My first experience with pornography was at age six, when a teenage boy in the neighborhood showed it to me. This became a secret we shared. He used the bond of secrecy to lead me to an isolated location so he could molest me. Early on, I became a sexaholic.

The greatest misunderstanding about addiction, in my opinion, is related to its size and power. I see the addict as a six-year-old boy in a tiny rowboat in the middle of the ocean with a handful of marbles. An armored battleship is steaming toward him. He can’t see the ship very well because thick fog is everywhere. He is trying to sink the battleship by throwing marbles at it.

I am the six-year-old boy. My sexaholism is the battleship. Those marbles are my efforts to overcome the addiction on my own. The fog is misinformation, confusion, bias, and judgmental attitudes about my addiction. It confuses me and keeps me from seeing two stark realities: (1) the battleship is enormous, and (2) I am alone in a tiny rowboat trying to stop it with marbles! I confidently think that if I can just throw those marbles hard enough, I will eventually pierce the hull and the battleship will sink. I tell myself, with conviction: “I will soon conquer my addiction.”

During my lifelong battle with the enemy ship, I kept looking for reinforcements. I spoke with psychiatric professionals about my inability to control my compulsions to act out sexually. The doctors shrugged and said they didn’t really see sex as a problem. One suggested that if I didn’t like what I was doing, I should stop. I felt genuine empathy from the few non-professional people in whom I confided. However, their most common, well-meaning counsel was that I probably needed to pray harder and more often. So I resolved to them, to myself, and to God that I would prevail this time. But there was a huge problem: now I was sitting in my lonely little rowboat, saying lots of prayers—and I once again started throwing more marbles at the battleship.

Today, I am just a few days shy of one year of sobriety. That is a miracle! It is by far the longest period of sobriety I have enjoyed in all my adult life. I recently told my wife that for the first time in my life, I am happy without an asterisk next to the word “happy.”

To what do I attribute my sobriety? After trying to stop 10,000 times, what was the difference this time? My last disclosure to my wife in April 2010 was catastrophic. Two days later, as I was wallowing in my misery, unsure whether our marriage would survive or our family would stay together, I was struck by the realization that I needed help. In a moment of inspiration, I called a friend in another state to tell him what I had been doing. He listened and then told me some things that changed my life.

First, he said that he knew exactly what I was going through, because he and his wife had dealt with the same thing four years earlier. Second, he said that my brain was broken, I had an addiction, and I could not get over it by myself. Third, he said there was hope for recovery and that all was not lost. Fourth, he told me about the fellowship of SA—a group of sexaholics who meet to support each other in their quest for sexual sobriety. He said, “Go to a meeting, now!”

After some hesitation, I went to my first meeting on a Friday night. I listened in awe as members shared their struggles with sexaholism, as well as their hopes and successes. When my turn came, I was able to talk about everything: the loneliness, the shame, the fear that I had destroyed my marriage, the pain I had inflicted on my wife—as well as my desire to change my life, stop acting out, and simply live as I knew God wanted me to live. I started attending meetings on a regular basis.

The remarkable thing about being in SA is that I have been able to expose my secrets to the light. Before SA, the shame and fear that accompanied my thoughts and behavior remained hidden inside of me, where they festered and grew. The more miserable and isolated I felt, the more I felt compelled to medicate by acting out. But I have found that in SA, as I bring my secrets into the light, they are beginning to lose their power.

In addition to meetings, phone calls have been a lifeline for me. I make calls and receive calls for many different reasons. I’ve called members because I’m having a rough day, or because I want to reaffirm my intention to remain sober for another day, or just to check in. Once, I received a call from a member at 11:30 p.m. We chatted for a few minutes about nothing in particular, expressed our appreciation for each other, and said goodbye. That short phone call helped him stay sober that night.

One of my favorite program slogans is “One Day at a Time.” I recognize that I will always be a sexaholic. But I also realize that if I work the SA program, I can remain sober. With God’s inspiration and strength, I intend to do that work.

Over this past year, I have still been sitting in the rowboat and the battleship is still out there. But now I see a bunch of other rowboats surrounding mine. They belong to my friends in SA. They have power tools for dismantling the battleship. They tell me to stick with them and they will show me how to slowly dismantle my battleship piece by piece, because they’ve done it before. They say, “It takes an addict to help an addict.”

What is the power source that all these cutting tools plug into so they can be used to chop up my battleship? It is the power of a loving God who is mindful of me and other sexaholics. I believe He wants us to find peace in this life and is helping us to do so.