As I type this, it’s 2:34 a.m., and I have reached a little over eight months of sobriety. I just experienced what I believe may be the first depths of recovery but I’m not sure. When I first entered through the SA doors and was shown how to surrender my lust by my sponsor, my life changed in that moment. For the first time in over 47 years of my ever-progressing disease, I felt immediate relief from what had controlled me and my life.

I started to record my lust levels early on. I’ve used a scale from one to 10, where a 10 would be where I masturbated and lost my sobriety. I remember on day four awaking to a level nine attack. It was my first severe withdrawal from lust. It was calling out in such a severe fashion that I lay writhing in discomfort. My mind was racing and the urge to stop the discomfort was insatiable. I immediately went through the Steps my sponsor taught me: admit powerlessness and do not fight it, completely surrender it to God (visualize handing it to Him), then say, “God I need your power, please lend me your power just for today so that Thy will may be done.” I felt immediate relief, but I had to get up and focus my mind on readings from the Big Book and White Book.

Over the next eight months I recorded various levels of lust, but never another level nine. Within three short months I was experiencing levels two through four, and an occasional five. As I walked through my initial sobriety, I soon realized that when I first felt the temptation to look, if I would immediately go to God and surrender and ask for his power, He would remove it 100% of the time. But if I did not immediately go to Him and took a sip or a drink here or there, I would ingest the poison of those drinks and have to suffer the consequences that came with drinking. It would hit me in the form of an intense desire to act out. Asking God to remove it after drinking never worked. In that case I would have to let the poison dissipate and run its course. I always had two choices after drinking: act out or suffer.

After eight months of sobriety and diligently working my Steps, and in accordance with the White Books section on “The Caution” (SA 3), my sponsor agreed with my marriage counselor that it was time to make a full disclosure to my wife. She already knew a lot of my story, but she could have never imagined the sheer magnitude of the progression and the depths to which I had gone. She had read a lot of books over the last eight months about sexual addiction, and she knew I had been unfaithful—but she did not understand to what extent.

This hurt her more than I could have imagined. She learned the absolute depths I had sunk to over the last 20 years of our 30-year marriage. She had known that on a couple of occasions I was not faithful and that I had picked up a couple of women off the street—but that was it. She now sat in complete shock as I revealed the progression, which started out with drunk women, then prostitutes, then massage parlors, and finally crossing the gender line. She was horrified, and unable to comprehend the information she had just received. As we walked out of the therapist’s office I felt a strange urge that I was going to get sick, and I did. As I came out of the restroom she asked “Are you okay?” I thought to myself, “Am I okay?” I couldn’t even imagine how she was even surviving this. I was so disgusted with myself that I thought, “Who cares how I am?”

The next day she talked while I just listened. She said that she now understood the depths of the progression from the books she had read. She said she had no delusions that I was somewhere in the middle of my disease. She was angry, hurt, and sad at how far it had progressed. There was so much she could not understand. She laid down boundaries that I was not to cross—which I was very happy to follow, since I did not have to leave the home. I was not to touch her in any way. She was completely repulsed by me and she did not know if she would make it through this.

The next day we spent several hours together talking. I did 95% listening and I would only say, “Thank you for sharing.” That evening, after a long conversation lying in bed, I instinctively touched her arm without thinking about it and instantly apologized and recoiled from it like from a hot flame. In that moment she said, “I would like to hold your hand” and she touched my hand. I instantly felt a river of emotions and I began to sob uncontrollably for about five seconds. Then it suddenly shut off as I closed my eyes and began shaking my head no. I don’t know what exactly happened, but I very much wanted to experience that feeling. I had not cried to this point. In fact I have felt very little throughout this process. My sponsor and counselor have said that is because of the deep wounding I experienced as a very young child.

I have excelled in many areas of my life and provided well for my family, but my dark secret life kept me in bondage from an early age. Tonight I awoke after this incident and started to feel my feelings. It was a strange encounter with “me.” I felt as though I were sinking into my body.

I barely started feeling my emotions and then lust suddenly struck, covering them up (a level five attack). I consciously settled back into my feelings, and the lust slowly dissipated until it was completely gone. I was feeling my feelings for about 10 seconds—and then I was suddenly and violently hit with a level 9.5 lust attack. It felt like it was a “burning lust” that started in my heart and moved throughout my body. It completely incapacitated me. I was overwhelmed with the urge to masturbate to get rid of it. Since coming into SA, I had not been hit with this level of lust to date. I immediately admitted powerlessness, surrendered, and begged God for his power. The relief came instantly, as I continually cried out for God.

For some reason my body does not want me to experience these feelings. It is baffling. I do not understand why my body automatically shuts down feelings and covers them with lust. I can only believe that this is the beginning of recovery for me. I know that more and more each day I will return to explore those feelings. The touch of my wife’s hand opened a chasm that I do not yet understand nor have I ever felt in my life. I do know I want very much to explore these feelings and someday live without lust automatically covering them up. But for tonight I will just write this letter and try again tomorrow.