Question & Answer About Porn

I just received these three questions:

“What is your view on porn? Is there anything wrong with it (porn)? Can someone be addicted (to porn)?"

Praise God these questions came my way! As one who has been down the porn road and now set free, I feel God has given me a unique perspective and insight to address this issue. Here is my reply I sent. This may come as a shock to some as you read through my reply but it is a reply that tells how I was set free and can set other captives free!
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Porn can be and is VERY addictive. I was hooked on porn from the time I was about 14 up until about 9 months ago. Porn has destroyed so very much in my life I wouldn't know where to start. Being BPII w/ a very heavy manic side, I came very close several times to having a run in with the law. Why I never got in trouble with the law is beyond me. The only thing that I can think of that saved me from traveling down that terrible road was God.

I tried being a Christian, a husband, & a good father while hooked on porn. Where did it get me? I was kicked out of church, divorced, & separated from my kids. That's what porn does. It screws with your mind and your sense of reality.

What saved me from porn? God. Pure, plain, & simple! When I hit the end of my rope so to say and had nothing else to live for earlier this year I just simply gave up. My wife who divorced me in 1996 and remarried me in December of 1999 believing that somehow I still had some redeeming value in me and that I did indeed need to be the father that God has called me to be took me in to the local mental health crisis center early this year.

What happened was I was very close to suicide. I didn’t care. I had nothing to loose. I said “What the hell? Here’s what I’ve done. Here’s what I feel. And here’s what I’m taking (abusing).” I laid it all out. The porn addiction. The OTC speed addiction. The self mutilation addiction that was a result of the porn addiction. I threw it all out there just to show how screwed up I had gotten myself. I had the “Here, YOU deal with it” attitude!

Little did I know that what I was doing was the single most freeing thing that I could do. I dumped it all. I held nothing back. I told my P-doc, my talk doc, my Pastor, & I even told our family doc some of it. The one person that I expected that would be the most likely to give me the boot or explode all over me was the one that cared the most. That was our Pastor.

The care that our Pastor took to make sure I got treatment, to talk with me, to love on me, to lift me up when I got down was more then I could have ever imagined! The problem is that our Pastor has seen way too many men get caught in the snare, the trap of porn and have their whole lives ruined. Mine was ruined here too. The difference was our Pastor had an opportunity to be Jesus to me, to free me from the trap, the snare that had so entangled me.

Being BP has an absurdly, seriously, dangerous side. When you’re on the high, manic side of BP you’ll crave porn just like a crack addict craves crack. When you’re on the down, depression side of BP having the porn addiction is just more thing to come in and pound you down. With BP & porn there is no middle ground. That’s what makes porn so absurdly, seriously, dangerous.

My advice to anyone with a porn addiction, especially those that are BP, tell your P-doc, your talk-doc, your Pastor, a close friend, your spouse if you have one. Tell someone that is willing to help you beat this addiction. Beating this addiction is going to be just like beating an alcohol or drug addiction. Why do I say that? Because porn causes dopamine to be released in the brain causing a drug high that your body naturally produces.

Another problem with porn is that it is somewhat culturally accepted and it is pretty much legal. So is the OTC (over the counter) speed pills I was hooked on. So are cigarettes. So on and so forth. They will all kill you. Period! How will porn kill you? For starters if you get deep enough into porn, which is so very easy to do and you won’t know it until it’s too late, is that porn can lead to such severe depression that one may very well commit suicide or at least try.

The good news is that I found something to replace that high I was getting from porn. This is a high that is better then any high porn or drugs could ever give me. This high has no end. This high is not destructive. This high is in fact very good for you. This high has brought me a ton of healing. What is this high? This high is Jesus!

If you’re playing around with porn, STOP!!! If you can’t stop, you need help. Like I said earlier, get help! This is your life. Don’t loose it over porn!

I hope and pray that hits home with some!

Be Blessed!

BIG