Minutes before being sentenced to a suspended 60-day jail term for driving while impaired by alcohol, Baltimore County Councilman Stephen G. Samuel Moxley acknowledged for the first time in public Wednesday that he is an alcoholic and that he needs help.

“It was a game of Russian roulette I was playing and I didn’t realize that,” Moxley said in Baltimore District Court after a prosecutor had spelled out the details of a four-car accident July 24 in West Baltimore that was caused by Moxley, who told police he had been out drinking sangria with friends. A woman was injured. It was his second driving under the influence charge in four years.

“You’re not going to go to jail,” Judge H. Gary Bass said to the 50-year-old councilman. But Bass placed Moxley on two years’ probation and ordered him to serve 85 hours of community service, to operate his car with a so-called ignition interlock device for 18 months, and to continue seeing a psychologist and attending an alcohol-treatment program.

Moxley was not fined, the judge said, because he was already incurring significant costs as part of his treatment and rehabilitation.

Moxley had initially been charged with four counts — three for driving under the influence and the fourth for failing to reduce his speed to avoid a collision. In an arrangement with prosecutor John Mitchell, Moxley was able to plead not guilty to a single charge of driving while impaired. Bass found him guilty of that lesser offense.

Moxley, a four-term councilman who represents the district that includes Catonsville and Arbutus, said after his arrest that he had no intention of resigning, but did not return phone calls from The Baltimore Sun or speak publicly about the incident.

After Wednesday’s hearing, Moxley expressed regret for the accident and for the “embarrassment” it brought to his wife and daughter, both of whom were in court. He also said he was sorry for the effect it might have had on the other three drivers in the accident, who were also in court.

“I’ve got a problem,” he told reporters. “I am powerless over alcohol.”