Chapter 2 – Descent into Madness
Without a doubt in my mind, I believe that being molested by my grandfather was the catalyst that began my journey towards an addiction to pornography. No child is mentally, psychologically, or emotionally prepared to handle such an assault, and the results can be far-reaching and devastating – they certainly were in my case. As I write these words, I am still uncovering ways in which that experience warped my development.
When I was molested at the age of seven, I had no understanding of my sexuality, nor did I even have the vocabulary to describe what I was experiencing. One of the ways in which being molested negatively affected me was that it aroused sexual feelings in me before the age at which I would normally begin to experience such feelings. At seven years old, I had no understanding of how to process the experience. Once my parents discovered the molestation, it ended, but the damage had been done.
Around the same time as the molestation occurred, someone gave me some body-building magazines. I became instantly aroused by the pictures of the scantily clad female body-builders. I remember becoming obsessed with trying to picture them without any clothes on at all. Being raised in a Christian home, I felt guilty about these desires, but I could not deny feeling a very powerful desire that I had never felt before, desires sent into hyperdrive by the experience of being molested.
I don’t recall whether I got rid of the magazines on my own, or if my parents decided that they needed to go, but soon the body-building magazines were out of my life, and my access to such materials was back to zero. For many years I had no access to anything remotely resembling pornography. Then, at the age of eleven, while playing in a wooded lot in our subdivision, I discovered a box of Playboy magazines that someone had dumped in the woods. What had, for about four years, been a latent and mostly unfulfilled desire for pornographic material suddenly roared back to life.
I became obsessed with the contents of those magazines and hid them in my room. I kept the magazines for a week or two, as I recall, before my guilty feelings drove me to the point of burning them one day in the back yard. My religious upbringing taught that it was sinful to look at pornography, and I wanted to do the right thing, but even then I knew I couldn’t simply throw them in the trash or I would go right back to them – I had to destroy them completely.
Once again, I entered a period without much access to anything pornographic. However, I soon entered puberty. Being surrounded by girls at school who were also entering puberty, my thoughts were frequently lustful. I frequently engaged in a fantasy life in my mind involving sexual situations with whichever girl or girls I happened to be attracted to at the time. Still, access to pornographic materials was all but out of my reach entirely as my parents were very strict about what movies and TV shows I could watch, as well as what books or other materials I could have.
In my teens, I began working in the summer and purchased a VCR for my room with some of the money I made. I began to amass a movie collection. As per my parents, there were restrictions placed upon what movies I could purchase, so pornography remained largely out of my reach for the time being. That would soon change.
These events occurred in the 1980’s, in the days before the internet, as we now know it, existed. There was no online pornography or easy access to pornographic materials from a cell phone. However, as I grew older and bought a car, I was able to go to the stores that sold pornography and began buying pornographic magazines and renting pornographic movies. I felt incredibly guilty about my behavior, but I kept it secret and told no one. My attempts to stop were short-lived and unsuccessful.
In these early days of my addiction, I was still flying under the radar so-to-speak. I told no one about the full extent of my pornographic consumption. I sometimes confessed to having lustful thoughts or having looked at pornography to a minister or asked for prayer concerning such behavior in a men’s church group, but my attempts to get help in dealing with my addiction went no further than that. In truth, I was still unaware I had an addiction and had never thought of my behavior in such a context. I thought that I simply had a sin problem and that I could beat it in time – just me and God – with will-power, Bible study, spiritual discipline, and prayer. I was wrong.
During my college years, my pornography use remained at about the same level. I would use pornography for a while, then stop for a while, then go back. Right before I graduated college, I started seeing my future wife, and I decided to tell her about the pornography issue. I erroneously believed that I would be able to kick the habit once I was married. After all, I surmised, with a wife to share my sexual passion with, it would be easy, right? Wrong.
I stopped buying pornography once I got married, but the lust for viewing pornographic material and fantasizing about sex remained. When my wife and I would watch a movie with a semi-pornographic scene, I would deceitfully fast-forward through it or turn my eyes away, only later to watch the scene repeatedly after my wife had gone to bed. I felt guilty, but I continued my solo I-can-beat-this-myself-and-I-don’t-need-to-tell-anyone-else dance with pornography, lust, and sexual fantasy.
For the next several years, that was where I stayed. I was a casual, under-the-radar user of pornography who regularly engaged in sexual fantasies and lusted after other women. I would resist these behaviors, then yield to the temptation to act out, then feel remorseful about what I had done and try to resist again. I didn’t realize at the time how harmful this was to the relationship with my wife and family, but I made excuses for it and convinced myself that I was genuinely trying to quit. Then something happened that sent my addiction to new depths.
I don’t remember exactly when I began accessing online pornography, but when I did, I entered a whole new level of addiction. The ease of accessing free pornography online in large quantity was too tempting to pass up – or so I thought at the time. In the early years, the internet connections were slow, so there was little online video content (at least as far as I was aware), and my internet connection was too slow to make much use of what videos did exist. But that, too, was about to change.
My wife and I had been having marital problems for years at that point. After eleven years of marriage, things were at their worst point to date. The year was 2006. I had begun drinking alcohol regularly, which was turning into an addiction of its own. By that point, the rapidly advancing technology had driven down the price of high-speed internet, while at the same time increased the data transmission speed. It was the perfect storm for my addiction. I began viewing pornographic images and videos online on a regular basis over a high-speed connection. Our marital problems grew steadily worse. Within six months I separated from my wife and filed for divorce. While my addiction to pornography was not the only reason for our marital problems, it was a significant contributing factor.
After I had separated from my wife, it was as if the floodgates of my addiction to pornography burst open. I began spending hours a day after work viewing hard-core online pornography videos, sometimes ending my binge by drinking until I passed out on the floor. For the first time in my life, I felt that I was out of control. The reality was that I had never been in control at all – the addiction was in control of me. I realized then that I really couldn’t stop using pornography on my own, and it frightened me. But my life was in such a mess at that time that I was in no frame of mind to do what I needed to do to begin the healing process.
Through a series of truly miraculous events, after almost six months of separation, my wife and I decided to try one last time to work through our issues and get back together. We started seeing a husband and wife counseling team. In one of our first meetings together, we discussed my use of pornography. I thank God that in no uncertain terms the male counselor confronted me with the fact that I had a sexual addiction and told me that I needed to get help in order for the marriage to work. He directed me to a local sexual addiction recovery program based on the Life Recovery materials.
I was desperate to change. I was frustrated with my inability to quit using pornography. Tormented by constant temptation and repeated failure to stop using pornography, engaging in sexual fantasy, and lusting, I frequently wanted to kill myself. It wasn’t fulfilling, it was no longer fun, it was a drug that I was addicted to, and it was killing me. I was tired of being controlled by an addiction to pornography, sexual fantasy, and lust. It was consuming me and was threatening to destroy my marriage and my family. I wanted to get free.