It’s 4:23 a.m. as I write this. Before getting up to write, I had lain in bed for half an hour processing a close call. The close call was not the trip to the emergency room we made the night before, when my daughter needed medical attention. When that happened I called my sponsor, and he warned me of possible temptations resulting from the disturbance we had experienced. But I honestly had no desire to act out, and my 94 days of sobriety were serving me well. Before I went to bed, I asked my Higher Power to keep me sober through this difficult time.

The following day brought relief from the medical emergency, and as the shock and stress from the earlier night dissipated, I again felt at ease. I could relax. But then it struck. While answering some social media requests on how my daughter was doing, I noticed an image that tempted me to look. Within seconds I was viewing the image. In the previous 94 days, when confronted with the same sort of temptation, I immediately admitted powerlessness, surrendered the temptation, asked my Higher Power to lend me his strength just for that moment, prayed “Thy will, not mine be done” (SA 70), and faithfully the temptation would be removed.

But this time—just for a brief moment—I drank in the poison of the image. I immediately got scared and quickly shut off the image. I admitted powerlessness, surrendered, and asked my Higher Power for strength, just as I had for the last 94 days. But in that one moment, I had let in lust. The poison had entered my system and was now coursing through my veins. The effects would not show up until hours later.

That night, my wife and I said our prayers as usual and prepared for bed. We were both exhausted from the activities of the day before, and were looking forward to a nice long night of much-needed restful sleep. But as I lay there, I began to feel the effects from the poison I had taken in earlier: I was irritable, restless, and discontent. Lust was calling me. I breathed deeply, prayed, and asked my Higher Power to take it away. But the better time to have asked for help was before I viewed the image. I knew this from my early days of sobriety. Now I had two choices: I could act out, or I could wait for the poison to dissipate.

As I lay there suffering, allowing the poison to run its course, my wife pressed in close, seeking comfort from the events that had unfolded the preceding day. A voice in my mind was saying, “It’s okay, you’re married,” but my heart knew that the act would be pure and simple lust, not intimacy. I also knew that no one would ever know this, and my sobriety date would remain intact because technically, I would not have acted out if I had sex with my wife. But deep inside I knew that having sex with her at that moment would only feed my lust, and it would strengthen the poison that was coursing through my veins. I knew that if I gave in to the desire to be free of the irritability, restlessness, and discontent, then the poison would double in volume, and the intensity of the desire would increase. As much as it was killing me, I needed to writhe in the discomfort until the poison dissipated from my body. I lay there for what seemed like hours until I passed out from exhaustion.

I awoke to a peaceful bliss. The poison was gone. After contemplating the event, I realized that if I had given in to the closeness my wife was seeking, I would have lost my sobriety. No one would have ever known, but I would have known. I would have had to announce at the next meeting, “My name is Dennis, and I have been sexually sober for 24 hours.”

I learned a lot from this experience. I learned that I need to seek my Higher Power before I drink the poison, when I’m first being tempted. Sometimes it seems that I’m walking through a jungle surrounded by poisonous thorns. Some of them I honestly do not see coming, and those are the ones that my Higher Power helps to remove immediately. But the temptations I choose to brush up against are on me—and then I must suffer one of two outcomes: act out or suffer.

Today I have 118 days of sobriety, after having had 42 years of disease. When I stepped into my first meeting 118 days ago, my life changed dramatically. I do not need to be convinced that my disease is progressing and that I am powerless over it. I never want to enjoy it or control it again. I do not know how many days I have left on this earth, but I want to live every one with God’s presence in my life. That is something I have wished for, for years.

I am faithfully doing everything my sponsor suggests. I wish I had found SA years ago, but like they say, “You’re never late to your first meeting.” We get here when the time is right.

I don’t know much about recovery, but I do know a great deal about my disease. I am so looking forward to each day as new insights are being revealed. The longer I travel this path of sobriety, the more aware I become of the jungle and its dangers. The more I prepare myself beforehand by asking my Higher Power for his strength, the better the chance I will have to live one more day in this beautiful journey of sobriety and recovery.