Question & Answer About Porn
I received the following three questions first back in 2005 and wrote a blog about them.
“What is your view on porn? Is there anything wrong with it (porn)? Can someone be addicted (to porn)?"
I’ve taken that blog and I just rewrote it with updates. I know that there are people out there needing to hear what I’ve written. I hope and pray that what I’ve wrote finds them.
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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. 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!
Porn can be and is VERY addictive. I was hooked on porn from the time I was about 14 up until about seven years ago. I was introduced to porn at an early age by a friend of mine’s big brother. Needless to say being introduced to porn at such an early age really messed with the way I saw women.
Porn has destroyed so very much in my life I wouldn't know where to start. Being Bi-Polar with 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. God had a better plan for my life!
I tried being a Christian, a husband, & a good father while hooked on porn. Where did it get me? I was divorced from my wife & separated from my kids. I also lost a lot of friends and had several disastrous relationships with women all because of the way my brain was skewered on porn. That's what porn does. It messes with your mind and destroys 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 about seven years ago 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 for help.
After years and years of being addicted to porn 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 psychiatrist, my counselor, my Pastor, & I even told our family doctor 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.
I’m Bi-Polar and back then I was having some serious Bi-Polar mood swings. Being Bi-Polar has an absurdly, seriously, dangerous side. When you’re on the high, manic side of Bi-Polar and you have a porn addiction you’ll crave porn just like a crack addict craves crack. When you’re on the down, depression side of Bi-Polar having the porn addiction is just more thing to come in and pound you down. With Bi-Polar & 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 Bi-Polar, tell your psychiatrist, your counselor, 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? It’s medically proven porn causes dopamine to be released in the brain causing a drug high.
Dopamine is a chemical that your body produces when you’re having sex. God designed sex to be between a husband and a wife. God designed sex so that when a husband and a wife are having sex dopamine is released enhancing the experience drawing the husband and wife closer together and thus giving them a longing deep inside for each other and the want to continue sexual relations. Any sex that is outside of the marriage bonds of a man and a woman is an abomination unto God which is exactly what porn does!
Another problem with porn is that it is somewhat culturally accepted and it is pretty much legal. So were the over the counter speed pills I was hooked on. So are cigarettes. So is alcohol. 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. At the very least it will kill your relationship God! It will also kill you emotionally and socially.
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 SCOTT
