Dear PFN - It was sweet reading your post, though the pain it brings up in my memory is horrible at the same time. I also told some of my story on this site in an earlier post, and I also went through the therapist and medication route. Before that, I went through the teshuva and frumkeit route. But at both of those stages, I was not yet able to use any of those tools to stay sober (not meds or therapy, and not teshuvah or frumkeit), until I started to work the 12 steps in SA. In my case, working the steps, going regularly to weekly SA meetings, getting a sponsor, and making many calls to other members, helped my life get turned around.
I'd be happy to give you all the details of my story, but for now, suffice it to say that my entire consciousness and inner life (and as much of my outer life as was possible) were about lust and nothing more. I was in a constant state of either: excitement/anticipation of when I'd act on my lust again, or depressing/exhausting fear of when I'd screw up and act on my lust again! That went on for fifteen years (beside the adolescent phase of all that).
But I digress...
I was going to a therapist because I got caught. He put me on meds and gave me "talk therapy" but I got progressively worse. I introduced him to the 12 steps in some literature that I had come by in one of my many 'bad' searches, but he (not being an addiction therapist) did not consider it worthwhile. The question he asked me was: "Look, do you want to beat this thing and get healed (which he professed he would do), or do you just want help to learn how to live with it? Cuz that's all 12 steps will give you."
Well, when I acted out (that last time) 11 years ago this past February and saw how out of control I was (married with three children at the time), I had a gift from Hashem of clear recognition that there was nothing really stopping me from taking the very next step in acting out, which would require me to throw away my entire life - family, religion, community, and everything. I saw my death looming and felt, "I need to do something - anything - to stop and stay stopped, NOW." That's when I went to an addiction therapist who connected me with SA, and I have been working the program, doing service work, making friends, and staying sober ever since.
My life and the life of my wife and children is immeasurably better now, and I have a best friend who is the answer to all my needs. It's not a picture of a woman, nor is it a woman at all - not even my wife. It is the Almighty Friend I always had, who created the world, all lust, all pleasure, all goodness, and me. He will take care of me, and as long as I do what is necessary to remain aware of him and be honest with myself, I will live a life that is made beautiful with the awareness that Hashem is with me and that everything will be OK.
So far, with a lot of help, I have not needed to reach for my drug (like I did in the past) to live. But back then, just being religious or davening was not enough for me, because I was very, very broken and very "goofy" in the head.
Now I am a sick person getting better/fixed up, not a bad person getting good.
Hope something here was helpful,
Dov