Wow - thanks for all the supportive and thoughtful replies.
Writing this post, and reading the responses has been a good first step for me in hopefully keeping this sane. For me there are two potentially destructive effects (and maybe a third).
The first is money - the problem is that my cash flow is so complex (well-paying full-time job plus consulting work BUT a family and a fairly high standard of living) that it's easy to justify nearly anything and 'launder' my hobbying expenses. I can pay all my bills ok - it's just sometimes hard to track the long term impact of the expenses and occasionally there is a month where I have big expenses and someone is late paying what they owe me and the margin I spent hobbying would have been nice to still have (I'd say I spend about $300 a month) or I just feel like it would have been nice to make some other discretionary purchase.
The second is time - MERB is definitely part of my problem, and I confess that I have been a real lurker (often because after an SP experience - good or bad - I just need to get away - not because I want to hoard info). Often a typical pattern is that I just wake up in the morning with this burning urge ('craving' - a hallmark of addiction) and when I get into my office I'm checking who's available for the day and relentlessly scanning reviews. I could have done some pretty constructive things in all the hours I've spent like this, but I manage to get my work done. It's just getting increasingly on the edge and I know I'm missing opportunities that would have been rewarding on a personal and professional level. As I mentioned above I have a demanding day job plus moonlighting - it's not like I have a lot of extra time.
The third - maybe - is my marriage. We have a lot of problems, and there are times when my wife just basically treats other people, including me, like sh*t. You might suppose that somehow she knows, consciously or unconsciously, and the treatment is a result of that knowledge. However although my secret sexual indulgences are something that started long before I met my wife, the abusive behavior preceded any dalliances on my part during our relationship by a long time. I basically have zero social life, as she dislikes all my friends and controls virtually every second of my time, and the whole situation is just extremely isolating - the simple human connection of an SP (and I realize it's a business transaction but then so are a lot of things) ends up being incredibly compelling as an outlet, and it's a lot simpler than having an affair - I have plenty of opportunities but I'm pretty sure this would be *more* disastrous than the hobby could ever be in emotional and (since it would likely be with co-workers) professional terms. Also ironically after the outlet of an SP experience, I often feel a renewed appreciation for those things I have in my family life that I won't get from SP'ing. I expect a number of guys probably feel similarly in that in a sense hobbying is *saving* my marriage.
It's clear to me that, at the very least, I'm vulnerable to this getting to a problem level. I'm not going to make any unrealistic promises about stopping, just trying to keep it reasonable.
Thanks for the replies - maybe we can consider this a thread open for anyone who wants to vent or talk if they feel the hobby is getting out of control for them.
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