As a child I had no exposure to healthy intimacy or communication. My parents had seven marriages between them, and seven children, two of whom I never met. My father left when I was three; my mother remarried when I was in my 20s. We younger children saw our father on weekends, but we were taught that he was evil. Questions about him, or about my family, were taboo.

In fact, most important questions in my family were taboo. Survival meant learning to hide my questions and fears. I also learned that maleness itself was somehow hateful and pathetic. As a child I would hide in the bathroom, standing before the mirror in my mother’s clothes, at times using scotch tape on my body to try to transform myself into a woman.

From the onset of puberty, I was constantly preoccupied by sexual desire. But I also saw sex as immoral and dirty. While my friends seemed to openly enjoy kissing and touching and going steady, I would ask: “How can you commit to one girl, knowing that tomorrow you may meet someone you like more?” I set impossible rules for myself; only the purest motivations were allowed. My values allowed me to feel morally superior to other boys; my hidden desires made me feel dishonest and ashamed. In my mind, there were good girls with whom to be friends or go steady, and bad girls to kiss and touch. I was hardly the first 13-year-old boy to fall into this trap. The problem is that I never outgrew it.

I first prayed to God when I was 16, living in Israel at a boarding school. I had fallen in love for the first time. I felt wonderful! Then I learned she had been with someone else. I was crushed. I soon found myself with another, older girl, one I hardly knew. She led me quickly into my first intercourse. When it was over, I was stricken with remorse and terror. I babbled to the girl insanely, and fled. I spent hours walking alone in the dark, calling out to God, begging him not to kill me, to give me another chance, and swearing to never do such a filthy thing again.

Over the next 20 years, I repeatedly tried to find intimacy, each time convinced this one would be different; each time failing. Only alcohol made me feel whole, temporarily masking the shame and fear. Courtship was always wonderful. But immediately following sex, all emotion would die except for an overwhelming need to escape. I was transformed into another person, hating myself and the woman beside me. Yet I enjoyed being with women with whom a real relationship was impossible.

At 19, I moved from Israel to Los Angeles and started college. Driving alone one night, I passed a prostitute on a street corner. I felt as if I had touched a live wire; I was hooked from the start. Prostitutes became the secret passion of my life, allowing me to have the ultimate bad girls without hurting anyone. The polarization of my life became extreme; friends commented that I seemed immune to the flirting games played between men and women. I became a successful activist, public speaker, and teacher—but most nights were spent cruising, masturbating and picking up prostitutes.

Returning to Israel at age 23, I was soon visiting prostitutes, living two lives and spending more time and money than ever. Eventually, financially drained and worried at my increasing exposure to disease, I discovered Internet pornography—safe, anonymous, and free. My therapist believed it was preferable to prostitution: healthier, inexpensive, and more civilized. In fact, the Internet helped me limit visits to prostitutes—but gradually it took me to places far less civilized than I had ever imagined.

As pornography and prostitution gained a greater hold on my life, my attempts at finding a real relationship lessened, until I gave up the effort entirely. I told myself I cherished my independence, and that I wouldn’t harm anyone this way. My contacts with friends lessened. My apartment gradually became a private refuge from the world. Binges of eating and masturbating to pornography lasted for days at a time, leaving me feeling ill. The pictures began to stay in my head all day; they were my first thoughts in the morning and last thoughts at night. I felt nauseous. I decided to stop. Then I decided to stop again, then again. At first I would last a month or two, then a couple of weeks, then days, until finally I found myself swearing to stop and then back at the computer 15 minutes later.

Last year, my life crashed. I started therapy with a new psychologist, and dealt for the first time with the warring sides of my personality. I became severely depressed, alternating between a passionate desire to injure myself, and an equally passionate desire to take my life. I knew I had no choice but to stop the insanity. I again promised myself to stop, and kept this promise for three months. But then I fell again, and finally admitted that I was never going to be able to stop, unless I found a new way to go about it.

Then three months ago I saw a TV program on sexual addiction. A man spoke about his life; I felt as if I were hearing myself speak. The man said the Twelve Steps had changed his life, and that he had found support and fellowship from others like himself. I located the fellowship in Jerusalem and called the hotline. I was “Twelve-stepped” by two people who left me in a sincere dilemma as to which of them was more insane. It is an indication of my desperation that I returned the following week, and as I sat in the room at the start of the meeting, I felt completely alienated and regretted my decision. But an amazing thing happened. As people began to tell their stories, they were transformed, and I saw humanity and compassion where minutes before I had seen nothing but strangeness. And so I find myself now trying to define powerlessness, unmanageability, surrender, and even lust itself.

I Am Powerless Over Lust. I cannot look at pornography without minutes turning into hours and hours into days. Masturbation has become an obsession. The need to act out is like a physical force. Self-control, willpower, and shame have proven powerless against it.

My Life Has Become Unmanageable. The unmanageability of my life is what led me to seek help in SA. Symptoms that led me here include:

• I have damaged my health using alcohol to help me act out.
• I have missed work so I could act out, sometimes bingeing for days.
• I have wasted inestimable money and time on my obsession.
• I have exposed myself to disease.
• I have become increasingly inattentive, forgetful and irritable.

Yet as my addiction progressed, these were but minor irritations.

Surrender. I don’t think I understand surrender. The word terrifies me, as if I am hanging on a branch and there is nothing beneath my feet but a bottomless abyss, and I am now being asked to let go. Even if I have been hanging on to nothing more than a false sense of my own control, I am still afraid that I have nothing else to hold onto. I know that I must eventually let go of something, but I feel powerless to do so today.

What is Lust? For me, lust is the best of friends and the worst of enemies. Lust is the most effective painkiller I know; while immersed in it I know no sadness, loneliness, or pain. Yet the relief it brings are outdone by the self-loathing that follows. Lust has caused me to endanger my life, my career, my health, and my family. It has blinded me to all that is important and beautiful in life.

Why Am I Here? Why am I sitting here reading my First Step? First, if I look at the progression of my addiction, I must ask myself where I will be in 10 years if I continue. The answer frightens me. I am here to reverse the progression. Second, I realize I have spent my life hating who I think I am today and living for who I imagine I will be tomorrow. I am here to become one person, to learn what it means to be human. Finally, I have glimpsed into my anger and have seen not just destruction, but also survival—a tiny seed that refuses to give in, that screams: “I am not hateful, I do not deserve to die.” I am here to cultivate that seed.

Postscript. I gave away this Step last month. I have been sober now for over two months. The almost constant agony of the first six weeks has given way to periods of calm interspersed with waves of difficulty. I do not know what the future holds, and I am struggling with my understanding of a Higher Power. I am only now realizing how deep my fear goes, and my anger and resistance to putting my trust in anyone or anything. I think I haven’t yet realized the magnitude of what I have begun, nor the importance of sharing this path with others like myself. At the same time, I find myself very excited about beginning a dialog with a force greater than myself, realizing that though I have often spoken to such a force, I have rarely tried to listen to it. I am hopeful that I will be surprised.