We live in a world now where mobile computers have changed everything, I often think back to the 90s when lads mags, Oasis and video games filled the time that I wasn’t kicking a football around in the park.

I was about 12 years old when I first came into conscious contact with pornography, my parents in some way must have thought it healthier to have a stash under the bed than the torn-out pages from papers or smuggling the catalogue with the lingerie section into my room.

When I think back the very first time I came across a magazine it was my birth father’s stash and I would have been about 6, my uncle some 3 years older and his friends were talking about nude mags and I said I could get one. I had no idea of what it meant back then but only a few years later it would become my easy way out. My escape.

Pat Carnes is the sex addicts version of Dr Bob, he was one of the first who wrote about sex addiction back in 1983 in the book Out of the Shadows, and many others since, he explained in recent times on the beyond theory podcast that a common path for males is formative years involve a hijacking of the reward system with video games which hits a whole other level when coming of age with pornography and the internet.

This has more recently been built upon with data from fight the new drug – https://fightthenewdrug.org/whats-the-research-video-game-addiction-linked-compulsive-porn-2/

I have observed this in my story and many shares of fellow recovering sex addicts and also observe it in friends and colleagues, the cultural normalising of video games and porn that led to a lot of my distorted thinking being propped up, thinking everyone is probably doing what im doing just nobody talks about it.

Here in 2023 and I am in the age demographic who’s pornography addiction dates back to a time before all this internet, I can remember a time before you could type in anything you can think of and a screen will show you what it can find. In my day it was magazine and video, as technology evolved so did my addiction.

I meet guys now who have never known anything but limitless novelty at a time where people are becoming less and less connected. For those who are old enough to remember viagra or to use it’s generic name sildenafil was a hit with older men who could no longer function fully due to age-related factors, now we have impotence drugs marketed towards guys in their 20s and they even allude to Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction being one of the contributing factors in this demographic.

In recovery I have seen just how much tech is designed to hijack our reward system, apps rely on algorithm and the doom scroll is a part of normal everyday life.

Internet Gaming Disorder has a greater backing from the DSM-5 than Sex Addiction which is frustrating, I have previously said whatever it is referred to as in a text book means little to me as my priority is that I am well and living as my authentic self.

A big purpose I feel in recovery is to take all I have learnt from my mess and poor life choices to help others find freedom and healing in their own journeys, there are innumerable folks entering rooms around the world, some have the self-awareness to seek help while others find their way into the rooms through hitting rock bottom and others being stopped by the law.

When I describe how bad things were for me to newcomers to the program I am reminded just how insane and unwell I was in “the bubble” as I describe my acting out behaviours would feel like someone else was taking the wheel and as a passenger I knew I was going to feel like shit and I still found myself along for the ride anyway.

My challenge with living in this game of phones era is to embrace help and accountability with tech, tools like Covenant Eyes and Screentime tools mean I can say to someone this stuff is just too difficult for me alone and I am willing to lay down my “right to privacy” knowing that secrecy is more the apt word for the things I have struggled with. I am glad that most late nights on my phone or computer now involve blog posting, podcasts or YouTube.

Tech is a great tool but a terrible master.

“He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly
fiction.”

Kris Kristofferson

Kris Kristofferson is said to have written the song the pilgrim in part about Johnny Cash and his behaviours, he was often described as the walking contradiction. As I look at my life I can relate with these words.

We addicts find ourselves caught in a relentless struggle, as our actions often betray the values we hold dear. I may cherish honesty, yet deceit became my modus operandi. I might value connection, yet isolation becomes my sanctuary.

The chasm between intentions and actions became a source of immense anguish, intensifying the contradictions I faced and lived with as a silent hypocrite.

One example of contradiction was I knew a girl who was what now may be described as a content creator, but we used the phrase glamour model back in the day. I stumbled upon her accidentally online and once I knew her alternative name I knew I could find these galleries of images, images which she doesn’t own and can never remove from the internet, the pain and regret of that period of her life I knew to be a source of great discomfort to her but so many times I would revisit these images to view them despite knowing better.

The self loathing involved with this act of self defiance was one of many examples of toxic shame at play in my life. I shudder to think the hours wasted merely in trying to find everything I could, the obsession and lunacy of addiction truly is cunning, baffling and powerful as the big book describes.

The contradiction I live with daily is that I despise everything that is pornography, I see no positives from it personally, I believe it is the worst educator, that producing and selling content is not empowering and being a blind consumer of it is buying into a lie that it is a substitute or an aid for real intimacy and connection. The reality, however, is if I was given unfettered access to the internet I would be walking the tightrope where if I were to fall off I would lose myself in a hole for days binging everything I could. I need accountability and I need support to function with modern living.

As soon as I see contradictions and paradoxes at play in my life I know I need to do some work on self care and service to others. My course needs correcting immediately as a degree or two off-course can be remedied quickly but to carry on in the wrong direction I can go severely off course very quickly.

One of the most profound contradictions I have to be alert to is the illusion of control. I may desperately desire to reign over my life but in truth I am a terrible God, without the program and others I will find myself utterly powerless in the face of compulsion. There is no self help for an addict.

So what do I mean by opposites? this is where the idealist and the romantic in me steps in, recovery gives flawed folks such as myself a chance to own my actions and more importantly learn from and learn how not to make the same mistakes and terrible decisions over and over again.

When I look at some of my worst and most shameful deeds on my inventory I see the opportunity to find the opposites or work towards the symmetry of redemption, from shame to grace, from defects to assets, from resentments to gratitude.

This website serves as an opposite that I needed to realise in my new life, in the past I would search out directories that would take me to places no person should go to online but to me they served as a phone list of dealers, I was the depraved junkie and my eyes where the veins waiting for its hit.

To live, I need to take the worst of me and work towards a directory of hope and help to make amends to myself and others for colouring so far out of my values.