About This Site

Thank you for being here! I hope you’re ready to be done with addiction and all the wreckage it leaves behind. Here is the story of my journey out of addiction.

My struggles began at 12 when I first encountered pornography. I was a curious kid seeking escape from feelings of loneliness and sadness that I was barely aware of. It seemed harmless, but I didn’t realize the magnitude of the chains I was slowly wrapping around myself. By age 16, I added alcohol to my list of escape routes, indulging in both secret and social addictions.

In college, miles away from home, I was free to live as I wished. I partied, I laughed, I lived—yet, in my quiet moments, the shadows of my addiction loomed. The secrecy surrounding my actions amplified my feelings of guilt and shame. I felt lost and isolated, even in a room full of friends.

At 22, I started to realize the damage my behavior was causing. I dreamed of a future family and understood my addictions were roadblocks to achieving that dream. While I managed to step away from alcohol and partying, the chains of pornography tightened, revealing the formidable nature of this addiction.

I spent the next ten years grappling with these issues, tumbling down a rabbit hole of self-loathing and despair. I sought solace in the very sources of my pain, trapping myself in a vicious cycle. I once thought marriage would be my saving grace, a way to satisfy my urges. I learned the hard way that love and lust aren’t interchangeable. Love is personal, unique, and shared, while lust is impersonal, common, and solitary. I learned that marriage doesn’t cure this.

When I turned 32, I was introduced to a 12-step program designed for sexual addiction. I attended my first meeting, nervous yet hopeful. To my surprise, I met others who shared similar experiences and were striving for change just like me. I wasn’t alone in my battle.

The 12-step program was tough but transformational. As I withdrew from my addictions by working the steps in the context of a group, I had to confront the underlying pain I’d masked for years. But by persisting and leaning on my sponsor and the group, I slowly began to regain control over my life. The journey was rough and filled with obstacles, but the sense of freedom that came with overcoming my addictions was worth every struggle.

Temptation didn’t disappear, but I wasn’t its prisoner anymore. I had the power to make better choices. As I embraced honesty, even the allure of temptation began to fade. Instead of battling addiction head-on, I focused on creating an environment where I could flourish while the addiction withered.

I’ve sat in countless meetings alongside others who share similar stories, and together we’ve found the strength to change. The principles of the 12-step program weren’t new; they were lessons I’d been taught growing up. The difference was in the practice and in coming out of isolation. By actively applying these principles, I was able to break free from the chains of addiction one day at a time.

If my story strikes a chord with you, I invite you to explore this website further. Here, you’ll find the wisdom I’ve gathered over 21+ years of recovery. Join me and many others as we walk the path toward freedom and happiness. It’s not an easy journey, but trust me, it’s worth it.

I’ve always been practical, wanting to know what I need to do to achieve my goals. So I’ve listed a few initial steps below that you can follow that worked for me.

  1. Find and attend at least one addiction recovery meeting per week.  This is the hardest step, and until the pain of the addiction gets really bad, you might not be willing to take this first step into freedom.  If you’re not ready yet, bookmark this page and come back once you’re ready – when the pain gets bad enough.  Once I overcame my fear, shame, and isolation and went to my first meeting, I was amazed at how helpful it was and how happy I was that I did it.  I found out it was a lot easier and more rewarding than I thought!  There are face-to-face and online meetings. Face-to-face is the most powerful, but online works pretty well too. I have been involved with two different 12-step addiction recovery programs for the past 20 years, Sexaholics Anonymous (like AA, but for sexual addictions instead of alcohol addiction.  The process of becoming free from any addiction is actually very similar.) and the Addiction Recovery Program (from the LDS church).  Both work for me and are based on the same core principles of getting my life back.  Pick one, find a meeting near you, and attend a meeting this week.  I used to feel so alone.  The shame and self-loathing I felt drove me into isolation for decades.  Finding out that there were so many others just like me who were also trying to get free was really motivating and was the key to getting rid of the shame and isolation that kept me in the addiction.  Coming out of isolation and destroying shame was the most important step.  Overcome your fear and take this step this week!  You and your freedom are worth it!
  2. Get a sponsor.  A sponsor is just someone else at that 12-step meeting who is farther along than you in recovery.  It’s someone who knows how to navigate recovery, and it will speed up your recovery at least 10 times faster.  After going to the meetings for a month or so, you’ll probably identify with some other attendees more than others.  Ask one of them if they’ll be your sponsor.  See the sponsor article for more information about how that works.
  3. Remember that as you get into recovery, things will probably get worse before they get better because the real problems are hiding underneath your main addiction.  As you put your addiction (your painkiller) down, some terrible feelings and fears will start to come to the surface.  Your sponsor and group will help you through all that.  Stay connected, and you’ll be fine.  It will get better.  Never give up.
  4. Once you have a meeting to attend and a sponsor to help you, come back to this site and browse through all the topics below to benefit from many years of experience around how to become free from your addictions by working these 12 steps and how to become a better person in general by following a more open, honest, more confident way of life.

As you go through the steps above, get to meetings, and start making progress, please contact us and let us know.  Seeing others get more freedom than before is what motivates us!

Above is the story of the founder of the More Freedom Blog.  If you want to see more stories of all the authors at this site, they are here.  I hope you find the peace and freedom we have found.  And never, never, never give up!

Spouses, family members, and friends of addicts can read this page to see how they can get support too.

Once you’re into the program, you can come back to the section below to learn more about each step and some of the basics of the program that will hopefully speed up the recovery process for you, just like a sponsor will, but this will give you yet another perspective on recovery and what’s worked for me.

Recovery Overview

Below is an outline of the basics of my recovery program. Most of it I’ve learned from books or other people in recovery, but I’ve lived it and made it mine now. Each link will take you to a list of blog posts that have something to do with that topic so you can dig into any of the topics you want to.

When I am working with someone new to recovery as their sponsor, I tell them to get the basics (listed below under “The Basics” in place first, then start working the 12 steps, and then everything else will fall into place.

  • The Basics
    • The 12 Steps – (I’m using the generic AA wording of the steps below.)
    • Step 0 – Became part of a fellowship of recovery.
    • Step 1 – We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable.
    • Step 2 – Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
    • Step 3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
    • Step 4 – Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
    • Step 5 – Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
    • Step 6 – Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
    • Step 7 – Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
    • Step 8 – Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
    • Step 9 – Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
    • Step 10 – Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
    • Step 11 – Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
    • Step 12 – Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
  • Other helpful topics
    • Habits – Changing from the outside in.
    • Lust – The opposite of love.  The source of compulsion.  A form of hatred.
    • Relapses and Triggers – Tips and tricks for learning.
    • Shame and Isolation – The core of addiction.
    • Denial and Gas-lighting
    • Codependency – Addiction to other people’s reactions to me.
    • I often learn through Analogies, so here are several in case you do too.
    • Results – What have I gotten out of addiction recovery above and beyond being free from addiction?
  • Myth-busting
    • Marriage doesn’t fix lust/sex addiction if you don’t switch love for lust.
    • Men will be men?  My sex drive is actually created by my choices to lust.