Like a drug addict who might progress from marijuana to cocaine to heroin, I progressed from masturbation to bookstores to prostitutes. Ultimately, at age 45, when I was in an insane one-year relationship with a woman half my age, I was brought to my knees in powerlessness and pain, and I found SA.

When I first met this woman, she told me she was in a “day program.” A bus would pick her up every day and take her to a program for dealing with mental illness and chemical addiction. I thought, “This will work for me!” I took her to drug dealers in a bombed-out looking ghetto at night for heroin or crack and then used her for sex and companionship.

I learned a lot from her about drug addiction. I learned the concept of “gateway drugs”: If she drank one beer, she had to have six. If she drank six beers she wanted crack or heroin. She said the one beer was not the problem; she just needed to stay away from heroin. But the one beer was the problem, because she was powerless! She would jump out of my moving car if I did not drive her to get drugs. Beer, a gateway drug for a heroin addict.

Then I could see that masturbation was a gateway drug for me. I masturbated during my marriage, and this left me with no real desire to connect with my wife. When I masturbated in marriage I was always committing adultery in my head—thousands of times with an unending multitude of partners. How much of a step is it from adulterous masturbation to adulterous sex? For me, it was not a long one at all. I would masturbate with phone sex or by thinking about someone I knew at work or saw on the street. But it was never enough. Then I would move on to the real thing. Interestingly, sex with these women was never enough either.

In 1990, at the age of 34, I flew to Minnesota to attend a sexual addiction clinic. When I arrived at the hospital, the nurse said I needed to sign a sobriety contract, which stated that I would not have sex with myself or anyone else while at the clinic. I said, “No masturbation? That wasn’t in the brochure!” She just smiled at me and said, “Paul, just sign it.” So I did. But I resented it! And I could not get 30 days of sobriety even at the clinic, with the best therapists and a 12-hour-a-day inpatient program. The longest I could go was 10 days (twice) before I reached for my drug of choice, masturbation.

For the next 10 years, I tried to manage my addiction. I spent four years in a relationship with the drug-addicted woman. She had been hospitalized five times for drug addiction and mental illness. I knew she would probably die in her addiction, but because I needed her for sex, I knew I would always enable her chemical desires. We were two addicts in a symbiotic dance of death. I knew if I didn’t get away from her we both might die. I learned a few years later that she did die of an overdose in a cheap motel.

In 2001, I was in a sexual recovery therapy group with singles and couples. I heard one man ask another, “Why don’t you consider SA’s sobriety definition: ‘No sex with self or outside of marriage?’” The addict husband replied indignantly (with his wife next to him), “If I didn’t masturbate I would not have any sex at all!” I thought to myself, “That man is sick.” Then it dawned on me, “Why don’t I consider SA’s definition?’

I went to my first SA meeting in 2001. I had never had more than 10 days free from masturbation since I was very young, but in SA I found what therapy, inpatient, and outpatient help had never given me. I found sobriety and a spiritual awakening. Several months later, I ran into the man from the therapy group who had first suggested SA to me and I said to him, “Remember that time you suggested SA at the therapy group? You actually saved my life!”

Before coming to SA I was agnostic. I did not believe that anyone could know there is a God. But in SA, I learned that lust was my god. And by listening to other members share about their Higher Power, I have found God, as well as a religious home outside of SA.

In my years prior to SA, I was looking for a psychological cure. In SA I saw that I needed a spiritual solution and a connection with my Higher Power. If I’m lusting, I’m spiritually disconnected. But if I practice regular spiritual readings, prayer and meditation, and attend services, I’m less susceptible to lust.

One day I told a psychiatrist that I was thinking of calling the heroin addict. He said out loud and wrote in his notes “addictive cravings and delusional thinking.” Now instead of saying I am having “euphoric recall” (which sounds like fun), I say I’m suffering with “addictive cravings and delusional thinking.” Addictive cravings, delusional thoughts, and drug dreams are a part of my lust addiction. I don’t need to give them an attractive label.

In 2005 I was blessed to marry a wonderful woman who knows the details of my addiction, but who can see the man I have become. I have real friends instead of being isolated in my addiction. More than 100 people attended our wedding; over half of them are our friends in SA.

I used to think my path was getting narrower. Now I see that the path is wider. I no longer wander through the wilderness. The vapors I was living in have been burned away by the light of a new day.

No matter what I am experiencing in life, SA is my new drug of choice! I have found God, peace, and serenity. I am home.