I would like to share with you two simple truths: there is nothing that cannot be forgiven, and there is no one un-deserving of forgiveness.

Desmond Tutu

During difficult times, my faith has been present as an option to choose life and hope over the option of misery and personal defects like self-pity, bitterness, resentment, and lack of forgiveness. The comfort people find in woe is tragic. (Ironically, that’s coming from an addict.)

I think we all like the idea of forgiveness, but the Instagram vs. reality factor of true forgiveness is rarely explored. The radical concept of forgiveness in the Jesus story is still massively offensive even to believers, with some only paying lip service to it and lacking the courage to practice it.

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I come from an alternative stream of Christianity. Before I realised the problem I had with my sexual behaviours, pornography, and the relationship dysfunction at play in all my adult life, I was a fringe figure in church. I had a couple of stints in the Christian space, played and sang the songs, but denied God with my lifestyle.

When I think of all the headaches religion has given me, I believe most of the issues have been with the human defects of other believers. If, as they say, hurt people hurt people, then the communities of organized religion are no exception to this rule.

When I think of the wonderful things about my faith as a Christian, the strongest by far is this message of forgiveness and how when we unpack the meaning of this, it really shows that mercy and compassion will always win over a sense of justice based on anger.

Forgiveness has become a subject that can be studied at a higher academic level but is almost flaky and selective on a societal one.

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My Step Four inventory comprised of things I’m embarrassed about, deeply ashamed of and abhorrently disgusted by. My sponsor was the witness of this inventory, and in all honesty, were people to be privy to a fraction of this, I would be sneered at and likely written off by a chunk of people.

I need to forgive and to be forgiven; it’s that fundamental human reality that we all need to embrace. Forgiveness is not about condoning or excusing the wrongdoing; instead, it’s about freeing ourselves from the emotional burden that can weigh us down.

To use a life example, I can refer to my birth father; he was a bully. My earliest memories of domestic violence are traumas that shaped and haunted me through my formative years and have left me with a lot of issues. In order for me to heal and move on with life, I need to forgive him for those things. By holding on to resentment, the only one being held back is me.

I simply say that, despite the hurt and the damage, I am no fit person to judge the man for his worst actions. In my heart of hearts, I do forgive him. I know what it means to need and desire forgiveness. I have to look people in the eye and own my past on a daily basis; their forgiveness doesn’t lessen my punishment.

I’ve heard the words, ‘You are an absolute idiot, but you’re a good man. I’m going to stand by you because anyone can mess up in a royal way, but I can see how much you punish yourself, so you don’t need help with that.’

This acceptance doesn’t let me off the hook; it means I am accountable to do and be better. It permits me to keep moving forward and work on my issues in a productive way.

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Imagine if we strived to be slow to anger and quick to forgive; what lives might be spared, turned around, and what healing would we see?

When we hit life’s bumps in the road or those shatter point moments in life, it is vital to pause and breathe. Our reaction says a lot about our ability to deal with stress, and that’s a crucial test in recovery. There are resentments and spot-check moments, and then there are the blunt force trauma moments that can shake your inmost being if you don’t have tools.

In the past, the closest I used to come to pausing and breathing was going outside for a cigarette or ten. I quit years ago, but I wonder if what I miss most about those moments was the standing still, remaining silent, and just regulating breathing. It sounds serene when you leave out the smoking part.

Whether it’s a test result, an accident, or any one of thousands of things that sends your flight senses through the roof, how can we prevent a derailment?

People in the military operating in high adrenaline speak of the short, sharp breaths to focus the senses and give time for training to kick in, to hack the response of emotion or survival.

Such a moment hit me today, and for a minute or two, I was stunned. I felt all four biological responses to danger.

Flight – This response is the panic reaction to run away; horses are flight animals and are easily spooked.

Fight – This is confronting a situation head-on and is the favored response of mine, but in a heightened adrenal state, one can make errors in judgment and react in an emotionally charged way. Fight can be good but not in a defensive, minimizing, or attacking way.

Freeze – This is how I felt initially and is essentially the rabbit in the headlights, not a response useful in many situations unless you’re in Jurassic Park trying not to be seen by a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Fawn – This is being overly compliant and trying to appease an aggressor. In actual danger, it’s likely to lead to an even worse outcome.

The fact is these are mostly realised in existential threats, but I mention them as they are also trauma responses, my feeling all four in one moment made me realize that the program has equipped me with experience, strength, and hope to have the option to choose how I respond, I respond by working my program.

A dear fellow shared recently how sheep will panic and flee in snow storms and ultimately get stuck in ditches where the sturdy cow hunkers down collectively and embraces the conditions and comes through in one piece.

I have found that taking some time to process, to breathe, gives me time to take the next right step, and that’s all there is to recovery.

I called my sponsor, checked in with my therapist, which will likely form the basis of our next catch-up.

One of my favorite bands is Enter Shikari, and their song “Sssnakepit” says, “when the weight of all the world is pushing down, just push right back.” That’s the invitation; if fear, anxiety, or compulsivity ramp up, then with our program, we get to fight back. If those dials are up to loud, just crank your program up to full. Be louder.

My secret is to take time out and literally breathe. As a Wim Hof practitioner, I am very grateful for breathwork at difficult times. It’s my version of two sharp breaths to give myself time to be calm and not react instinctively but rather trust God to do His job and deliver me in my circumstances and not from them.

He may not spare me the fire, or the lion’s den, or the belly of the whale, but He will be present with and spare me in it.

Feelings of inadequacy have been at the heart of my life before landing in recovery. I often shudder with thoughts of how I failed to present authenticity for fear of rejection. When mixed with the flammable nature of toxic shame, my acting out, there was little chance I would have ever been able to put my hand up and say, “I have a problem and I need help.”

The years of isolation this led to left me feeling like I was a castaway on an island. I’ve written about this analogy before, but to use the illustration of an island, I kept myself hostage with the countless promises of “one day,” not the one day at a time, but the decades-long kicking the can down the road lie that I will have a handle on my addiction, I could tame the beast in me, and no one need ever find out.

Whether it be that job, or when I achieve this goal, or if I get this or that type of girlfriend, if I lose weight, if I can just pay my debts, if I just stick to this and not that, all were excuses to avoid the mirror of accountability.

My addiction was propped up with cognitive distortions and unaddressed trauma. However much the world and even myself at times tried to make it a moral failing, the fact remains there was a narrative or a story I needed to discover. I got triggered by that word before, “narrative,” like it was somehow thinking up an excuse to minimize or wriggle out of owning my deeds. The truth is no human in their right mind would spend the time in obsession, sleeplessness, and fantasy that I called home.

My partner and I recently parked the camper van along the coast. I decided I would nip to the shop, and when I realized the one I had in mind was closed, I rang her up to say I would be a bit longer. We still have the boundary that we keep in touch closely. Since being in a dark place of seeing my own demise as an option or justice, it’s a consideration on my part to check in and not leave too much room for fear of the worst.

“I won’t be long, babe. Hang on a sec; there’s a lad here playing some worship songs.” I teared up at the memory of a younger me singing love songs to a higher power I wasn’t ready to surrender to in deed. Those songs of my youth were sentiment but lacked the substance that my rock bottom would give me. I was young, well-meaning but already on a path of addiction back then.

This sparked a thought about the concept of one’s inner child. In my years of working numerous jobs, I have a pile of old business cards. Why I kept them, I don’t know. Perhaps the hoarder in me didn’t chuck them out.

One of the business cards featured a picture of a much younger me, eleven years old, wearing my Granddad’s flat cap, a look I still rock to this day. I stared at the face of little me, and at eleven years old, the thought that that kid in a years’ time would start pouring limitless amounts of top-shelf magazines and within a further year make the jump to VHS and all sorts of hardcore content.

When I get angry at myself and overwhelmed with shame, I have decided to look at that snap of my younger self and remember that I am that young lad. I never set myself up for my path. That’s not to say I didn’t run with it and take it to places of my own doing. I have to own and live with certain things. My diagnosis of being an addict doesn’t let me off that, far from it. Ownership, consequence, and amends are mine to carry like a limp for the remainder of my life.

But I don’t have to despise myself to learn, change, and carry the message to others. Patrick Carnes wrote the book “Out of the Shadows” in 1983, the year of my birth. Forty years on, and the challenge is to come out of the shadows and safely start to own our truth.

I’ve traded the “one day isle” for “today I am sober, grateful, content.”

One of the things that has become obvious is that our relationship and interfusion with technology go hand in hand with the growth in sex and porn addiction. Technology is an enabler of sorts, as scores of apps to hook up and the infinite sites on the internet for pornographic content mean that we have more access to unprecedented amounts of sexual novelty. Terms such as ‘doom scroll’ show that the wider population has developed unhealthy behaviors with screen time and tech use similar to those who struggle with porn addiction.

The words of Patrick Carnes have foretold, almost like some sort of prophet, that we are on the cusp of a sex and porn addiction epidemic. The misinformation around the validity of sexual compulsivity being recognized as an addiction akin to that of other behavioural and substance-based addictions continues, and I argue that behavioral addictions are still substance-based, in that the ‘shooting up’ takes place within the brain in the form of the neurotransmitter dopamine.

I am a drug addict of sorts, but a cheap one at that. I knackered out my brain’s dopamine factory to the point it almost completely ruined my life. At the height or the lowest part of my acting out, it wasn’t even about gratification; I couldn’t even get aroused. The ‘hits’ took place between the ears.

One of the arguments against sex addiction is that it’s the cry of morally bankrupt men to minimize and avoid accountability for their actions and misconduct. Far from it, my life in recovery is about taking accountability, and my future is centered upon living my amends, but alas, I’m getting carried away.

The apologetics for a diagnosis is not something I like to get too embroiled with, but I state the case here as it’s a context to something I feel is more important. If this epidemic prediction is fulfilled, what might that look like? How might the dynamics or makeup of fellowships shift?

Indulge in my speculation for a minute. The thought occurred to me over the last year or so that we have a hypersexual society and culture. We also now have consumers of pornography at an all-time high and a growing number of pornography producers. It’s no longer the studios but the bedrooms, the webcams, and the OnlyFans. This industry is growing at an unsustainable rate but it has been for a generation now, and with that migration from the studio to the grassroots on an industrial global scale, we have two demographics whose sexual behavior goes off the charts and perpetually props up one another’s dysfunction.

I wonder if in time we will see the way that sex and porn addiction presents will reflect these changes. Will ‘content creators’ hit a point of unmanageability? Will the behaviors of payoff in followers, money, and the acts of sex fuse, making the widely agreed-upon definition of addiction fit this growing portion of the population?

A neuropsychological disorder defining pervasive and intense urge to engage in maladaptive behaviors providing immediate sensory rewards, despite their harmful consequences.

Here are some facts to consider relating to consumption since 2021:

• Around 30% to 35% of all internet downloads were related to pornography.
• Pornhub, one of the largest adult websites, received over 42 billion visits in 2019, averaging around 115 million visits per day.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, there was a significant increase in online traffic to adult websites, with some sources reporting an increase of up to 24%.

And here are some points on production:

• Revenue Growth: The global adult entertainment industry has seen steady growth over the years. In 2020, it was estimated to be worth around $97 billion, marking an increase from previous years.
• The growth of amateur and self-produced content, fueled by platforms like OnlyFans has been a significant driver of industry growth. By 2020, these platforms were estimated to have generated billions of dollars collectively.
• Live webcam shows and private performances had become a multi-billion-dollar segment of the industry by 2020, with a growing number of performers and users participating.

Sex addiction took a bit of a hit in the headlines last week, and one moment, in particular, I found pretty hurtful was the BBC political presenter Emily Maitlis, belittling sex addiction in a cliche and dismissive way.

In addiction, there is the common experience of someone visiting a therapist who scratches their head as much as everyone else and says, “Have you not tried stopping?”

We’ve explored, in previous posts, the controversy in the medical space and its status in the DSM.

In addition to the professional labeling or diagnosis we addicts differ in our language. It’s often referred to as a disease, and in a way I get it, it’s progressive and sometimes sadly terminal (life becomes so unmanageable some end their lives).

The world of 12-step meetings for sex and porn addiction evokes all sorts of images. I often hear that people expect a room full of pervert stereotypes in long coats. The reality is, a newcomer will discover there isn’t a type of person that struggles with this, “rich, poor, high or low” this problem is an equal opportunist employer.

Not to turn this into a film review, but the film “Thanks for Sharing” gives a lighthearted glimpse into the subject of sex addiction in a way that’s not too triggering if watched with a partner or friend.

Very early on in my journey, my partner and I sat down to watch it. There really wasn’t much to pick from in the area of media to lift the lid on our world.

We laughed, cried, and felt that the subject was a little bit more relatable if they made a film about it. I must stress it may be triggering, and while it’s rated 15, it does have some content that you may want to consider before consuming.

The film captures the bizarre insanity of sex addiction, the friendships formed, and the grit and darkness of relapse and how ultimately we in recovery have to make some serious modifications to modern living so that we can be compatible with the world around us.

The thing I like about the film is the characters in recovery exist and live alongside other broken people with their own issues and that’s life, the world doesn’t revolve around us, much like my own relationship, we both have our own challenges and we are both in each others corner, to support, encourage and grow alongside one another.

I hear a lot in recovery just how difficult it is for partners, and sadly many don’t make it out of the wards of betrayal. I find a deep sense of gratitude for my partner’s grasp of the inability to deal with recovery alone. It’s never been as simple as reading a book or watching a video and you’re cured.

It takes honesty, determination, connection, service, and working a program of living to tackle life just one day at a time.

What’s really important for addicts, loved ones and even the general public is that everybodies story with sex addiction is different but in all of them we find we relate to one another and as we commence our common journey in recovery, we find that our common problem is accompanied by our common cure.

In my case as a blind consumer of pornography I have been a part of the problem. In the rooms of the 12 steps in my life now I get to be a part of the solution.

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

I’ve had periods in life where I just want out, I want escape, I want to be spared. Notice that word, want, I always neglected the more important thing, needs. That’s ultimately a simplified version of where I’ve been going wrong since I was a child.

Understanding and communicating my needs has been a gradual process, I started this journey towards life without acting out with a feeling of deep worthlessness. The shame I felt hit the stocks and shares of self-worth very hard and only through empathy and forgiveness to myself that I’ve been able to get better and be better.

In speaking with a fellow this week I recalled one of my favourite wilderness films, The Edge with national treasure and sober soul Anthony Hopkins. If you want to listen to his AA share check this out.

In the film The Edge, Anthony Hopkins plays a billionaire stranded in the wilderness, he recalls a survival book he had been reading and tries snap his fellow survivors out of wallowing over the circumstance they found themselves in.

He reflects people lost in the wilderness die of shame! I recommend checking it out as it’s a great film.

If I were to write a survival guide for anyone just landing at Step One in some plane crash of circumstance I would share the two following most valuable skills.

Gratitude, the ability to focus on the positives in any situation can keep you alive through anything. When my double life came to a halt and the bubble burst I felt like I was about to lose everything, I thought I would take my own life and I thought people would cheer if I did, that was how much value I placed on myself at that moment, I could have easily fallen into a pit of misery and self-pity.

That “arrest” moment that we all face in one way or another is just like the drills practiced when travelling mountains in the snow. The word arrest simply means to stop. If we slip or slide into a fall the command arrest should activate a conditioned response to grasp your ice axe and lock it in with all your weight. Think of the practice of gratitude as the ice axe stopping you from falling to your death.

The second most crucial skill for me isn’t even a skill, it’s a decision to be of service to ones fellow man. Most of our problems are magnified by the crippling isolation of fear and loneliness, we feel unworthy of love which is what kept us in the cycle of acting out. Breaking this self imposed life of exile is vital for recovery. It’s why we are told to make calls, it’s how we connect to others in recovery and when we do, we realise we aren’t alone, in time that contact becomes service, not out of some ritualised chore but by showing up for others. When we put our wants and priorities in the perspective of service to other the defects of self take a back seat.

What’s also helpful is all of ones worries about their own life and circumstances fade away when we realise the world still spins and others’ lives play out at the same time as ours. There is something liberating about this, at the toughest times I have to choose to lean into the circumstances and engage in service to others, that may be helping someone or simply taking time to meet up with someone, catch up with that friend going through a tough time.

In my time in recovery sometimes feeling sorry for myself and feeling sorry for what I’ve done, look alike and I only really know the difference by the presence of gratitude and being of use in service.

Oh and one more thing, One day at a time!

The internet is abuzz with the latest scandal centered on Russell Brand. I’ve already written about this, but the 12-step sober community has taken a few sucker punches this week. While that hurts, I wonder if this might be a potential step forward in understanding sex addiction. If it’s not, it’s certainly an opportunity.

There has been much talk about the naughties and lad mag culture, two topics I have firsthand experience with. I also have the ability to reflect honestly on some of the things people might not feel comfortable saying or even linking together.

I read an interesting article this week about a former editor of Loaded magazine and his changed feelings. He talks about the escalation that came from the saturation and normalization of the content of these magazines.

The lad’s magazines were the softcore content I could flick through in the workplace or in front of mates. The titles varied, and my GCSE artwork was full of sketches of models from the magazine shoots. A few years ago, I found a favorite retro issue of Maxim magazine online and paid the best part of 20 quid for an out-of-date mag.

I recall my mates clubbed together and got me an annual subscription to a magazine. It was the same pile of magazines that I ended up ditching before moving in with my partner of nearly a decade. I also moaned about how the end of the lad mag era was an attack on masculinity.

In one regard, as toxic as those magazines were, fast-forward to 2023, and young girls are sold the idea of OnlyFans as an entrepreneurial step. The age of the influencer has just taken that culture, and instead of glamour models, it’s the neighbor, the work colleague, and in one extreme story I heard about the other day, a stepdaughter. OnlyFans blends amateur porn with stalker-like behavior.

For all the talk of toxic masculinity that lad mags peddled, the novelty was limited to pages. They say if a picture paints a thousand words, then a video paints a billion.

I am of an age that started with print and evolved over a couple of decades. In years to come, more and more people will come forward with problems with sexual compulsivity that have only known limitless online porn in a culture that normalizes the production of porn.

Here are some things that didn’t happen in my day which suggest the baseline is starting from a much higher point of novelty and severity of content than those of us a little longer in the tooth:

• Pornstars now use Twitch as “gamer girls” and recruit young lads to consume their content.
• Instagram girls have accounts that are landing pages for new subscribers to OnlyFans.
• Viral trends of reaction videos to extreme and often illegal porn.
• Online revenge porn wasn’t a thing in our days.
• Algorithms funnel more and more content which saturates timelines on social media.

Where society fails to safeguard young males is shaming sexuality and objectifying in one breath and harnessing it in another. Whether society is a patriarchy or swings to a matriarchy, its attitude towards porn will always result in negative outcomes. Objectification is objectification whoever makes a few bucks.

The shares of the folks of my generation talk about magazines, VHS, and the lingerie sections of catalogs. Lad mag culture was toxic, and we haven’t finished seeing how much these pioneers have been affected. It’s very easy to look back at the culture of the naughties and shudder, failing to see just how hypocritical we are today.

The sex and porn addiction time bomb ticks on.

We realised just how simple it can be. We had no literature or posters, and even the teas and coffees missed the meeting last night.

None of that stopped us from having a good meeting. Our focus was on the third step, and revisiting this as a sponsor, I realised how others’ journeys differ and how, at times, the spiritual aspect and God stuff can be a stumbling block.

I come from an evangelical family, and as someone growing up with that religious attitude towards sex, there were certainly some unhelpful aspects that further alienated me from getting help. The sin and shame culture attached to sexuality in the church painted the loving father of my faith as a strict disciplinarian and almost some sort of angry voyeur with plenty of wrath and punishment just waiting to strike. Not a great view to have of a loving God.

In recovery, I felt that God was waiting to meet me as my loving father. Not in a church meeting, but in a room full of broken folks opening up their innermost being and living vulnerably. People don’t argue about doctrine and who has the right way or the correct take on what God and higher power are; we simply get on with it according to our understanding.

I always love to hear others explain their experience and beliefs about a higher power. Not once do I ever feel the need to get a Bible out and morph into Ned Flanders.

I shared how looking back on this process, I really feel that this aspect of the program can be a tough one to navigate. It’s a common conversation point in program calls, and I try to reserve the specifics of my own Christocentric faith, instead opting for generalisations and parables.

In my experience, regardless of my belief, the power only started working when I became willing to do the basics.

When I make calls to other addicts, I establish a genuine loving connection with others, and it empowers me to be grateful, helpful, and listen. This fosters empathy and care in a deeper and more meaningful way, and thus I find a power greater than self!

When I give of my time in service to others as a sponsor, I see them overcome obstacles and make huge leaps of progress toward a life they may not have thought possible when they first grabbed a chair and listened to shares. The strength they can see in me isn’t my own, and thus we find a power greater than self!

When I saw we needed a group in our city and I wrestled with the feelings of unworthiness and doubts of whether someone else should undertake the service, it grew from a seed of an idea to a growing community of beautiful recovering souls, and thus I found a power greater than self!

I could go on, but I think it’s clear what the message is here. A wise friend and someone I love very much shared how they feel when they guide people through the steps: they feel something rising up from within like God is working through them.

I remember the song from school assemblies, ‘Make me a channel of your peace.’

The message here is pretty powerful and seems to be rare in our present-day culture.

Charity used to be the word for love, and now it’s almost a corporate body to practice compassion that we could all radiate.

Even empathy and consideration seem more political than human at times with the numerous causes and issues that people can be selective and exclusive with.

In recovery, we have a higher power whose love is unconditional and restorative, and we get to live life with a transition ‘From Shame to Grace.’

Our virtuosity in recovery needn’t be for show or display but for the audience of one as we don’t seek credit or recognition.

The ‘Just for Today’ card says, ‘I will do someone a good turn and not get found out.’ If anyone knows of it, it will not count.

Our recovery is a miracle that can be contagious, and its only requirement is to be willing.