Although I love what Hashem is doing for me since I started using the 12 steps to allow Him to do it, I sincerely believe there are many ways that Hashem can do that for his kids. Some folks clearly need a different way than the 12 steps in order to reach what the 12 steps are about (as the 12th step declares) "a spiritual awakening" and sobriety.
But clearly, 'learning how to stop masturbating' is not the answer, and neither is 'learning how to stop lusting'... 'Not' is just...well, 'not'! Eventually, when things change enough that we want "it" more than we want to be close to Hashem, our wives, our kids, reality, sanity, or whatever - then we pick up where we left off and get busy with lust fantasy again. As precious as living with Hashem, our wife/families, etc. are, they often lose their panache. They eventually just get too boring, too fraught with 'issues', too scary, or just too...'too'. Life as I knew it was rarely enough to stop me from acting out my hopes and dreams of lust for long.
So the answer for most addicts I have met is a new attitude toward living that is inside us. A change in our very motivations for living. Amazing. Impossible, really...and that makes it really amazing, to me!
Most of the guys who are sincerely interested in just 'not', eventually 'do' again, and find they need to stop 'stopping' and instead, start letting go of burdens, and live. Look, eventually we will all be forced to surrender all our burdens.....by getting old, maybe sick, and surely, by dying. So why not start letting go right now while we can still live and enjoy the reduced 'weight'?
And a life without burdens is a sober life. Cuz lust is always a drag and always makes us miserable, no matter how much we feel we need it to live. And many of us do think just that, in truth, which is why we do it so much.
But the steps cannot be the only way, I figure.
But I just figured, why reinvent the wheel? So I went to 12 steps meetings (I chose SA) and chose a sponsor and the rest was history for me and my family. See, my humiliation (leiv nishbar) eventually led me to enough humility that I could tolerate to just follow in the footsteps of people who have already been successful getting and staying free. I was ready to accept cheirus - even if it meant learning it from a bunch of sexaholic goyim perverts. (Though I will say that it's been great fun so far, and that I just spent a Shabbos with over 160 very frum yidden in SA recovery....so there are plenty frum yidden to learn recovery from, nowadays!)
Others need to grow up another way, and I am sure that many have and many will - kein yirbu!