Chapter 6 - You Can't Do It Alone
Because we often feel shame regarding our pornography addiction, we addicts often fall into the trap of trying to overcome the addiction on our own. We are ashamed to reach out to anyone for help, so we go it alone. I pursued this failed strategy for years, thinking that if I just tried hard enough that I could stop using pornography. But, like a man caught in quicksand, the more I struggled to get free on my own, the deeper I sank into the clutches of the addiction. Oh, there were periods of temporary success, where I avoided acting out by sheer will-power – but that never lasted. When I finally did give in to the temptation again, it was even worse than before.
The quintessential male hero in many of the movies and stories from my childhood was a strong, self-reliant rough-and-tumble guy who ultimately rose to the challenge facing him and defeated the enemy – mostly on his own. Some of the best examples of this were the characters played on the movie screen by the likes of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. They were larger than life men with a gun who would take on insurmountable odds, seemingly to face defeat early on, then rise from the ashes of that defeat to overcome the enemy and win the day.
This type of hero is one interpretation of what is often referred to in the United States as the ‘American Spirit’, the rugged individualism that we value so highly, the indomitable spirit that never gives up and ultimately wins. It is a characteristic we see played out time and time again by countless men and women who go out into the world to do battle for a paycheck, a medal, a promotion, recognition by their peers – whatever the prize they seek is, and come home victorious to their adoring families.
But while most of us have some version of this story that we have internalized, idolized even, there is one big flaw with it – the story we believe in our heads is a lie. The rugged gunslinger needs his gun, bullets, usually a good horse, and plenty of food to sustain him in his battle with the bad guys – none of which he made himself. The athlete who battles back from and injury to take the top prize in their field needed doctors, medicine, coaches – a whole team of support people, in order to achieve victory. The working mom whose husband left her to raise their three kids on her own needs someone to watch the kids while she’s at work, a business to employ her, et cetera. None of these classic figures – real or imaginary, wins by themselves. They all need support from other people along the way.
Overcoming an addiction to pornography is no different. If you attempt to do it alone, you won’t succeed. You will need a support team to help you out, or you will be the gunslinger without the gun going up against the biggest, baddest, deadliest group of outlaws you’ve ever faced (they all have their guns, by the way). In short, if you attempt to overcome your addiction by yourself you will fail. Think about it. Your enemy has a whole army of people on their side seeking to defeat you. First, there is the pornography industry itself, pushing their product at you on the internet and to your email account, and in the bookstores, gas stations, et cetera. Then there is our over-sexualized culture that uses sex to sell everything from toothpaste to websites to a particular political candidate. Oh, did I forget to mention the entertainment industry – books and movies whose producers, directors, and writers think their work is somehow incomplete or lacking unless they include salacious sexual encounters that often have little to do with advancing the actual plot of their stories? You literally cannot get away from sexual temptation entirely unless you live under a rock in the deepest part of Alaska, and only then if you leave your cell phone behind and wipe your memory. Oh – did I forget to mention that? Even part of your own brain is allied against you, bringing up memories you have stored over the years from viewing pornography or from past sexual encounters. Yes, you are going to need your own group of allies if you are to defeat this addiction successfully.
We addicts have a very strong motivation that leads us to try and overcome our addiction to pornography on our own – it’s called shame. That feeling inside your head and heart that makes you feel that you would rather die than tell your wife, your husband, your best friend, or a counselor the truth about how you can’t seem to stop using pornography – that’s shame. We’ll delve more into what shame is and how to overcome it in an upcoming chapter, but for now, it will suffice to simply recognize the elephant in the room and that it must be addressed in order to get free from your addiction.
Humans are stubborn creatures. It is an unfortunate truth that most of us will wait until we lose something significant because of our addiction to pornography before we finally decide to overcome our fear of exposing our problem and get the help we need to get free. I waited until my marriage was almost destroyed before I came clean and reached out to get the help I needed. My wife and I had been separated for six months. I had filed for divorce. We had decided to attend counseling as a last-ditch effort to save our marriage. It was in one such counseling session where my pornography use came up. I don’t honestly recall how it came up, or whether it was me, my wife, or the counselor who brought it up. Whoever broached the topic, after hearing my story the counselor sitting across the table from me pulled no punches and told me in no uncertain terms that I had a sexual addiction problem and that I needed to get help. He gave me the contact information for a Life Recovery group and by so doing helped save not only my marriage but likely my life as well.
If you are a pornography addict who has not yet taken that significant and essential step of reaching out to others for help for your addiction, you are likely terrified right now as you read this. I know, I’ve been there. But let me ask you this. What price are you willing to pay to keep your addiction a secret? Are you willing to lose your marriage? Your kids? How about your job? Are you willing for your pornography addiction to progress to the point where you cross a legal boundary? Are you willing to wait until you get a disease from a prostitute? How about going to jail because you had sex with a minor? Because one thing is certain, if you are addicted to pornography and don’t get the help you need, your addiction will progress, and you will pay an increasingly higher and higher price for your refusal to get the help you need to get free.
I faced this reality shortly after I had joined a sexual addiction recovery group. We were reading through the Sexaholics Anonymous White Book at the time. The passage we were reading was a personal story of a sex addict. His story sounded familiar to me – too familiar. He detailed how his pornography use had started and increased and then how he had committed adultery and then lost his marriage and so on and so forth. I saw my own story on those pages. I had not committed physical adultery, but I had seen my own addiction to pornography progress in the same way as the man in the story up until that point. I knew that if I didn’t work my program and somehow get free from the addiction, that very soon I was going to end up committing adultery and destroying my marriage. I was scared because I had become convinced by that point that I didn’t have the strength to stop the progression. I became much more serious about my program and getting the help I needed from others after that meeting.
So again, I’ll ask you. What are you willing to lose before you get the help you need? Perhaps a better question to ask is, what are you not willing to lose? Whatever it is, let that motivate you to push through whatever objections and fear you may have and get the help you need. Find one of the groups I referred to in the previous chapter, go to a counselor, pastor, or priest, and start getting the help you need. Do it this week. No excuses. Set the appointment today if you can. I’m serious. If you don’t do this, then nothing else you read in this book is going to help you.