From Prison to Freedom
For most of my life, I lived in a prison—not one with bars and guards, but one I built myself, brick by brick, with shame, secrets, and addiction. It was a prison far more confining than any cell could ever be. I grew up in a ‘Brady Bunch’ family—stable, warm, loved. Life seemed perfect until 4th grade, when an older boy invited me into his house and abused me. The shame burned so deep I told no one. I buried it, forgot it, tried to erase it from existence. But my soul remembered. The happy, optimistic boy who smiled easily and trusted freely died that day. In his place stood someone else—introverted, scared, mistrusting everyone. That’s when I started building my prison walls. By 5th grade, I had pushed away every friend and locked myself inside, alone.
In 8th grade, I found my brother’s pornography. I was hooked instantly. I developed two selves: the mask I wore for the world and the addict I hid inside. Through high school and college, my addiction consumed me. I learned the dark art of manipulation—chase, groom, catch, discard. I hurt so many good people. People who genuinely loved me. People I threw away like trash. With each person I hurt, I added another lock to my prison door.
Three years after college, desperate and broken, I thought marriage would save me. It didn’t. When internet porn arrived, it swallowed my life whole. I grew angrier and angrier at my wife, blaming her for the monster I’d become. After 27 years, I manipulated her into divorcing me. As she walked out the door, she said two words: “Get Help.” I looked her in the eye and lied: “I will.”
Once free from marriage, my addiction exploded. But I wasn’t free at all—I was more imprisoned than ever. I crossed every boundary, shattered every moral line. Child pornography. Paying for sex. Nothing worked anymore. Nothing satisfied the screaming emptiness inside. I pushed away everyone—my wife, my daughter, every friend. I couldn’t keep a job. I was living in a hell of my own making, a prison of the self. The walls were so high now I couldn’t see the sky. I thought about ending it all.
Then God broke down the door. In July 2020, when police burst into my room, my first thought was “Thank God!” Relief flooded through me—finally, it was over. They put me in an 8×5 holding pen. Ironically, this physical prison would become the key to my freedom. On the wall at the foot of my bed, someone had scratched five words: “How did I get here?” For two days, those words were all I could see. God held my eyes open, forced me to stare at that question until I finally, finally looked at the truth: ME. I did this. Not my ex-wife. Not my childhood. ME. For the first time in my life, I felt the crushing weight of decades of guilt, remorse, and self-loathing. But in that tiny cell, something began to crack in the prison I’d built around my heart.
In general population, God sent me a friend—an alcoholic who had killed someone while driving drunk. He didn’t preach. He just showed me, through his hope, that maybe I wasn’t beyond saving. When my daughter bailed me out, I knew: I had to find help or die trying.
Once I was out, I found a twelve-step program for sexaholics. Soon I was on a Zoom meeting, shaking, terrified, hopeful. I met my sponsor. I started to work program and participated in the fellowship. It took a year to finish my 1st step—a year of facing every demon I’d spent a lifetime running from. With each step, another wall of my self-made prison crumbled.
Then in August 2021, I was found guilty and sentenced to 53 days in jail. I kept working the steps. It was all I had. Inmates called me “PapaPhone” because I was always on the phone with my sponsor. But God wasn’t done sending me help. He connected me with another inmate—a recovering alcoholic with rage issues who was also working the 12 steps. We talked for hours about the program, about surrender, about finding God in the darkest places. He became my accountability partner behind those walls, someone who understood the battle I was fighting. Together, we worked through the steps. In that cell, in that solitude, with my sponsor on the phone and my fellow recovering addict by my side, I finally connected with God. He knew exactly what I needed. By His grace, I finished steps 2 and 3 behind bars. The irony wasn’t lost on me: I was in a physical prison, but for the first time in decades, I was beginning to feel free.
When I was released, I didn’t stop. Meetings. Calls. Steps. One day at a time. By God’s grace, I’m now working on my 12th step.
Who am I now? I’m the same broken man, but with one precious gift: a choice. Every morning, I choose recovery over addiction. I choose freedom over my self-made prison. I have a relationship with God. I’ve joined a church. I still struggle. I still fall short. But every day, I recommit to sobriety. Every day, I forgive myself. Every day, I remember: I am worth it. I am worth God’s forgiveness and love.
I am grateful for my arrest. I am grateful for the graffiti on that cell wall. I am grateful to be alive, for the first time in my life.
Why did God save me? Why didn’t He just let me end it? I believe He saved me so I wouldn’t die with all that hate poisoning my heart, trapped forever in that prison of addiction. So I could finally see a sunrise and feel something. So I could grow. He saved me so I could make amends to the people I destroyed. So I could make amends to Him and know Him truly. So I could help others like me—lost, broken, drowning in their own prisons—see there’s another way out.
Since my liberation from addiction, I am freer now than I ever was in my so-called freedom. The prison of addiction held me captive for decades. But through God’s grace, and the 12 steps program, I found the key. I walked out of that prison and into the light.
I had to go to prison to be set free.
I am grateful to be a sexaholic in recovery. When I was 8, I was sexually abused by a 10-year old who had found their father’s pornography. In middle and high school, I obsessively masturbated to fantasy and pornography and at college, I added excessive sex. This progressed until I was caught sexually abusing one of my students. That is what drove me to 12-Step recovery. Lust controlled my life; I craved more, could not stop, and had no limits. Doing what I wanted, to whom I wanted, and when I wanted cost me a marriage, career, and 20 months of freedom.
I returned to 12-Step meetings after my release and, after years of procrastination, accepted that I had to change my old, selfish ways. I found a sponsor who guided me through the Steps. Those Steps identified my problem and offered me a method for change. That path has been crooked, up and down, and sometimes I left the path.
However, living in recovery is less stressful, takes less energy, and helps me make better decisions. Results include a marriage in recovery, better job, hobbies, and I sleep through the night. Even in recovery, I am still human, have problems, and sometimes hurt people. The Steps keep me in contact with my Higher Power (HP) who helps me deal constructively with my problems and make amends when needed.
I have a lasting and joyous recovery as long as I continue trying to improve my relationships with the people inside and outside of my head.
The strongest message I retained from my early 12-Step meetings was to stay sober.
But, at my first meeting, I also heard this statement, “Nor do we claim that sobriety alone will lead to a lasting and joyous recovery.” If sobriety alone isn’t enough, what more do I need to do?
The literature warns me that within a week or a month I will forget the pain that drove me to the 12 Steps. Forgetting isn’t a quirk of mine, it is a symptom of addiction. Unless reminded, I will forget everything that helps me or hurts me. I have repeatedly read 12-Step literature, but each time I re-read, there are large sections I don’t remember.
Thankfully, when at a meeting or on a call, someone will remind me of the sections I forgot. Being in contact with others also helps me avoid isolation; another symptom of this disease. There is power in fellowship.
I was on a call with a member during my commute home. As I slowed to take the exit, another driver aggressively came too close. In my rear view mirror I saw him put up his hands and tilt his head as if to yell, “why are you slowing down!?!” I instinctively made a rude hand gesture.
Acting in anger while in contact with a fellow addict prodded me to tell on myself. As I confessed my action, I had to add that the person saw my raised middle finger over the sticker in my rear window that proclaims, “Love One Another.”
My recovery needs fellowship.
Experience shows that my thoughts and actions, not just my crimes, but all the daily, selfish decisions that bring me guilt and shame, have to change. People can change, but that amount of work is intimidating. Thankfully, the fellowship gives me monitoring and support as I try.
My recovery needs a change in my thoughts and actions.
The steps ask me to change by improving my relations with others; how do I do that?
I was a history major in college and was taught to look for original documents. Alcoholics Anonymous, commonly known as the Big Book (BB) is the original document. I have no problem with alcohol, but those instructions also work on my problem—lust—just as they do for gamblers, over-eaters, or drug users.
The instructions for the Steps–not the short version on the posters, but the instructions in the BB–gave me clear-cut directions. The Steps are not something I do once and am cured nor are they an added burden, they replace my old ways of thinking and acting. Working the Steps with a sponsor is vital because, without guidance, I would have taken many wrong turns and probably, out of frustration, given up on the Steps.
My recovery needs the Steps.
But what does that look like in action? The simple answer is Step 10 tells me how to deal with any situation causing me pain or discomfort; surrender, share, and do service. Step 11 tells me to review my past day, meditate on what my HP wants me to do during my coming day, discard defects revealed in my review, make amends when appropriate, and pray. Using written self-reflection, I can stop accumulating baggage, deal with existing baggage, and do what I can to fix relationships. However, I could not have just started with 10 and 11. Without going through the other Steps, in order with a sponsor, these instructions would not make sense.
Lately, meditation, which is given few words in the BB, has become a larger part of my program. I keep expanding the range of what fuels my meditation; multiple faith traditions, writers, and poets. However, I also know SAs who stay with one source or faith tradition and their meditation life is deep and rich. We all find our own way through recovery and the same is true of meditation.
My recovery needs meditation to connect with my HP.
One passage in the BB instructions for Step 4 seems written for people with my problem; “if sex is very troublesome, we throw ourselves harder into helping others. We think of their needs and work for them.
This takes us out of ourselves.”
For me, this passage emphasizes Step 12; carry the message to others. I once felt unqualified to help others. That was a lie. If I have studied and worked the Steps with a sponsor, then I have knowledge that the newcomer does not have, but needs. It was given to me, I must give it to others.
What if I say something wrong? I am human: I have and I will probably do it again. The only way to become a good sponsor is to learn from being a bad sponsor.
The only time sponsoring is stressful is when I am doing it wrong. I only share my experience of recovery and the Steps. The sponsee has to figure out how to use the Steps to find their HP. As a bonus, when I try to help someone, my problems shrink to insignificance or are forgotten. My sponsee’s recovery is between them and their HP; none of my business and outside of my control.
I am only asked to try. Trying helps me be sober, happy, joyous, and free. I need to be helping others or preparing to help them.
Help others; the final part needed for my recovery.
My lasting and joyous recovery comes from helping others. I can only do that because I improved my relations with others. Those relations improved because I changed my old ways using the Steps. Change was possible because of the monitoring and support I found in fellowship. I could value and seek fellowship because of sobriety. Sobriety is like the ticket that allows me to enter a concert. After I am in the door, I don’t think about the ticket anymore, I focus on experiencing the event.
I am forced to register as a sex offender, which means there are varying restrictions on my location and activities. Do I look at all the places I can’t go (UK, Australia, state parks, any church service) or focus on all the places I can go (rest of Europe, Iceland, national parks, museums, historic sites.) I choose a positive sobriety.
I will try to spend my limited energy being helpful in the present. I can learn from the past, but I can’t change it; I can prepare for the future, but I cannot guarantee it. Living in the present is more important.
Recovery is a flat, paved road. Similar to driving, while on that road, I am always within a few feet of a collision or running off the road and all other cars are outside of my control. All I can do is follow the rules, be present, and pay attention.