Question: How Did You Quit Porn?

Anonymous asked:

I would understand if you declined, but could you tell me how you recovered from pornography addiction? And if so, what made you decide to stop? Do you think your friends and family were affected by your addictions? I’m working on publishing the stories of pornography addicts and the effects on themselves and others. Thank you very much.

Here are some posts where you might find some of the answers:

- Porn Addiction: An Introduction – Also has links to seven part series

- Fighting Porn For The Last Time (Again) – Also has links to answered questions about porn

How did you recover?

It first had to begin with confession. I told my roommate everything. He was shocked; we prayed, cried, talked into the night. He became my “accountability partner.”

I went all out. Cut off most sources of internet, put a filter on my computer, had X3Watch set up so my roommate knew what I was looking at, always left my door open (including the bathroom during showers), started openly talking about my addiction, read everything I could on porn addiction and recovery, and ran out the house when the urge struck.

The external changes were necessary but not sufficient. I had to spiritually re-ground myself because I had been so used to using porn as a comfort. No matter what people say, no one just “uses porn” when they’re bored. There’s always a deeper reason, even behind the boredom. I had to find out why porn was my go-to mechanism for coping.

It was an array of complicated (but not that complicated) issues like approval-seeking, depression, lack of encouragement, self-loathing, self-pity, daddy issues, pride, ego, and control. While many would say lust is the issue, lust is only a vehicle for our ego: we try to fulfill that lust for a sense of domination.

Most guys don’t know how to control their lust because they don’t understand how to deal with helplessness — in other words, most of us spoiled Americans have no idea what to do when we don’t get something we want.

No one naturally drifts towards discipline. So you have a bunch of spoiled dudes who can’t possibly fulfill their lust outside of marriage in legitimate ways — pray, exercise, fellowship, read the Bible, sing, a hobby — and that threatens the ego. Therefore porn is the easiest way to find control.

When I quit porn, I found out how helplessly inept I really was without it. When it was no longer an option, it was like my milk bottle was ripped from me. I felt like I had cut off my leg. Most of us can’t imagine what it’s like to never be without porn for the rest of your life, and that’s when you know it’s an addiction.

I had to confront my ego and embrace humility. I had to realize I was a spoiled selfish baby who used porn to subside the temper tantrums of not “getting what I want.” It was a painful process of self-discovery and meditation. Most guys don’t make it because their ego is too important to them.

Knowing the Gospel — that Jesus the Son of God humbly gave his life on a cross for a broken people he created — was the exact humility and love that I needed to constantly uppercut my ego. That was the identity, the grounding, the truth I had to fully embrace. Though I can safely say that I was “still a Christian” while addicted to porn, I hadn’t allowed the Gospel to fully explode its life into me. I still believe that God could work through me despite my addiction — He can make good of whatever we do — but it was not the complete good that He had wanted.

Most porn addicts believe they can experience God while occasionally using porn, but then they don’t know the full guilt-free joy of God without it.

What made you decide to stop?

The simple answer is that the consequences were overwhelming me. As embarrassing as it is, it was difficult (near-impossible) to look at a woman without thinking about her sexually. The loop of porn playing in my head choked me with a sexual dimension to damn near everything. If someone tells you they can separate their “porn life” with “real life,” they’re either very good liars (having deceived themselves) or sociopaths.

I also stayed up nights looking at porn, which has caused tons of lost sleep. I once calculated the amount of time I spent on porn in my fifteen year addiction to see how much time I had lost. Working from a general average (meaning it could be more), I had lost a total of about two years of my entire life to pornography. I could’ve gotten a second bachelor’s or piano lessons or traveled the world or been married.

You must also know that most recorded pornography — about 3/4 — is from some type of illegal trafficking and sex slavery. Even the “professional porn” is born out of psychological coercion and abuse. I read tons of testimonies of sexually abused women seduced by porn producers, gangraped on set, tricked over and over, numbed by drugs and alcohol, to finish their scenes.

It made me sick to my stomach. What if she was my mother, sister, daughter? And no matter who she is, she IS a daughter of God, a created human being like you and me. Only a sick jerk (or society) would dismantle a women into a robotic sexual playtoy, and it happens everyday across millions of computer screens in the so-called victimless multi-billion dollar porn industry.

You could say “the woman made her choice,” and while that could be true in some cases, that is by majority a patently false statement when you consider the psychological factors and the human trafficking. There’s no glamor in this industry.

What ultimately got me to stop was knowing I couldn’t throw my mind at both things (God and porn) without sacrificing my usefulness and integrity. Maybe I could’ve kept up the charade: do good church work while secretly using porn to cope. But it was not sustainable, not honorable, and not edifying. It didn’t build me in any way whatsoever; it only killed. And it stole some of the best years of my life that I could’ve spent doing good.

Do you think your friends and family were affected by your addictions?

I managed to keep it hidden, but I can say that it had a “covert effect” on them. In other words, while outwardly they couldn’t tell anything was wrong, there were moments when it came seeping out of my identity.

I sometimes said misogynistic things as if women were mechanical objects, and though I’d deny it, I knew my undertones suggested I was subconsciously saying it that way.

At times when I counseled friends through sexual issues, I felt largely hypocritical since I knew all the right things but was not doing the right thing myself. That put a HUGE guilt-burden through my gut that I could never get over. When I taught and preached, I was constantly guilty. For a long time, I didn’t mention the words “purity” or “holiness” because I felt I had no right.

When I was able to confess my addiction, first privately and then publicly, it was crazy how everyone was so understanding and instantly related to it. Even addicts of other things started opening up. The healing was incredible.

So I would say something in reverse here: that my addiction affected my friends and family because I was not honest about it, therefore I was holding back on gracious conversation. I didn’t realize how I was missing out on community. God wants that, and so do people. And all that helped fueled the recovery of countless others.