The Taking Action Group in McKinney, TX

Of this, we've got that Reagan here who's going to kind of lead the way to talk about stuff.

We're going to have different individuals on the succeeding exceeding Saturdays talk about the remainder of the steps. And so

how often is this going to happen

quarterly thing,

you know, every three months, you know, we'll have different members after

this program and how it's out

Anyway, I would probably say hold all questions to the end because we are recording and

welcome for the Reagan. No, go ahead, Sir. All right, Well, wow. It's a it's a privilege to be here and it's a privilege to be asked to do this. You know, I was thinking when I was coming up here, my father would probably be really proud when I first got into this program. One of the things I did, you know, had a wonderful man who who showed me the steps and how to work this. And one of the things he, he first told me, which I was a little reluctant, he said, you know, I, we've got this,

this street church down by Fair Park. And, you know, and I think you need to go down there because we go down there and we, we talk about the steps every day. And so, so for a while I was going down there to what they called the International Street Church down by Fair Park, which basically was a big church and people come in and be sleeping on the pews. And, you know, they were recovering drug addicts. It was reformed prostitutes and just kind of people out the street trying to

find a place to recover and they're trying to help them get their lives a bag about. And, and so anyways, when I was mentioning telling my father about, you know, well, you know, I'm in the program and these are the things I do, I said, oh, by the way, you know, I go down to this, this church down by Fair Park, you know, and I'll, I'll speak there, you know, and talk to people about the program. And so somehow my dad construed that I was out on a street corner somewhere

with this book preaching to people

about the 12 steps. And so

if he was to know now that that I was actually at a church inside a building, just talking to a bunch of guys, that would probably give him a lot of relief because he never told me directly. But my brother and sister said, you know, Daddy's kind of worried about you.

He thinks you're out on some street corner down by Fair Park, you know, preaching to people. So no, that's not me. This whole thing for me started really early, real early.

It's, you know, my parents, they, they separated pretty early when I was a kid. They separated when I was about six years old. And later on in life, I found out that, you know, unbeknownst to me, I mean, I knew that, you know, well, I guess, you know, if you're a fish, you swim in water and that's all you know. And

and so my family life, it seemed like the normal one to me.

What I came to find out later is that my mother and father, they had a open marriage, which means that they were having affairs with the neighbors and with various assunder of other people around.

I don't, I, I think I had a sense that that things were happening that, you know, I shouldn't know about, you know, And so I don't know how that affected me, but that's what I grew up in.

So when I was probably about seven or eight, I remember

I was living with, I was living with my mother. And I remember, you know, at that time I felt really out of place. I just, you know, as, you know, being in second grade, you know, and I'm sure, I'm sure there's a lot. Actually, it's kind of ironic because my profession is I teach 2nd grade. And so I can understand that there are some children that they just, they don't have it quite found their place in the world and they're filled a little off. That was me.

I now, I remember one time I was going around, you know, my moms, our apartment was in my momma's room and I found a Playboy magazine and, and I opened it up and it was like, wow.

It was just the coolest thing I ever saw. Now

I assume that most kids when they would open up this Playboy magazine, they'd look at the pictures and they'd go, wow, wow, that's neat. You know, especially kid being about 7-8 years old, it was more than that for me. I felt lonely. I felt out of place.

I remember actually taking the centerfold. And by the way, if someone came in here right now and held that centerfold up there was about 40 years ago, I should say that's it.

That image is burned in my brain. That was one of the first pornographic images. That that is the first pornographic image I can ever remember. And it is burning my brain. Ask me what my second grade teacher's name was. I have no idea. You know, ask me other little important facts. Ask me what street I lived on. You know, what was the name of the apartments we lived in? I have no idea.

Show me that picture. I go, hey, that's it.

That image was burned in my brain. That was the first one. That was one of many,

but I took that. I remember taking that centerfold and just laying it down on the floor, spreading it out and laying down on top of it and just thinking,

oh, this feels comfortable

now it's going to go to sleep. But I really couldn't 'cause my I kept sticking to the magazine. So actually

able to to turn and stuff like that really didn't make that possible. But the thing was, that was my very first experience of finding this sense of ease and comfort in a pornographic image.

Now, I didn't tell anyone. I didn't want anyone to know. I don't even know if my mom ever found out that I had the Playboy magazine. And then secondly, also was a question going through my mind is why does my mom have a Playboy magazine?

Is she just did? And that was kind of the way it was throughout my, you know, whole childhood.

I, you know, and, and the, the difference between me, what, why didn't I become another addict? Lord knows the opportunities were there, you know, besides finding Playboy magazines. You know, my mom used drugs. So I remember as kids, you know, there'd be water pipes in there that were stained with, you know, marijuana resin. And we'd take them as kids and blow bubbles in them,

you know, it's, you know, so, so why did I become a pothead? It didn't resonate with me. It just didn't, you know, as I got older, you know, it's not like I at, at six and seven, I started collecting those pornographic images, you know, or pornographic magazines, you know, that actually came later,

you know, because eventually, you know, I move. I was living with my father and I found my father.

Wow. He had that little night stand beside his bed and he kept all his magazines in there and, and my stepbrother knew about it. So my stepbrother and I, you know, we were like, you know, you know, little on little Candenstein missions, we're going to go in there and sneak into dad's room and we're going to look through the magazines and look at this. And, and so we did that. And so I learned my dad kid Pistache right beside his bed.

Now eventually, you know, my father, he he went through many marriages. And so, you know, eventually my stepbrother was gone. I think this was my dad working on his fourth marriage and and he was gone. And, you know, it's just all kinds of craziness. But for some reason, my father decided he was going to throw out all his magazines.

And you know, I would find later in years I would do the same thing. You know, I would get tired of this and I'd take all my stash and I'd go take it somewhere. Of course, I didn't ever take it right to my house. You know, I've loaded up in the car, bundle it up in big black bags and drive some location where it couldn't possibly be related to me, you know,

and. But anyways, I found my dad's

magazines in the garbage can. I was about 12 or 13 at the time.

I took all these magazines out

and I took him upstairs into my bedroom and I kept them in a closet. And to me it was just fantastic because every night I went to bed, you know, I was feeling tired. I was feeling, you know, the day was rough. You know, here I am my family's I've been separated from my brother and sister because my dad is is just acting insane and my mom won't let my kids,

my brother and sister come and live with him. But I felt like I needed to stay there to protect my dad,

and so I'm living in this crazy situation. I've got these magazines here. And here is something once again, I find ease and comfort

with these magazines every night, you know, no matter what insanity I've dealt with that day, I've got this little stash I can go to, you know, you know, and I can open up the penthouse and read the letters to the editor, you know, and, and all of a sudden I have a little bit of an escape. I feel better. Well, this went pretty good for a month or two, but at the time I had a retainer.

I had this little return. And back then, you know, my wife recently got braces and she has a retainer. And she said, I remember her telling me, oh, I've got to go get my retainer. And I still have images of what it looked like when I was a kid. They're completely different now. It's just like this little clear plastic thing. Mine look like an alien implant. You know, it's had this little red part sticker in these little wires I hooked around it. And anyways, those things were kind of expensive. And me being the teenager I was,

sometimes I would misplace it. Well, I misplaced it and my father was like, I'm not buying another retainer. We're tearing your room up to find that retainer. So so they start tearing up my room and guess what? I'm found out. My dad finds the stash.

Well, my dad, he goes well, step out of the room and he talks with his wife a little bit, my stepmom. And then, then he sends her out of the room and he brings me and he goes son, and he holds up one of the magazines. I found this in your room.

I said yeah, yeah. I said I took them out of the trash because I know, I know goes well. You know, I was a little disappointed to find this, but

you know what? You're 13 now. I think you're old enough for these. So son, keep them in your room. Keep them hidden away from your sister. Make sure she doesn't see them or know about them and you can keep them.

I'm a man now.

I am a man.

I didn't need a bar mitzvah.

I was 13 and my father handed me my personal porno collection,

you know, and honestly, this set my mindset for the the rest of my life. Now, what I honestly believe and thought is that every man got to a point. Every man had one of these. You know, there must be a reason why Hugh Hefner was so rich. That's because

every man had to have his collection and you know, and, and so I had mine and, you know, eventually, you know, things deteriorated between me and my father and he sent me to live up with my mom. So when I was going up there, once again, my father had given me pretty clear instructions with my pornography and how it was to be handled and that I didn't need to let others know about it. This was kind of our guy thing.

So somehow I found this little suitcase and that became my little carrying case for my pornography.

And so I moved up when I was towards the end of my freshman year in high school, I moved up to Dallas to live with my mom. And I brought it with me and, and carried it with me until I finally left the house. No, of course I added to it, you know, because eventually I turned 18, you know, and most kids, you know, at that age, you know, you turn 18. Wow, You can drink. Well,

yeah, wow. I could drink. But more importantly, I could legally go in and buy pornography now. And that was the big deal for me. So I kept adding to my collection and, and I would find that whenever I was in a place where I was stressed or whatever, just simply looking at these magazines, you know, not always acting out, but even just looking them gave me an escape

from what?

From my world

and, and it continued. Now

it's kind of funny because I, every Monday I, I go to a halfway house now in Fort Worth and I talk to them and, and last week I went there is, there's this guy there normally in our meetings. I can't tell if he's awake or not. You know, he's generally in almost like a comatose state.

Well, something happened to him. And Monday night, you know, I'm going through my, I'm going, we're talking about, we're talking about the 4th step and we're talking about inventories. And so, you know, I had gone through the week before about resentments. And so I went back to review that. I was talking about, you know, how why I want to get these things down on paper, why it's so important. And,

and he pipes up and he's like, so you got to do all that to get rid of that.

You got to go through all that.

And yeah. And it just turned into this long conversation of

why do you do it?

Why do you do? And he couldn't get it through his mind. He it made no sense to him. Granted, he is on parole for a for sexual assault,

but he can't get it through his mind. It makes no sense to him why I have to do all this and why I can't just stop. Why I couldn't just stop

and

and it was interesting. It was really interesting to be able to go through that and explain to him

that just can't.

I can't tell you why. All I know is that I tried and I tried because what happened is that as I continued this, this lifestyle now up to this point, all this pornography, all this stuff, it didn't really 'cause me any problems. It was working for me. It honestly was, you know, I had a way where when I was stressed or whatever, I had this sense of escape and I got some ease and comfort.

Now, as I went into college,

I went to college and my first two years I lived in a dorm.

And the whole thing about my use of pornography is that it was so secretive. It was so secretive. I didn't want anyone to know that I did this.

I that, you know, I just didn't, I didn't share it with much of anyone, you know, not even the other guys. I didn't want them to know I did this. So when I was in this dorm room, which, you know, Gee, was probably maybe about half the size of this room with another guy

and that I've never met before,

I wasn't about to do anything. And then we didn't even have, we had communal bathrooms. So even when I, you know, went into shower or, you know, or even take a dump, you know, I've got, you know, three or four other guys in there and, you know, we'd sit there and, you know, have showers and have conversations. So I didn't act out. It stopped.

So in my mind, you know, if I was to think is this an issue, it was like, no, it's not an issue. Look, I'm here. So for two years, two years, I did nothing. I didn't act out. Now, I can tell you during that time I sure did drink a lot and smoke a lot of pot.

So, you know, I probably compensated a little bit. But to me it's like, hey, I'm in college, you know, I'm supposed to live a little. You know, that's the whole point for me being here, right?

Well, yeah, I might get an education, but you know, really I'm supposed to be living

and I went into there and

that's what I did.

And so I didn't and it's like it was gone. I I think I even went ahead and and bequested my pornography collection to my younger brother. It's which he took on and and I was really disturbed one time to find it and to find a little jar of Crisco in there

which

I have no idea. I think he had something about him and a girlfriend and

somehow the Crisco got involved and so he took it to new levels.

So anyways, for two years I didn't do it. OK, Now in the big book, they tell a story. They tell a story about this man who who was a young executive and realizes that if he's going to be successful in life and in his career, he can't drink. And so what's he do? He stops.

He stops and so he's successful in his career. He becomes very successful and is able to retire at a young age because he worked so hard and put so much into it.

So but once he retired, he was like, wow, I retired. I guess I can have a drink now. What do I have to worry for? He's dead in two years.

04 years? Was it 4 years? He's dead.

So all that work, four years, he's dead because, well, he was an alcoholic. He didn't drink all that time. Two years for me, I didn't act out, you know, sure, I was drinking a lot. Sure I was smoking some pot, you know, and anytime I could possibly try and get something going with a woman, I would. But that wasn't much, you know? And So what happens was that my roommates.

One day they go out and one of them thinks that it'd be really funny

if he bought the other half Hustler magazine. So I'm going to get him. And they come home as hahaha, look what I bought him. I bought him this Hustler magazine. Oh, Can you believe that they're laughing? You know, Can you believe I did that? Oh, this is so funny. Oh, this Hustler magazine. And I'm laughing right along with them. And so anyways, they go out to grab a beer and they leave me at home with that Hustler magazine.

I immediately take that into my bedroom.

I'm back in it

right away.

It was just like, here you go. It was an old friend.

Good God, I missed you.

And then I discover, well, there's this little porno shop, you know, up the highway from Denton. I can go up there, you know, I can, Oh, I, I can rent videos. And so I was back in it now. It's still not causing me problems.

It's it's still not an issue for me.

I'm doing all these things. But you know what? There's some embarrassment involved. It's embarrassing when because I was, I was a musician, I was a music major in college and so and I lived with artists and everything. So we didn't feel a need for TV. We didn't have TV's in our houses that we lived in because we were artists. We played music,

we drank lots of beer and got creative so we didn't need TV's.

So it made it a little challenging when I discovered I could rent tapes and watch them. But I also found places where I could rent a little TV and rent AVCR as well. So it was a little embarrassing when my roommates would come home and they would poke their head in my room to see what I was doing. And I'm trying to cover up this TV and VCR that I've rented because I'm watching these porno tapes.

You know,

it's but it didn't cause me really any issues. It was a little embarrassing. I'm sure my friends probably talked to each other and shared, you know, God, Can you believe what he did? You know, but it wasn't causing me issues. And this continued, you know, throughout my life. I just continued with this. Now eventually, you know, the Internet,

it's, it's nice to look out here and judge the, your faces and to know that we're on the same timeline with technology,

you know, because when I look, I talked to younger guys sometimes it's like Internet, you, you were there when you didn't always have that. And it's like, no. So anyways, I remember the Internet and actually once again, I'm over at my moms house and I'm at a, I've been out of college a couple years and working. And why on God's green earth my mom decided to share this with me? I have no idea, but she did

my mom. And I think, honestly, she was trying to embarrass my stepfather,

you know? And she goes, oh, you know, we've got the Internet now. Yeah. I said, oh, yeah, yeah. Well, that's neat. She goes, yeah, look at all these pictures that that, you know, that Felix is finding on the computer. Can you? And she shows me these outrageous pornographic images and. And I'm just like, oh, oh, that's disgusting.

Oh, I can't believe that. Wow. They have that stuff on the Internet

and and you know,

for whatever reason, she showed me that.

Now I was at the time I had just met my soon to be wife and I was about to move back up to Denton. But instead I moved in with my mom for a little bit to kind of have a transition place before I decided my next move. So I'm there at my mom's house and she's gone. There's the Internet. So I first now discovered, wow,

here's an unlimited pipeline of this stuff.

And I start doing that. Of course, back then it was, it was a little different because the pictures kind of come up, you know, it's a little bit at a time. It's scrolling down like, oh, you know, you talk about anticipation.

Oh, what's next? You know,

you know, takes me 5 minutes to look at one little image, you know, wow, you know, it was exciting. And, and so anyways, all this goes on. I eventually get married. We don't have a computer. And of course I tell my wife we've got to get a computer. We've got to get a computer. You know, it's the modern age. My wife is, is fearful

of technology and change even to this very day.

You know, I've really encouraged her for us to get a smartphone and say, Oh no, I don't need that. Just give me one of those simple, you know, you know, little flip phones and, and don't send me a text message 'cause I don't know what to do with it. And,

you know, and, and so getting a computer just wasn't a high priority, but it was for me

because in the back of my mind I knew, well, I get this computer I've got, I've got pornography, you know, coming right into my house. I'm married, I got life doesn't get better. You know, it's I, you know, I am set up. And so eventually we do. And in the first part of my marriage, my wife, she realized that I looked at pornography.

And for her at the time, she said, well, you know,

I understand you. Your sex drive is probably much bigger than mine. So I understand you got to do these things to kind of take care of that sex drive. I'm OK with that. You know,

she really wasn't.

She accepted it, but come to find out, she really wasn't OK with it. So I did those things. Now I tried to be discreet about it,

but but once again, it's not causing me any problems.

It's not an issue. You know, the fact that I, I get up every morning and that I, you know, masturbate before I go to work, you know, and that I get home and as soon as I get home, I've got a masturbate and then hoping that sometime within that, maybe my wife will have sex with me.

But even if she doesn't, I'm taking care of,

you know, and.

But it's not causing any problems for me. It's not,

but it gets to a point where it starts to cause problems for me. We have children

and we and when the children come into the picture, my wife was like, you know what? It's really probably not a good idea

for this to be in the house with our children.

And I said, you know what? I wholeheartedly agree with you. Because even though I found my father's porno pornography collection, even though my father gave me his pornography collection,

in my heart of hearts, I knew I didn't want that for my children.

You know, my son just turned 12,

so he's about a year younger. He's around the age when I got my pornography collection. I can't imagine my son looking at pornography. I can't. That's that's an image. That's something I can't reconcile. Now. I kind of screwed that one up. I'll get to that one in a moment, but

I can't imagine that.

So when my wife said I don't want this in the house,

every fiber of my being said I don't either.

I really don't want my children to be exposed to this.

And I meant it.

I meant it at the bottom of my soul that I didn't want them to be exposed to that.

But what I found is that

I would continue,

you know, and eventually it got to a point where I had been laid off.

I was laid off when my wife was about six months pregnant with our second child.

So it was pretty important for me to find employment. A matter of fact, what had happened when I was laid off is they had said, well, look, I was in management at the time. They said we really, you know, we're restructuring our management and we don't, you know, need so many of you. So we're going to let you go. Well, we'll let you go, but if you want to, you can take a lesser position. We'll pay you a little more than we do those normal guys, and you can stay on. But I said no, I'm having a second child.

I need to, I need to make more money.

And so I took a layoff thinking in my mind, I'm going to guess, you know, look at all my skills. I'm a skilled guy. I'm going to go right to work. No problem here. I'll just take that layoff. I'm going to go somewhere else. I'm going to go to bigger, greener pastures.

But what ended up happening was

I didn't. And so I would spend hours at home on the Internet doing job searches,

and that was kind of stressful. And that was kind of a drag.

So I would go a little bit and then I would say, you know what, man, I've been two hours. My mind is just numb from looking at all these ads, sending out emails, yadda yadda yadda.

I need a break

so I'll just take 1015 minutes here, look at a little porno and get right back to work.

Well,

all of a sudden I look up and it's 5:00 and my wife is about to pull in the driveway

because I've just spent the whole day clicking through porno.

I just spent that whole day wasting time. Now when I turned on that I had no intention. I had no intention that I was going to spend the rest of my day. I didn't start out saying, wow, what a drag. I think I'll spend the whole day just looking at porno and seeing how many times I can masturbate.

That wasn't in my plan,

you know, And so I found that that kept happening. I would wake up in the morning and say to myself,

I am not going to look at pornography today. I am not going to do it. I'm just not going to do it.

But inevitably what would happen was I would get to a point where it was like,

wow, you've done really good.

What about a little porno? Yeah, just a little bit,

but it was never a little bit. It started never being a little bit. I found that if I had any free time, I had a way of filling it, and I would.

Now my wife, she realized that I had promised her I wouldn't do these things and she realized I was

through whatever way. So we sat down, We had a marriage therapist. I married a therapist. By the way, my wife is a licensed professional counselor. And, and so I don't know if any of you have such a benefit, but what that meant was that as soon as I met her, before we got married, we found us a marriage therapist.

Now, fortunately enough, we found a lovely man, a lovely man and we were blessed to be found with him. And matter of fact, even went and saw him a couple weeks ago and he is truly a St. But anyways, she realized I was still doing this. And so we were had a, a session with our therapist and, and we sat down and she and he was like, so you keep doing this. Tell me about that. And I said, well, you know,

I said, Dave, I, I sat down and and I tell myself I'm not going to do this.

Yeah, I find I'll spend. And of course, I was kind of making it a little nicer. I would spend a couple hours

looking at pornography even though I told myself I wasn't. And that seems to keep happening

now. My wife is a recovered alcoholic.

So, you know, being a part of the 12 step was that. As a matter of fact, when I first met my wife, one of the things she said is, you know, I'm so glad I met you. I always thought I was going to marry someone with an addiction.

Yeah, but you met me and so

lucky you.

I always thought I was going to meet someone in the program.

I guess you lucked out with me.

So we are.

So my therapist hears this and my therapist says, you know, Reagan, it sounds like an addiction.

It sounds like you might have a sex addiction.

Now granted, up to this point I had no idea this existed. Sex addiction.

You know what? You could be right.

I said, is there, is there something for that? He goes, yes, here I know this, this 12 step group, here's the address and he gave me the address to the CSD, let's say go by there,

check it out, see what you think, see if it resonates with you. So anyways, this was around, I think this around 2002 and

yeah, this around 2002. And so anyways, I show up there and I go into one meeting. So I go into a sex and love Addicts Anonymous meeting and I go in there and these guys are talking about all this and that and da da, da, and I'm listening to them doing all their talking and talking about their relationships and, and this one and, you know, and all this different stuff. And then afterwards some guy comes up to me, goes, oh, so you're new. Well, here's all these pamphlets

and he shares with me a little about, oh, isn't this tragic thing? There's all this pornography, all this stuff. Isn't it just, oh, yes. And I was like, yes, you know what? I am a sex addict.

I am.

Thank you so much for letting me know. I took all those pamphlets. I went home. I erased all the links on my computer because I figured I was fixed. Now

I found out I was a sex addict. Man, I have identified the problem.

Nothing else that will happen. Nothing else will happen. And what happened, though, is that lasted for a couple months,

which I really, given the circumstances, was pretty good,

you know, But I was back in it,

you know, and finally my wife found out again, says, I can't believe you're back at this.

Now, little did she know this would be the second time of numerous times she would say, I can't believe you're still doing this.

And so anyway, so I went back. This time I made my way upstairs to the SAA meeting. And I went in there and they did a little differently. And I appreciated this. I was first. I said, any newcomers? I raised my hand. I said, OK, come here. And this lovely man took me downstairs and he explained to me

little about the program, a little bit about sex addiction. And I can tell you I wholeheartedly wanted to be

a part of that. I really wanted the recovery

umm now I listen to all the guys talk and everyone shared and I thought it was wonderful how all these guys would talk about all their stuff and everything. I thought, wow, this is great. I asked that guy right there to you know, to be my sponsor and and he gave me all these worksheets. He said, well here, I want you to go home. I want you to do this and this and this and, you know, call me, you know, call me every day and, and do these worksheets and

you'll be on your way.

I don't think he actually said you'll be on your way, but I pretty much assumed this guy is my sponsor. He's going to show me how

and so this is how I do it. So I went home and I did these worksheets about my personal powerlessness. And so I did all these worksheets. I filled it out and, and how my life had been unmanageable. I filled out all that stuff,

but you know what, it didn't make a lot of sense to me. You know, 'cause I remember one of them was a little check off list and he goes list all the ways your life has been unmanageable. I said, you know what, I don't see a lot of these, how my life is unmanageable. Doesn't make a lot of sense to, well, it's anything. You know, when I was 12 years old, I went into a junkyard and I broke in there to look at stuff

and some guy held a gun to my head. And that's an example of my life being unmanageable.

I was thinking, OK, well, you know, so I'm starting to get the impression that this whole 12 step thing is really kind of, you know, like therapy. You know, I'm going to go through and I'm going to look at all the little issues in my life and I'm going to become enlightened.

I'm going to understand how my mind works, how I've reacted to things and all the events that have led up to me being a sex addict.

The only problem was I kept acting out. I might stay sober for a month. I might stay sober for a couple weeks. But you know what? And those months or couple of weeks, I was just, you know, white knuckling it. You know, a phrase I, by the way, I had never really heard until I went to that program and and, but pretty well accurately describes what I was doing.

I was holding on for dear life. Please God, just don't let me act out.

And I thought that's what the 12 steps and how these guys got a year or couple years of sobriety was beyond me.

You know, but they did. Now I, I also, I realized that it must be important. There's these 12 steps here and there must be something to that and I probably need to do something with that. So this guy says, hey, we're starting a step study group. I thought I need to do that. So I joined this STEP study group.

Now this book here,

I never saw it there. Well, actually I take that back. They did keep a copy or two in the cabinet with all the literature,

but it pretty much sat there and collected dust. I, I, I really didn't have much idea what this was except I knew these things came from here and, but apparently that was all they were able to give us the, you know, the Cliff note version right here. So we didn't really need this because we had these up on the wall and that told me everything that was in here.

You know, all the rest was just fluff and had to do with Alcoholics, not sex addicts.

So anyways, I joined this step study group and

we didn't read this. No, we were sex addicts. We read A gentle path through the 12 steps and we worked our way through the 12 steps doing through a gentle path.

They really should change the title of that book, A gentle and extremely long

Path through the 12 steps. So after about 18 months of our step study group, and I don't even know if we got all the way through all the steps. I, I think, I think eventually we just kind of disbanded and said, good God, is this ever going to end?

I don't know,

it's like, it's really been nice hanging out with you guys for the last 18 months, but but you know what, I've got some other pressing things going on. I'd really like to free up my time on Sunday evenings. And, and so it, it didn't get me there, you know, it didn't get me there. And so I kept going to my meetings and I would go out and eat dinner with the guys and we would do this and I would maintain some level of,

but it always came down to this.

When the shit really hit the fan,

I was out.

You know, the perfect example is the most sobriety I had before this point that I do in my life now was for about 6 months. And in that six months,

at one point, my wife, she had neck surgery

and I had started a new job. I had no support. My wife had neck surgery. I had these two young kids. I'm trying to juggle them. I'm trying to do what? My wife comes out of surgery, she is bound up. She looks like she's on her deathbed. They've got her on a morphine pump and all I want to do at this time

is to be able to care for my wife,

but I can't because I've got two young kids. I got to take them home and get them to bed, get them fed, schooled and all that.

So I've got six months sobriety. I'm sitting there, I'm going home. I don't know what to do with myself.

I don't know how I can manage all of this.

So I remember driving home with my kids and thinking, I'm going home. I'm putting them in bed and as soon as they are in bed I'm getting on that computer and I'm acting out.

The thought was that simple.

It's like, look, it doesn't get any worse than this.

What's you know, what are you going to do? How are you going to manage?

I always went back to my old way of managing

and I did. And this continued and discontinued and I'd have periods of time. Finally

around 2009, around February or so,

my wife and I had been, we were in our room and we were getting ready for bed and we were laughing and joking ha ha, ha, ha ha. Having a nice time. And my son comes busting into my room and my son says are you all having sex?

Nine year old son,

are y'all having sex?