As far as I have seen, all the warnings about the 'badness' of lust seem quite silly. The silliest warnings of all are the religious warnings, though the moralist ones are a close second... If I was really motivated by goodness or halacha then I'd have never been in this trouble in the first place! Some people just don't get it. I have met them. They think goodness is a substitute for honesty. Hah. And while the tikun klali might do you some good in avoiding punishment and gehinom - what does it have to do withstopping or with recovery?
If it had never 'hit home' for me, I'd probably have never have stopped. It feels good to use sex and lust, so why would we ever quit unless we had to? Few would, I guess.
My own journey involved a lot of pain - in and out of the marriage - as a result of my lying, escapades and lots of frustrated unmanageability. I got caught badly by my wife, then went to a shrink... still got much worse, until I eventually saw the end coming.Just had to stop, I couldn't live without it. I was basically a dead-man, as far as I could tell. I went to an addictions shrink who introduced me to SA. I grabbed onto it and did as suggested and have been sober and getting freer from the tyranny of lust in my life ever since.
It is quite shocking, actually. I was going from massage parlor to massage parlor, nudee bar to nudee bar, and making phone hookups around the clock with little power to 'organize' things or stop.... And now I am sober, mostly useful, and growing in every part of my life.