My addiction to pornography, lust, and masturbation started when I was about 12 years old. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I didn’t think I was hurting anyone, so I continued to use these things to escape from depression and loneliness (though I didn’t know it at the time) and to cover up the things I didn’t like feeling. Around age 16, I started drinking alcohol with my friends as well.
I graduated high school and left home to go to college 600 miles away. Free at last! I partied with my new-found friends. My sexual addictions were always there in their various forms, but I kept them very private because I was ashamed of what I was doing to myself and others. They progressed to sex with others, strip clubs and more. It seemed there was no limit to where I would allow my addictions to take me. I isolated from friends at church and eventually stopped going to church completely. I was often around large groups of people, but I felt completely alone. I was nearing rock bottom and would consistently use lust and alcohol to numb my pains and escape from the realities of life.
At age 22, I had some experiences that led to a change of heart. I started to care about what I was doing and how it was hurting me and my future wife and family that I wanted to have someday. When this change of heart happened, I walked away from alcohol and going to parties, but I wasn’t able to walk away from pornography and masturbation. I wanted to stop those things as well, but over the years they had become powerful addictions that were much stronger than alcohol or anything else I had experienced up to that point. I soon found out that I was unable to overcome these addictions on my own, though I tried everything I could think of.
For the next ten years, I tried to overcome my sexual addictions and failed miserably. I would mentally beat myself up every day for being such a failure. My searching on the Internet got progressively worse. This new material locked me into the addiction even tighter. I could find no way out of it. The addiction locked me into a horrible downward spiral of physically acting out my addiction, beating myself up for being so “stupid,” becoming depressed and hopeless and then seeking the addiction again to cover up pain and loneliness and then the cycle repeated endlessly.
Denial and shame prevented the hypocrisy of my life from hitting me in the face. I was so hypocritical that I would get after people who thought that going to R-rated movies was all right. Little did they know that I was looking at much worse than R-rated movies every day. I did everything in my power to try to be perfect to make up for the sins of my hidden life. At times, my pride would convince me that I was such a great person that I had to have this addiction just to keep me humble. Thoughts like that almost stopped me from fighting against it. I almost just accepted it as a necessary evil that, by keeping me humble, did more good than harm. The lies of pride and denial knew no bounds in me.
I also thought that if I got married, the problem would go away because then this “appetite” would finally be satisfied. I found that to be false by talking to other people who were married and yet were still addicted. I found out later that just as an addict is never satisfied with one piece of pornography for their whole life, the addict’s wife could not satisfy their lust for very long either. I found that love was completely different than lust and that I could only find happiness if I removed lust from my life completely – even in marriage. I discovered that love is personal and different for each person that I love and that lust is generic and that I can transfer it from person to person. That’s what happened as I viewed several images of pornography one after the other. I transferred lust from one image to another and another. It didn’t matter who they were. Lust turned people into objects in my mind.
Around age 32, one of the many church leaders who had tried to help me overcome this addiction told me about a 12-Step program for sexual addiction. I didn’t even know what a 12-Step program was, but he said that another member of my congregation had found success there. At this point, I was willing to try anything. I went to my first 12-Step meeting and was very nervous. It turned out that the people there were just like me and had experienced the same things I had, but were now changing for the better. I identified with what they were saying, and I got hope in that first meeting that this might work. I was no longer alone.
I kept going back to the 12-Step meetings, got a sponsor, started “working the steps,” and began to see real changes in my behavior and my level of peace and joy. Things actually got a bit worse in the beginning as I put down these addictions I had been using to numb myself out – I started feeling the pain. It was a rocky road, but by going to meetings and working the steps, I became free from these addictions physically and then started to work on overcoming the effects that all those years of addiction had on me. I also had to overcome the toxic shame and denial that kept me lying to others and especially to myself all these years. It took years of sobriety and the threat of losing my family to undo the bulk of that denial because I wasn’t even aware of it for those first years of physical sobriety. If I had been more humble and vulnerable sooner, I could have progressed much more quickly.
I didn’t become free from temptation, but I no longer felt compelled to give in to temptation. I was finally free to choose – to turn away from these addictions. I was finally free to choose other, better things in life. In fact, I found out that much of the temptation came from the conditioning I had put myself through all those years. So, as I became completely honest with myself, even the temptations started to decrease. I still must exert effort to continue down this narrow path, but it’s amazing when compared to my life of addiction. Instead of fighting the addiction directly, I now work to provide an environment where the addiction is weak and I am safe and free. Through the program, I also work to rid myself of the pride, resentment, denial, minimizing, rationalizing, omitting, hiding, lying, judgment, and unresolved sins in my past and present that were causing the misery that I had tried to cover up with my addiction continually.
I have been in meetings with thousands of people doing the same things I did and who are getting the same results I’m getting. I can see their lives change like mine did. It’s amazing and I never thought I could be free as I continue taking care of myself in the ways I have learned in recovery.
The fundamental principles of the 12-Step program were not new to me. I found that, for me, the core of 12-Step programs matched principles I had learned growing up. I had known these things for most of my life, so what was so different about these 12-Step programs? Why should I bother learning about similar things I had been learning from my family and church all those years? It was evident that merely possessing knowledge of these principals in my mind had not freed me of these addictions up to that point in my life, so why would learning about these same principles again make a difference this time around? I think I found the answer to this question and I want to share what I have found with you. As you browse around this blog, you’ll find these answers and more.
If you identify with my story and want to learn more, I have written what I’ve learned during these past 18 years in recovery from all my addictions here in this blog. Come join me and thousands of others who have found the freedom and happiness they deserve. Start here!
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