Yesterday marked two years of sobriety for me. Prior to my sobriety date of May 24, 2006, I can’t remember having gone two days without acting out in the previous 30 years. For my sobriety and so much more, I am forever grateful to the program and to the fellowship of SA.

I didn’t come to SA with the purest of motives. I came with a gun to my head, having been caught acting out over the phone by my wife. This was not the first time I had been caught. Just two days earlier, she had found some erotic stories I had written for an acting-out partner. In those stories I detailed acting out with still more people, in person, online, and over the phone.

While the details were a shock to my wife, the fact that I was acting out was certainly not a revelation to her. To the contrary, she had been telling me for five or six years that I was a sex addict. I laughed dismissively and attributed our differences to my “healthy sex drive” and her “limited sex drive.” It never occurred to me that wanting to have sex five or six times a day had nothing to do with a “sex drive” until I entered SA.

Funny thing is, the day before my “sobriety date,” I had decided to look and see whether my wife was perhaps right. I searched for “sex addict” on the Internet and found a site with a quiz. Needless to say, I passed with flying colors. For the first time I thought “maybe there’s something to this sex addiction stuff.” That day I called two therapists. One was a general therapist that I found in the phone book, the other was a sex addiction specialist. The specialist did not call me back but the other therapist did and I made an appointment.

All of that was not enough to stop me from acting out the next day. I cannot imagine a truer definition of powerlessness. Then, my wife coming in and discovering me was surely a clear sign of unmanageability. My memory of that afternoon is quite clear, and I hope it always will be. My wife was crushed and hysterical and could not decide what to scream or throw at me next.

That afternoon, after the blowup, I did the smartest thing I have ever done. I called back the sex addiction specialist. This time she called me back and, while she was booked solid and could not see me for a couple of weeks, she suggested I go to a group therapy session that evening. I drove there—fully 45 minutes further than the other therapist—and for the first time, I spoke to a group of men about my life and the things I was doing.

I’d love to say that I went to that meeting surrendered and ready for recovery, but I did not. I battled and debated and talked about “giving up this, but keeping that.” I had already forgotten what that afternoon had been like.

At the conclusion of that first group therapy session, the co-therapist said something to me that stuck. After all of my negotiation and debating and still having not decided what I was going to do, he said “If you want to come back, you’re welcome and we’d love to have you, but you need to stop what you’re doing.”

I took those words seriously and went home and debated with myself. I credit much of my recovery and certainly my early recovery to the words “stop what you’re doing.” I had a decision to make; stop and join the group or don’t stop and move on. Moving on would also have meant leaving my home and family. That made the decision easier.

I left that group about a month ago. I will join a different group in the fall with the same therapist and people who are further along in recovery. The people who were at the group my first night unanimously agree that they never thought I would return. But I could not bear life without my family. I knew that leaving them would lead me to death—an idea that didn’t necessarily seem like a bad thing at the time, but I was not quite ready.

I did one other thing after that group; I went to an SA meeting. The group was on a Tuesday and I went to an SA meeting on Saturday morning. Both the SA meeting and the therapy group seemed very odd to me. “These guys had a problem. All I did was A, B and C but, these guys. . .” I’ve since come to understand that there is NOTHING that I would not do, only things I had not done. Every time I drew a line in the sand, every time I decided that I would stop, I came back with more energy focused on destroying myself and those around me. But the meetings were a start.

Something else happened at that first SA meeting: God stepped in and offered me a choice. I had been what the literature calls a “militant atheist” all my life. Born into a Jewish household, I never had any exposure to religion and, therefore, decided that religion was for weak people—not a strong person like me.

I came home from the meeting with a copy of Sexaholics Anonymous and went upstairs to my wife. She asked how it went and I started to cry. I showed her the Twelve Steps of SA and asked her what she saw. She, a religious Catholic, immediately saw all of the references to God. I asked how I could possibly do this and she said, “I don’t know, just try it and see where it takes you.”

I continued going to meetings (when I could fit them into my busy schedule) and seeing the therapist. The therapist eventually told me to put the meetings into my book, treat them like client appointments, “and don’t miss them.” I did and it worked. Still, my program consisted of three meetings a week and not much else; no sponsor, no making phone calls, very little connection to the fellowship, and still no relationship with a Higher Power who I now choose to call God.

After about five months, at two meetings in a row I read a passage from Alcoholics Anonymous (47), that said “Do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there is a Power greater than myself?” Willing to believe? Even I can be willing! So the door was open and I started being “willing”—and it made all the difference. Being willing meant taking the action and hoping something would follow. It meant praying, even if I wasn’t certain that there would be a result. The result, of course, turned out to be all about the action. What had I been fighting for so long?

The next struggle was getting a sponsor. Like everything else, this took me awhile. My therapist said it had something to do with my lousy relationships with my father and two of my three older brothers; that asking older or more senior people for help is a struggle. But five months into the program I decided who my sponsor would be. It took me another two months to ask him. Up to that point, I had done no Step work.

When I did ask, he said yes and we started meeting and working the Steps on a regular basis. I dove in, especially on the first three Steps. This was completely new but the idea of a Higher Power was something that I was now ready for.

Today, I love working the Steps—whether as part of my own program, or just doing a quick Four through Nine on whatever needs addressing on a particular day, or working with a sponsee and trying to give back a sliver of what’s been given to me. I often tell people that for me, I can sum this program up in 30 words, “Go to meetings, go to meetings, go to meetings, go to meetings, go to meetings. Work the Steps, work the Steps, work the Steps, work the Steps, work the Steps.” If you can’t do anything else, just do that and let God do the rest.

Also, I began showing up to meetings early, setting up, leading meetings, and making phone calls (lots of phone calls).

When the Saturday morning meeting became difficult for me to make, I started one closer to home. Now, I need a Wednesday meeting and there isn’t one nearby, so a group of us have decided to start one. If I need something for my recovery, I make sure that I can get it.

Sobriety has been a wonderful gift for me, but sobriety is not what I’m here for today. Today I realize that recovery is where the treasure is.

Recovery, for me, is spending time with my children and not resenting the fact that I’m not acting out or planning my next acting out session. It’s being able to spend time with my wife without her wondering whether I’m only there in the hopes that we’ll have sex. It’s being able to speak or work with women and not imagine them in a sexual fashion and not spend my time and energy trying to get them to act out with me. Recovery is being able to spend time with friends and family and enjoying it. Recovery is taking a walk in the park and noticing the weather, the trees, the birds; not just the women on the bike path.

Recovery is also about speaking my truth and letting people know when they have done something that has hurt or bothered me—without feeling that it makes me a weakling. It is about setting boundaries for myself and letting others know that they need to respect those boundaries. As an addict, I would often simply go along to get along, hoping I could then slink away—with my resentments—to act out. Today I know that I can choose to be treated well and fairly, and to remove myself from situations where that does not happen.

I am so very grateful for the gifts I have gotten from this program of recovery. For the newcomers, I would like to say that it gets better and better—if you do your part. The clichés are true, “It’s simple, but it’s not easy” and “It works if you work it.” It really is work, but so is acting out. I spent so much time and energy on acting out and living two separate lives that I did little else. Living honestly takes much less effort and produces much less stress.

I hope others find what I’ve found. I can’t wait to see what else awaits me as I continue trudging the Road of Happy Destiny. I hope to see some of you along the path. May God bless you and keep you until then.