Over five years into recovery, my connection to SAA is minimal. I recently attended a very dear friend’s celebration of life and saw some faces I hadn’t seen for a while. It reminded me that I have needed to share some perspectives during this time, especially for those who may have some miles on the clock and find themselves a little disconnected from a previous chapter, when recovery was exciting, and who now feel in some sort of no-man’s-land.

I’m about two years on from regular sit-downs with my therapist; at one point, I used to go weekly. I’m also two years on from being at a meeting every week and having a week dominated by service calls and sponsorship.

Now my phone rings less often, and sponsees reach out less and less. I have a weekly meeting with guys who share my faith and approach life with vulnerability and honesty. In that regard, we are like a recovery group, and this outlet allows me to fulfil my ongoing programme of recovery. I continue to take inventory (Step Ten), maintain my conscious contact with God (Step Eleven), and carry the message of recovery by living more authentically (Step Twelve), so why do I feel like I’ve fallen back somewhat?

My honest answer? Long-term recovery, and living life on life’s terms, is at times a permanent reminder that my life derailed. There are closed chapters, lost friends, closed opportunities, and shut doors. My early zest and serenity made it easier to live with those realities—to accept the things I cannot change. I may have the wisdom to know the difference between the things I cannot change and the things I can, but it doesn’t mean the constant reminders don’t rob me of joy.

There is an element of recovery which feels like maintaining a constant state of self-awareness and effort to abstain, in thought and deed, from something which most guys don’t even think is an issue. I’ve never been someone who approaches recovery as living under a rock, and as a result, I would never coach someone to pursue a white-knuckle definition of sexual sobriety.

We have the Three Circles as a tool, and there’s a middle circle for that very reason: process addictions are not as binary as drink or don’t drink. Take a food addict—the answer isn’t to starve to death. In the same way, for the sex addict, the answer isn’t to chop your Johnson off and live like a eunuch Jedi.

All that being said, I’ve noticed bargaining and justification creeping into what I consider the grey zone—the middle circle of behaviour. I’m a boundary bender and, as such, I can push things on social media from time to time: lingering here and there on something in my feed, following the odd unhelpful account. I’m usually open about it and brush it off with the idea that, compared to where I used to be, I’m just orbiting harmless and innocuous stuff.

The problem with this approach is that the algorithm can become a dealer and a pusher. I wish there were an algorithm opt-out button, but here we are.

The screen-time stats on my phone show that, even in my much better life, my dependency on my phone is a time hole. If I’m honest, I can fall into scroll rabbit holes, and even my use of AI has become something I can waste time on. It can take me away from being present in my own life and leave me feeling a lot like the avoidance and medicating I used to get from acting out.

AI, if I am honest, has some pretty solid safeguards around image generation and nudity. I know that because I’ve found myself trying to push them, and that in itself is a form of relapse. But I believe that’s a spectrum, and let’s just say that in my five years, I’ve been on that spectrum in one way or another more than I would care to admit.

So what do I do about these things? Well, the answer is the same now as it was when I was plugged into SAA 24/7 and obsessed with recovery: honest reflection, continued willingness to be helped and to share, and being willing to make some changes. For instance, I now allow myself three hours a day with social media and AI, with a solid, enforced cut-off from night-time until late morning.

Long-term recovery is a little like maintaining a waistline: you are never going to weigh the same without some consistency, and your recovery will never stay as it was early on. Sure, there are some guys who, for years—decades even—attend every meeting like clockwork. It’s okay that my life has grown in other directions, but it’s not okay to be complacent and construct a self-deceptive narrative.

It’s why we need one another. Recovery is best worked in connection with others because, regardless of what the addiction is, isolation is the soil of addiction.