I was born in 1947, the middle of five children in a Catholic family. My oldest brother died of a mental illness when he was 30. I don’t remember much of my childhood, except that I seemed to be in a constant state of fear.

I never did well in school. I was devastated when I learned that I would have to repeat the seventh grade. Around the same time, I entered puberty. I found a pleasurable friend in masturbation. But as the compulsion grew worse, the pleasure turned into guilt, shame, and remorse. My friend became my enemy.

In the eighth grade, I turned to weightlifting and football for relief. Our football team did well. For a while I was less preoccupied with self. I even enjoyed school. However, one day I injured my sciatic nerve while lifting weights. This ended my football career. I found myself fantasizing about sex more. I couldn’t get home fast enough to masturbate. I also began visiting prostitutes.

The summer after ninth grade I felt a calling from God to become a priest. I had a secondary motivation: I thought the priesthood might cure my addiction. I applied to the seminary but was told to wait because my grades needed improvement.

I met a girl in my sophomore whom I really loved. We went steady for three years. I wanted to do the right thing, so I stopped visiting prostitutes—but we were still acting out by having mutual masturbation. Still, everything was beautiful for a time. Then God intervened.

I asked my counselor about being a monk, since I couldn’t apply to seminary. He gave me books about the monastic life. As I read the literature, I started thinking about my girlfriend, my money, my car, and my freedom. I was in torment until one night, when I made the decision to go into the monastery. Then, a great peace came over me.

I entered a monastery when I was 18. The first week, I was so homesick and lovesick that I vomited every morning. I told my Higher Power that if I vomited on the seventh day, I would go home. Well, the seventh day I was peaceful and I didn’t vomit!

After six weeks, I was sent to another monastery for a one-year novitiate. That year was a blessing. Even though I had gone to a Catholic high school, I had never been interested in faith-related matters. Now, everything was new and I loved it.

At the end of my first year I had my wisdom teeth pulled. The surgery was difficult and painful. As a result of the pain, I started masturbating again. I had had a year of abstinence, but that would be the last time for years to come that I would be free from masturbation.

When I was 20, I started at the Catholic University. I also took my three-year vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability. I took the vow of chastity, figuring that once I settled down, I would be okay.

I graduated in May of 1971. Because of my constant struggles in school, graduation felt like a great accomplishment—a miracle from God! After graduation, I took my final vows. I thought again about the vow of chastity. I still had no solution for my sex addiction. I had to trust God and hope for the best. I continued to pray and search for a solution.

In 1972, I started teaching and counseling at our high school. This was extremely difficult because I was so timid, but I got through the year. A jail chaplain asked me to help him with counseling and serving Mass at the jail that year. I was excited about helping him, and again started thinking about becoming a priest. This time, I was encouraged to apply to seminary. I began my studies the following fall.

I decided to get a Master’s degree in criminal justice so I could become a prison chaplain. I chose a university in Texas that offered the program. As I drove there, I had severe anxiety attacks. I was always filled with fear when I encountered new situations.

I interned as a prison chaplain at the local Department of Criminal Justice, in the psychiatric treatment center. The inmates had pornography pasted all over their walls. For three months, I saw these images eight hours a day. This fueled my lust to the point that I started buying my own pornography on a regular basis.

In 1975, I began my fourth year in theology. This was an important year because in June I would be ordained a priest. I often wondered when I would stop masturbating and viewing pornography. I talked with a moral theologian and a psychologist, but neither of them had a solution. I felt like two persons. The inner tension caused severe headaches. I got a prescription for pain pills, and I soon became addicted to them.

In June 1976, I was ordained a priest. I started conducting Mass at the county jail. Unfortunately, now that I was working at the jail instead of the monastery, I could come and go as I pleased—and my sex and drug addictions took off at full speed.

For three years, I would pop pills, wash them down with wine, and hit the streets to pick up prostitutes. I achieved some control by flooding my brain with spiritual reading. I cut down my pill intake as well as the frequency of using pornography and masturbating. However, it would be 10 more years before I would find the Real Solution.

Several members of the Mafia were housed in our jail. I visited them daily. Over time, I became close friends with the mob outside of the jail. They trusted me, because I didn’t want to know their business. I visited their families, helped their children, baptized their babies, blessed marriages, annulled marriages, heard confessions, and served them Communion.

I partied with members of the mob at restaurants and at their clubhouse. They bought me expensive clothes and paid for nice vacations. I tried to be a priest to them, but my addictions affected my judgment. In the end, I lowered myself by providing contraband to the incarcerated mob. My life was out of control.

My last year at the jail was like a constant tornado. My mob friends had been moved to other prisons around the country. My sex addiction went into remission because my drug addiction was at its peak. I had mood swings between rage and depression. In my rage, I wrote nasty letters to the sheriff because of poor jail conditions. I became angry with a judge for sentencing a religious brother who had sex with a minor. Help arrived when the bishop let me know that it was time for me to leave the jail. This was some relief, but I still had plenty of rage inside of me. No one knew I was chemically dependent. I did not know I was that sick. I only knew that something was wrong and I couldn’t fix it.

I decided that a change in prisons would solve my problem, so I asked my superior if I could join the federal prison system. In 1986, I went to Georgia for prison training. Once there however, the drug addiction was so bad that I could not perform even a simple task. My addiction threw me into a deep depression. Because of the depression, I would lock myself in my office, unable to do anything at all. I started attending a Twelve Step program dealing with emotions. I also went to a psychiatrist who put me on medication. But I could not overcome my addictions.

I decided that I was ready to take action. I quit! I told my religious superior that I was having suicidal thoughts and could no longer take the work at the prison. He told me to come home.

That Spring a travel agent asked me to take a group of parishioners to Yugoslavia to participate in a spiritual event. I experienced many miracles there. One miracle was the joy I felt after hearing confessions in English for eight hours straight. As sick as I was, I felt lifted up out of myself. The second miracle was that I met a drug and alcohol counselor who lived only 30 minutes from my home in the States. She would be the one to get me through hell and into a treatment program.

When I returned home from the trip, I was assigned to teach high school. After 16 years of working with prisoners, I found that I could not control a high school class. Instead of teaching lessons, I showed religious videos. This solved my teaching problem, but it did not solve my problem. My depression got so bad that I would have preferred to be on death row.

During this time, I had been seeing the counselor I met in Yugoslavia. When the school year ended in 1989, she suggested I go into drug addiction treatment. She recommended a long-term facility for priests and religious people. But I decided to hang around the monastery for the summer instead.

That summer, I had a mental, emotional, and physical meltdown I was admitted to our local hospital. From there I was sent to the out-of-state program for priests. When my religious superior came to visit, I broke down crying. After a life time of stuffing my feelings, they all came gushing out. I was ready for treatment. I had nowhere else to go.

I stayed at the facility for seven months. Besides classes and therapy sessions, they offered Twelve Step meetings. I went to AA meetings at first. Then I learned about a program called “Sexaholics Anonymous.” The program even had a book with instructions: sexual sobriety means that if I am single, I cannot have sex at all, including masturbation. At last I had found a solution!

I was terrified to speak in those meetings. I kept everything inside. I didn’t have a sponsor. I worked most of the Steps on my own. However, I worked Steps Four and Five with my counselor. For the first time, I was able to share some of my story. The shame and despair of my life came pouring out. I received some guidance. I also learned that I was suffering from bipolar disorder and severe depression. All of this gave me hope and some tools, and I was able to stay sober for a time.

I was put on a new depression medication, which helped a little, but each day was a struggle. My brain was drugged, my personality suppressed. All I could do was hope for a better day and put faith in God that everything would be okay. I believed that the Twelve Step programs would work because at the meetings I saw happy people. So I persevered in these programs.

In the summer of 1990, back at the monastery, I went to AA meetings in the evenings. I thought that if I attended AA every night, I would not need SA—but after a year I masturbated once. Back to SA! I dragged myself to meetings. I just sat there taking up space. I was still afraid to share. My brain was in a fog from the drugs. It took about three years for the fog to lift.

I knew I had to take action, no matter how I felt. I put the gloves on and crawled into the ring of life. Every day was a battle. Some days I got knocked down, but the next day I would pick myself up and start again. I kept fighting. There was no alternative. As the White Book says, I needed to “Take refuge in God … [and] call on God’s presence as a shield to protect me from my own lust and emotions” (166). I volunteered to give talks and visit treatment centers. Program people say that if you want to be happy, help another drunk. I wanted to be happy.

At first I went to only one SA meeting per week and felt better. Then I went to two meetings a week and felt even better. Finally, I went to five meetings per week, and the healing process really took off. I became less depressed. The temptations to act out lessened. I was beginning to feel peace and serenity. I was better able to listen to others and not be so focused on myself. I started enjoying the meetings and looked forward to going to them. I had a whole new outlook on life.

It took seven more years before I found the courage to open up at meetings. Everything is better now! Today I have a sponsor. I go to two meetings per week. I sponsor three men, and I call them every day. I never called members of SA before. I’m not so introverted today; I can share myself with others. All of this program activity gives me serenity—only by God’s grace, after 19 years of sobriety.

Now I see how healing a phone call can be. I don’t know how I kept sober in those early years without doing the basics. But meetings, meetings, and more meetings have saved my sobriety. All the counseling in the world was not enough; I needed the SA program. My God, working through SA meetings, has saved my life.

In the Spring of 1991, my religious superior said that a year was enough rest and that I should look for a ministry that would pay for my room and board. I enrolled in a pastoral education program that was designed to train a person in counseling. After the training, I found a hospital chaplaincy position. I have been the chaplain at this hospital for the past 19 years.

Today, God has given me true peace, joy, and happiness. No more guilt, self-hatred, or depression. No more hiding. Today, I can pray to my Higher Power with intimacy and love. My spiritual life is full of hope, and I am making progress daily.

Today, God is using my weaknesses to help others who have the same problems I do. I will always have the addictions and the bipolar disorder, but now they are assets, not liabilities. God can use my experiences to benefit others. I am free and sober today. God has made me a new man.

I’m grateful for the love and support of my monastic community and the people at my church. But most of all, I’m grateful for SA. I was looking for sexual sobriety since I was 13 years old. I wish there had been SA back then; maybe I would not have suffered as much. But God knew what I needed: soul surgery without pain medication.

Today, I am happy, joyous, and free, thanks be to God. May God bless you and your journey.