My descent into addiction closely parallels the development of the Internet. In 1992, Newsweek featured a cover story highlighting this developing phenomenon. Around the same time, my employer gave us Internet access, and I started reading erotic stories online. As a youth I had occasionally enjoyed letters to the editor in men’s magazines, but I hadn’t read those in years. Now, an idle dalliance at work gradually increased in power and time commitment until it occupied at least an hour a day in my office.

I was one of the first users of the Internet at my workplace, and one day I invited some colleagues to check out this innovative technology. During the demo, I clicked on a random site I had bookmarked. It turned out to be a porn site that I didn’t remember bookmarking. I made up a lame excuse, saying that the browser must have sent me that site—but I don’t think anyone was fooled.

Erotic stories led to pictures which led to videos, but my crack cocaine was chat rooms. I also began exploring a same-sex lust, which I had been aware of over the years but which I had never yet acted upon. Now, my Internet exploration confirmed my same-sex attraction. It was strong and powerful. Chat rooms led me to sexual highs that I’d been trying to recreate since my first orgasm at age 14.

Eventually I began chatting with other married men who were seeking same-sex liaisons. As I chatted with them, sex with another man began to seem normal and inevitable, yet I knew that taking that step would violate everything I believed about marriage and commitment. I was not personally convinced that monogamy was the only viable option for successful relationships, but my wife believed in total commitment and monogamy, and I had made that commitment to her.

Now however, as I entertained fantasies and got closer to meeting men for sex, I recognized that I had a progressive and unmanageable compulsive illness. I sought help from a well-known therapist who was reputed to be one of the world’s experts on sexual compulsivity. Today I believe that was the beginning of my Step One—I understood that my life was unmanageable. Unfortunately, it took me 12 more years to realize that I was also powerless over my addiction.

In therapy I learned to accept my urges toward men, and to understand family-of-origin issues. But my disease continued to progress. I began a series of random sexual encounters with men I met online. I was referred to a therapy group for men with sexual compulsivity. Eventually I was able to stop all my addictive behaviors—except for masturbation, which I thought was fine!—for about four years.

Then one Sunday, when I was at work and resentful about being there, I decided to take “just one glance” at an old favorite chat room site, to see how it looked after five years of additional technology. I immediately found myself in sensory overload, bombarded with private chat windows, now with photos added. I entered my “addiction zone”: a state of total mental and body arousal with an intense need to satisfy my craving. I met up that very afternoon with another man and continued to binge for the next nine months.

I was a very ugly person in those days. I was isolated, snappish and reactive at home. I was often late to important family events because I was stuck online and couldn’t get myself to stop, and I was angry with my wife because I believed that she was driving me to this behavior! My employer received several complaints about me—something that had never happened before in my 20 years of medical practice.

I rejoined the therapy group, and the members eventually demanded that I disclose my acting out to my wife. I wanted to protect her from the pain of learning that her husband had random sex with other men, but they said she might actually prefer to be given the choice about whether to remain in a marriage with a guy who is engaging in such behavior.

Eventually, on a “date night,” my wife asked me if I was happy with our relationship. I disclosed everything. I knew that the truth was the truth, and secrecy would not change the truth. I felt some relief, along with great fear that this might mean the end of my marriage. My wife was deeply hurt—but, remarkably, she decided that she loved me enough to stay in the relationship.

We saw a couples therapist, and I convinced myself, my therapist, and my wife that in order to honor “my homosexual side,” it was most appropriate for me to masturbate with same-sex fantasy. My wife was skeptical, but since my therapist agreed, who was she to argue?

I abstained from same-sex encounters for the next five years, but was still masturbating a lot and watching gay porn while on business trips. These behaviors had been my pattern throughout my so-called “recovery.” After a while I started visiting gay hookup sites again. I never mentioned those behaviors to my relapse prevention group, my therapist, or my wife.

I complained to the therapist that things weren’t getting better. He suggested that I spend some time in our sessions considering what life would be to live as a gay man. I resisted the idea because, frankly, none of the sex I had with men ever made me any happier, and I did enjoy sex with my wife. I was also afraid that if I gave serious consideration to choosing a gay lifestyle, I would never return from it.

My disease progressed to frightening depths. After seven years of not acting out with men, I became obsessed with setting up liaisons for my business trips. Then I started hooking up with men in town. Cyber sex, phone sex, and masturbation were no longer satisfying. Eventually I found myself in a hotel room in New Orleans with a guy I had met before. After an evening of unsatisfying sex, I woke up and found that I couldn’t wait for him to leave. Several months later he disclosed to me that he was HIV positive.

I came home and told my therapist that I’d been lying about my sobriety for at least a year. I asked him whether he thought a Twelve Step program might help, and he agreed that many people find these programs helpful. I also had to tell my relapse prevention group that I had not been fully honest with them for several years. Several of these men are also in SA or AA, and they encouraged me to try the Twelve Step approach. Next came the inevitable second disclosure to my wife. She wailed like a wounded animal, displaying the worst pain I could ever imagine inflicting upon the woman I loved.

I fell into a deep depression and stopped acting out on December 7, 2009—but I was reluctant to attend SA at first because I did not believe the sobriety definition made any sense. Then in late December, I attended my first SA meeting. There I found a bunch of honest men willing to share their stories and their phone numbers with me—including single guys happily living within the SA definition of sexual sobriety. The members immediately directed me to attend as many meetings as I could, so I began attending five or six meetings a week. I cancelled all my business trips for six months.

My first sponsor told me to talk to two or three guys a day. I didn’t like making calls, but I followed his direction. One day when I was triggered in a locker room at the gym, I realized that my same-sex lusting wasn’t any different from opposite-sex lusting; in both cases, erotic energy was directed away from my primary love relationship, and was taking something from someone who probably did not want to be lusted after. I realized that I was in no way unique because of my same-sex lusting and deserved no special accommodations. And I realized that my therapist had been right: as long as I was fanning my lust with same-sex fantasy and masturbation, I could not know “true union” with my wife.

My wife was not happy that I had chosen a gay man as a sponsor. I was adamant that he was among the most wise and sober guys in our fellowship (true to this day), and that it was good for my recovery to have healthy, boundary-filled relationships with gay men (one of our therapists had said so!). Hearing that, my sponsor fired me. He noted that it was not accidental that I had chosen one of the few gay men in the fellowship to be my sponsor, and that if my goal was to stay in my marriage, having a “that’s her problem” attitude was not going to help me achieve my goals.

My second sponsor (a rough-and-tumble-former-high-school-jock-serial-womanizer) worked with me on my Step One, which I shared with my home group after 90 days of sobriety. Even though I’d already read three versions to my sponsor (each version moving farther away from my “sexalog” and more focused on my powerlessness and unmanageability), declaring who I was out loud before my group felt different.

Reading my First Step was like seeing myself in a movie—unsanitized, without airbrushing or soft-pedaling. The image was not pleasant; it was the opposite of the wonderful guy I had told myself I was. Yet during the feedback period, I felt total acceptance and extraordinary love in the room. For the first time, I felt the presence of a Higher Power. This launched me into Step Two. I believed that—just perhaps—some kind of power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.

As a lifelong agnostic, I struggled with Step Three. I felt disconnected from the guys who were earnestly sharing about their connections to a Higher Power, and I worried that I could not move forward with Step Three. But my Higher Power works in amazing ways.

At the time, the father of one of my SA mentors was dying, and I had been helping my friend as his father’s disease progressed. When I called him to discuss my distress around Step Three, I learned that his father had died. I sobbed as if it were my own father, who died when I was 16. I realized that in helping my friend, I had been trying to save my own dad. And just as I couldn’t save my father, I couldn’t save his.

This was a magic Higher Power moment for me—a mutual drama of healing, support, and redemption. I can’t explain it. I immediately rewrote my Second and Third Step, convinced that a Higher Power was at work in my life. I became totally willing to turn my will and care of my life over to that Higher Power.

I continued my Step work with a loving sponsor and began working with sponsees of my own. My life was becoming more spiritual than it had ever been; I felt that I had experienced the promised spiritual awakening. Yet my true spiritual awakening surprised me. The turning point was just last year, when our local Intergroup decided to host the July 2013 SA International Convention in Baltimore.

In the beginning, we were eager to highlight the growth of our local fellowship and show off our city. Yet early on, the enterprise nearly collapsed because of differences of opinions among the members of our steering committee. I called my sponsor. Before I even told him why I was calling he said, “It’s your ego, Steve. Conventions are nice, but they aren’t that important. Get over it.” Then I went out for a long bike ride. As I was huffing uphill, I thought that perhaps our local fellowships weren’t ready for this challenge, and perhaps we could hold a convention in the future instead. Then, once I made that surrender, amazing things began to happen!

The steering committee was able to overcome the impasses that had stymied us, and we gelled into a wonderful working group. Rather than highlighting our local members, our program committee decided to reach out to SA members all over the world. The outpouring of volunteer support was extraordinary. So last July, a rather generic business hotel was transformed into a “City of Recovery,” 800 souls strong. Hallways bustled with people, laughter, tears, hugs, spirit, and most definitely a Higher Power. I felt privileged to be involved.

That last morning, as I participated in an old-timers panel, I found myself weeping at some of the shares, including mine. During the closing session, I wept again as I shared my gratitude. I realized that apart from being a dad to my three kids, this convention felt like the greatest thing with which I had ever been involved.

The following Monday, I knew something was different when I saw a junior colleague—someone whom I had resented for many years—and all I felt toward him was love. I found myself crying with my patients, which certainly wasn’t efficient for directing a clinic! So I went into our meditation room, fell on my knees sobbing, and right there had a life-altering spiritual experience. I felt myself in the hands of my Higher Power, embraced in love. And most amazingly, I felt the presence of my father who died when I was 16. I felt nothing but his love—the one thing which I have longed most for in the 39 years since his death. I felt my God-sized hole filled. My Higher Power stayed with me that day, and now—whenever I let my ego go and reach out to others—I can tap into that Power. For a man who was a life-long agnostic, this is incredible!

Since that experience, I’m better able to feel and to give love. I have wonderful male friends in the fellowship whom I truly love, in the most healthy way possible. I still have same-sex attraction—I believe that is part of my “wiring.” However, when I am visually triggered, I can use the tools of the program: I can pray for the person, pray for my Higher Power to remove my lusting, and call one of my brothers to surrender my lust. If the trigger is someone I must engage with, I make sure to look him in the eyes, and address him as a person and not as an object. The lustful feelings evaporate. My relationship with my wife has never been stronger. We are emotionally open, mutually respectful, and very loving.

This past year, an incredible career opportunity found me—but it required a relocation, which neither my wife nor I wanted. Working our individual programs, we have negotiated the first phases of a complex move with plenty of humor and love. While getting to know new SA and S-Anon communities, we will also be returning to Baltimore and our home groups on a regular basis. I believe that this is part of my Higher Power’s plans for us.

I’m definitely a “work in progress.” My sponsor warns me that to maintain the spiritual connection, I must continue to work Steps Ten through Twelve daily. I know he’s right. I take frequent Tenth Step inventories during the day, make amends on the spot whenever possible, take brief breaks for meditation throughout the day, and frequently use the Third Step prayer when beginning my day, as well as the Seventh Step prayer when I sense my character defects coming out.

The program works, but it takes work. It takes lots of meetings, lots of phone calls, lots of Step work, and lots of service. I always believed that at heart I was a good person. But my character defects promoted a spiritual sickness leading to progressive addiction. The SA program and my Higher Power have allowed my best self to re-emerge from the diseased person I had become. I never knew the “road of happy destiny” would be filled with so much gratitude and joy.