Earlier this week, I had 67 tumors cut out of my body. You can click here to learn about the surgery and my recovery, if you'd like. Now I'm at home recovering with heavy doses of Percocet and Doctor Who. And as long as I'm high as a kite, I figured I'd write about one of my favorite topics - Porn Addiction.
Sometimes people ask me (in my imagination) why I talk so openly about my addiction to and recovery from porn. And it's a fair question. I had the same question when I was a kid. One of my youth counselors at church stood up in front of our class and confessed he had struggled with porn. My friends and I were just grossed out. We thought why is he telling us all of this?
He told us that he had been addicted to porn, and the it had cost him a lot. At the time, I had only been exposed to porn once or twice, and certainly didn't think of myself as a porn addict. And what he said made no sense. What could porn possibly cost him? It seemed obvious that it might cost him some money, and maybe trust if he was in a relationship. But he talked about it costing him everything. It was confusing.
As I grew older, porn became a regular thing. Eventually I grew to understand a little more of the price. Porn cost me my integrity and purity. It made me feel like a hollow shell of a man. But even then I didn't realize what I was giving up for my addiction.
It wasn't until a year after I quit that I realized what it had cost me. Being free from porn has given me more than I can possibly communicate. But here are just a few of the notable things that freedom has afforded me.
Incredible confidence. It's not that I'm never insecure anymore. It's just that I don't wonder whether or not I'm able to accomplish things. At one point, I didn't believe it was possible to stop looking at porn. Now that I have. I believe anything is possible.
Huge quantities of time and mental energy. When you look at porn, you're not just giving up time you spend in front of your computer. Porn addiction has a whole process that takes up tons of time and mental space. For most guys, it begins with an obsession. We begin thinking about girls, and sex, and porn long before we actually look at it. Then we have to find the right time and place. A lot of guys can't simply look at porn whenever they want. They're married or they have kids. So they have to find a time when they can be alone. Those guys end up wrapping up a bunch of mental and emotional energy in figuring out when they'll be able to look at porn.
Then there's the waiting. While guys are supposed to be working, having dinner with the family, spending time with friends, or whatever they're waiting. And for that reason, they're not fully present.
Then there's the actual time spent looking. But that's not all.
Afterward, there's time spend trying to cover your tracks. For some guys it's as simple as deleting their browser history. For others it's more involved. But either way, there's some amount of time spent hiding their shame.
And lastly, there's the time spend feeling empty and alone because, if a guy is being honest with himself, he just spent time sharing a sexual experience with a machine. And if he's married or has kids, there's added shame in feeling like a failure.
By the time he's done, a guy will have invested a great deal of his mental and emotional energy in his porn addiction. I never realized how much I was investing in my addiction until I stopped.
Suddenly I had time to do almost everything I loved. I began writing music. Before long I started this blog, wrote a book, cut a couple worship albums with my worship team, was winning at my job, and more.
I have something that most guys want. Nearly every study shows that about half of guys look at porn on some sort of ongoing basis. I bet, if you asked those guys, they'd tell you they wish they didn't have the urge to look at porn.
Now I've been sexually sober for more than 3 years. That's how long my sponsor had been sober when I met him, and I wanted what he had. Now I have what I wanted, and I get to offer it to other people, which brings me back to the question that people always ask me (in my imagination)
Why do I talk so openly about my addiction to and recovery from porn? For me blogging is about answering one question - What does God want to use me to do? When I first started writing, I wrote a lot about church leadership, which I still write about quite a bit. But as time went on, I saw other areas of my life that seemed usable. So I started writing about them.
When I first wrote about my addiction and recovery from porn, the response was huge. And as a result, I have gotten to meet with bunches of worship leaders, pastors, and other Christian professionals, even some who are way older than me, who have the same struggle I've had. I've gotten to offer those guys something I never had - a safe place to be honest.
So I write about my porn/sex addiction because it's what God is using most to help others discover more potential in themselves. I'm just grateful for the opportunity to be useful.
Well, there you go. I hope the Percocet didn't make it too unbearable. If you have thoughts about this post, please leave them in the comment section below.
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