Hi @WMarriedLGBT, I’m a male sex / lust addict. I can speak to my experience about recovering from sex addiction. There are some patterns common to sex / lust / porn addictions that are common in other addictions as well, and there are others that differ somewhat. These have been mine.
I spent a very long time with the cravings. Sometimes I’d be bouncing from craving to craving, acting out again and again and again, for hours, days, or a week at a time. Then I’d turn back to my life, dejected and ashamed, hollow, yet not believing I could change much of anything. (Still I tried. I tried to understand it. I tried to control it. I had blockers and accountability software and flip phones (not smartphones), all trying to keep myself from walking down that path to my addiction.)
For me personally, recovery from this addiction has taught me this about myself:
It is not caused by porn, or media, or sex, or culture, or cravings, or physiology, or neurology, or what clothing people wear. The problem (and the solution) is way deeper (and simpler) than that. All those things are superficial. Saying those things cause it is like saying a problem of obesity is caused primarily by food. The problem is about my choices in relation to food, my attitudes in relation to food (how I perceive it), and those choices have emotional and psychological roots. I need to learn from people who can help me to understand those roots, dig them up, and throw them - in a conscious, healthy way - out of my garden.
My journey has been long but I am grateful now for 4 months of continuous sobriety, which I haven’t had since before I hit puberty.
For me, my path to reaching this point went through Sexaholics Anonymous (www.SA.org). There are other groups focused on sex / porn / lust addiction recovery as well (Neal made a list of them here: Resources for our recovery - #64 by NealRecoveryCA). I found that it was only when I started connecting with and learning with others who had walked their own road through sex / lust / porn addictions - who had been in that heart-emptying carousel, and who’d decided they wanted out - that my heart truly began to respond, and the deep change took root.
Don’t give up. It is possible if you keep searching, you stay humble, and you take little steps every day (steps which you can learn from others in recovery).