I don’t remember when I discovered Internet pornography, but I know now that I was in trouble from the moment I first saw a hard-core image on my screen. Initially I didn’t think much about it. I’d been looking at photographs of naked women since my early teen years—girly magazines that we passed around at boarding school.

In those days the magazines were pretty tame by today’s standards. The only real pornography I saw came in the form of a few well-thumbed novels that we also passed around. The excitement came in the images we called into our minds to match the descriptions on the page. The magazines just gave us a little more fodder for our imaginations. Of course I masturbated to them both—magazines and books—and I always figured my buddies did too. We didn’t talk about it, because we “just knew” there was something shameful about it.

Somehow I never outgrew that boyhood habit, even after I matured physically and became sexually active. I spent my twenties acting out the fantasies I’d picked up from the printed page with women my own age, who usually seemed willing enough to go along. If they weren’t willing that was okay too; I’d just move on to someone else. But I also continued to use books and magazines for extra excitement, and to tide me over in those periods when I’d lost interest in one girlfriend (or been dumped), and hadn’t yet found another.

I was drinking a lot and using illegal drugs. Alcohol helped me relax, and the bars were my happy hunting grounds for available women. If I went home alone, I could just drink and drug myself into dreamland.

Eventually I got tired of that lifestyle and married a woman who was willing to put up with my drinking. She said I was “a little wild.” I told my friends the only reason we were getting married was to have children. But somehow we never did. My wife didn’t match the perfection I saw or imagined in the printed women I continued to use when I masturbated. I kept finding excuses for not having children or, eventually, sex. I preferred my fantasy women to the real one in my bed, and the marriage ended.

By then my compulsive use of alcohol and drugs had taken its inevitable toll in my life. “Under the lash,” I’d stopped drinking and taking drugs and joined Alcoholics Anonymous. By the grace of God I also quit smoking cigarettes, which I was eventually able to do with the help of the principles I’d learned in AA. I met the woman who became my second wife, and we settled in to a happy marriage in every sense of the word. I even stopped masturbating—for the most part—because my new wife and I enjoyed an active and fulfilling sex life.

Then we got the computer, and I discovered a compulsion in me much deeper than my other addictions. We’d been married a few years when we joined the 20th century and started to explore the Internet on a dialup connection, amazed at what was available there. That’s when I found Internet porn. I started spending more and more time alone with the computer, searching out ever more explicit images and, when dialup gave way to broadband, video clips.

At first I didn’t pay for it. There was more available online for free than I could ever survey, even staying up late clicking through the sites. But in time I found porn sites that offered the specific, sordid fantasies I’d read about as a boy. I subscribed from time to time. It wasn’t much money, and I didn’t see the harm. I could give my imagination a rest and let the computer show me what I wanted to see.

My wife did see the harm in it though. It was probably inevitable that she would figure out what I was doing. But her problem wasn’t the money; she was devastated by my disrespect for her, and for her gender. I’d never thought of the women (and men) in the videos and pictures I enjoyed as real people. They were just actors or models who were paid for what they did and who sometimes seemed to enjoy it. It usually wasn’t something I particularly wanted to do myself, but I got a thrill out of watching others do it. But my wife saw it for what it was—cruel and dehumanizing exploitation. The upset was so severe that we separated. We went into marriage counseling and, at the suggestion of a friend, I found SA.

Recovery from my pornography addiction hasn’t been easy—much harder for me than giving up booze, drugs, or cigarettes. I get a deep urge for a little escape into pornography when things don’t go my way, when I get frustrated at work or home, or when I’m “hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.” I seem to want pornography a lot more than I ever wanted liquor, cigarettes, or drugs. Eventually I reach a point where my will power is no good. Fighting just seems to make things worse, and the possibility that “the next one will fix me” keeps the obsession alive in the face of sleepless nights and painful lust hangovers.

I’ve had more than one slip, and I’ve grown to appreciate the admonition in Sexaholics Anonymous (91) that sometimes people who’ve been successful in other Twelve Step programs have to start all over again in SA. I’ve come to realize that the pornographic “drink” starts well before I turn on the computer or begin the fatal series of mouse clicks that will call up an image that sends me into a binge. I adhere to the SA bottom line, but I’ve found it helpful to change my sobriety date every time I look at pornography, whether that leads to physical acting out or not. I know from painful experience that it will eventually.

I’m also learning—too slowly for my impatient taste—that a lust drink always brings a hangover. For me it usually takes the form of depression, remorse, and painfully obsessive resentments directed at the people around me. Sometimes I act out on those resentments too, a habit that will eventually get me in trouble at work, home, or just out on the street. But “my own enlightened self-interest” isn’t always as strong as my addiction, and I often think that acting on resentment scratches the same itch in my soul that acting on lust does.

I use my computer as a research tool at work, and lately I’ve started switching it off, no matter how busy I am, if I find myself idly clicking toward lust images. I know where they are. Like a lust look on the street, I know in my heart if what I’m doing is driven by a desire for the lustful thrill that I think will make me feel better about whatever is bothering me. If it is, I shut down and start over. That helps too.

But ultimately it is the program of SA that keeps me sober, by helping me find my way to a personal God who works in my life. SA helps me know when lust is driving my attitudes, thoughts, and actions, and when it is, I can turn to my Higher Power with a simple prayer or a quick telephone call to another suffering addict who understands my problem. I learned in AA that “it’s the first drink that gets you drunk.” That is certainly true for me with pornography. The first click can get me drunk, but my God is always there ready to help me stop before it’s too late.