accomplished was to annoy and upset my wife.

My only thought was gratification, never consequences—until afterward. I promised myself I would stop after every encounter. I hoped a psychotherapist would help me find my ideal sexual outlet. I was still convinced that I would be satisfied once I found the perfect match.

And my insanity continued. Somehow I always had a story for my wife. I had been held up in traffic, had forgotten my license and been stopped by the police; whatever I could think of to cover the truth. My sudden disappearances terrified my wife, yet I yelled at her for rounding up the family to look for me. “Don’t you know your own husband already?” I demanded angrily. “I was just taking a walk!”

By my mid-twenties, my acting out was so draining that I could not show up for work reliably and soon could not hold a steady job. So I decided to go into business for myself. But here too I flagged. I missed appointments. I did not put in the hours the business required. I was too busy acting out. The only career I pursued with real energy was scheming new ways to escape into sex. My career was lust. I began using household money to act out. I borrowed against my credit cards and spent the money on prostitutes. My credit was ruined.

One night on a trip to the city with my family to obtain medical testing for my son, I left my family in a motel and went cruising. Here was a new city! I had to sample the prostitutes. I was arrested by an undercover policeman and spent half the night in a holding cell with three dozen drunks and vagrants who urinated on the floor. After a few hours I was moved to a small two-man cell. Sitting there, going back over my life, I felt more sober than I had in years. I swore off my sex addiction—for good (again). After my release and another story for my wife, I slept through my son’s hospital visiting hours and scored a call girl.

Soon lust made me so reckless that I started cruising my own suburban area. People from my congregation saw me with the girls and my rabbi gave me a lecture. Business associates saw me haggling with prostitutes and word got around. I knew I was ruining my reputation as a businessman and a good Jew, but danger was part of my high.

My son was born with severe cerebral palsy. He is a cripple for life. He was born the day after one of my all-night sex binges following a month in Israel in which I spent ten thousand dollars on prostitutes. I believed God punished me for acting out. For a time I stayed home and was abstinent. But soon, I was back out there.

By age thirty I was using alcohol and cocaine to intensify my lust binges with prostitutes; at thirty-three, I was a full-blown crack addict, stealing from my wife’s purse, my twelve-year-old daughter, and my business associates to pay for my prostitutes and drugs. I swore on a Bible in shul that I would stop drugging and sexing. It never even slowed me down. My business was failing; fellow businessmen knew what I was and would not deal with me.

I was spending thousands of dollars a month. I passed bad checks throughout my Jewish community, turning friends of many years against me. I became too ashamed to show my face in shul. I skipped daily prayers. I stopped answering the phone.

Thirteen years ago I took my wife and my son to Delaware for three days while he underwent surgery. I took no money, hoping that would keep me from prostitutes. Within hours after arriving I had my bookkeeper wire me five hundred dollars, and when that ran out, I cashed another $125 in bad checks with a rabbi. I spent scant minutes in the hospital with my son. I had lost all semblance of self-respect. I was out of control, and I did not know how to stop. I found Alcoholics Anonymous through a counselor, but still could not stop drinking, drugging, and lusting.

One night, desperate after a binge of lust, sex and alcohol, I called an AA member. I told him what was going on with me. I also told him how as a young boy I was taught that if I slept more than five or six hours a night I was lazy, and that I had to adhere to a strict religious observance. I had to be a yeshiva superstar. If I wasn’t a star, I was a failure. I told him about the history of inability to achieve at school, overeating, masturbating, and the progression that had brought me to my present condition. I believed that not only I was a failure at life, but that I was evil.

He responded by saying something that has stayed with me. I am not evil, he said, but sick—insane, in fact. The solution was neither to punish myself nor to resign myself to my active addiction as God’s punishment. But God could help me. Something clicked. I am insane, not evil. Since that night I have been sober from alcohol and drugs.

But I was still insane with lust. Celebrating my first AA anniversary, I went to my old cruising haunts. I was terrified. This was the way back to crack and booze in a hurry. When I got up the nerve to tell my AA sponsor about it, he told me to satiate my lust with masturbation and pornography but to stay away from prostitutes.

I continued to masturbate and stay sober from alcohol. But my lust did not sit still. With thirteen months of AA sobriety, I found myself cruising to pick up a prostitute again. I knew that acting out with a prostitute would lead me back to alcohol and drugs, and I knew that if I picked up alcohol and drugs again, I would die. Somehow I got home without acting out. It was clear to me then that lust was my drug and that I had to find a support group for my lust, or I would die. I remember the date I contacted SA twelve years ago. It is still my sexual sobriety date. I surrendered completely to God and the SA program. I followed directions from my sponsor a day at a time. I knew, and I know, and I hope I never forget, that I am insane.

I began to comprehend the depths of my insanity when I started working the Fourth through Ninth Steps. The Ninth Step is very painful for me because it reminds me of all the people I have hurt. It has also meant a prison sentence for grand larceny—another of my fundraising schemes for prostitutes and drugs.

I am not able to make direct amends to most of the people I used and hurt through lust, yet I hold myself ready to do so. In God’s time I will be given the opportunity to make amends to those people. The Tenth Step reminds me that I am insane, especially when I trip over my chief character defects—anger, resentment, self-pity, and fear. Today, God makes it possible to find a different, better, and happier way of life.

I have worked the Eleventh Step—prayer and meditation—since the day I got sexually sober. The Twelfth Step—working with others—is the strongest medicine of all, especially when I am caught up in self-pity. The days of miracles are still with us. There is a Power outside myself, greater than myself, which is ready, willing, and able to give me hourly and daily reprieves from my addictions. That One is God. I am also short-tempered, resentful, jealous, and lazy: in all these ways my life is unmanageable. But if I surrender to Him, He has proven to me He will stretch out His arms to me every minute, every hour. Twelve years sober now, I still struggle against the old feeling that I am not a good Jew. But God shows me that I am a good and caring person. I am grateful to be a sober member of SA, knowing that I am only insane, not evil, and that God will take good care of me.