The pornography addiction started when I was 11 and local drugstore friends showed me how to steal the magazines. It became a tradition and we would stash them in my garage. This would last for 25 years and I thought marriage would stop me from fantasizing, masturbating, and looking at pornography.
However, it only got worse and got me confused about what was really wrong with me. There was nothing wrong with our sexual life to even convince me to act out my fantasies. I started going to massage parlors where I could live out the pornographic materials I see from magazines.
It started from Playboy magazine in 1961 to lots of stuff later on. I tried getting rid of the addiction several times even attempted during a church camping activity where I sat around a bonfire and told to repent. I wrote what I wanted to repent on a piece of paper and threw it into the fire. The director told us that God will
After that experience, I had a theological dilemma while at a drugstore. I began questioning God and his intentions. I asked if He really wanted my addiction gone then He would take it away from the others who were also doing it. I was in denial but then I also got to thinking that I should stop for the sake of my marriage. The more I thought about my addiction the more I felt a lot of guilt than I had in the first 10 years of my addiction.
Now I’m in a full-time counseling practice, I’m serving at a local church, I’m teaching at a local Christian college and I’m serving on the local school board. But the temptation to get back into it was always there and every time I try to give in to it I would feel so humiliated and guilty that I convinced myself that I should stop.
The turning point happened when a woman that I had gotten involved with told my clients about my past. They intervened and told me how betrayed they felt. But there was this physician who was an alcoholic who gave me hope that I can overcome my addiction. He told me that my sex addiction was no different from his alcohol addiction and I remembered I just fell into his arms and he whispered in my ear that he would find me help which he did.
He found me a therapy center where I met this man who had the same addiction as I had and I wanted his sense of serenity. Amazingly, I didn’t act out for 30 days. Through the center, I met different people who taught me the value of life and opened my eyes to the real meaning of Christianity.
I remembered the verse Philippians 1:6 which tells me that God always provides a person to remind us of grace. These included the people I met through my journey of healing, my clients who were angry at me and the recovering alcoholic. God also sent my wife to help me and most importantly, being honest to myself and to others is a great gift of freedom. I surrendered my life to Jesus when I was at the treatment center and from the point forward, God never ceases to amaze me with all the miraculous things He has done in my life.