Hello and welcome to my story.  I hope that my story will be something you can connect to and feel a part of and not be about just me – I would love to create a community of support.  Hopefully, if I am successful in sharing my story, you will be encouraged to share your own story and together we can create a place where those of us who are actively recovering from pornography addiction can gain strength, help each other, and direct new people to help them with their battles as well.

First, a brief history of my story (I’ll go into much more detail in the future).  I was first exposed to pornography at 10 years old.  I found my grandfather’s collection and continued to seek it out for the next 4-5 years.  My church taught me the danger of pornography, but I liked the “high” better than I did trying to stop so I kept going.  By the time I was 16 and starting to date I realized I probably shouldn’t mix the two and started trying to stop.  Unfortunately, I quickly found it was much easier said than done.  I would win and lose battles off and on — sometimes quitting for years at a time.  This pattern continued for most of my adult life until I finally hit absolute bottom and decided to reach out for help from others.

I read many books and websites trying to stop on my own.  They gave me strength and helped me get better and better at staying clean for longer and longer, but eventually my nemesis would return.  Finally, I gave in and accepted that I needed help beyond myself.  I worked with a professional counselor.  I tried my church’s pornography addiction group.  I started a private group that met once a week with a few friends who had the same struggle.  I attended a SAA 12 step group which was the final key in my personal journey.  Finally, I had found what I was looking for — true recovery!

I have felt the lows (really bad ones where I didn’t even want to keep living).  I have felt the successes that were quickly followed by failures and depression.  I’ve had incredible anxiety where I could hardly breathe and felt like I could do nothing right. Sometimes just focusing on driving to work and pretending to do my job was all I could handle for the day.  I’ve been terrified people would find out and shun me.  I’ve been afraid to lose my job.  I’ve been afraid I’d be kicked out of my church.  I’ve feared losing my wife and children.  I’ve felt worthless.  I’ve felt like a failure.  I’ve hated myself.  I’ve felt alone.  I’ve felt like life was unfair.  I’ve felt abandoned.  I’ve felt like God had abandoned me.  I’d felt like I’d been told lies when people would say they’d beaten it.

But oh what joy it is to not feel that anymore!  When I finished steps 6-7 of my 12 step SAA program, I felt like a huge boulder I’d been carrying my whole life was now gone.  I have finished my 12 step program.  My SAA sponsor is an angel from God!  I am in recovery.  I feel free!  I have been free of my addiction in a way that I have never experienced before.  It is amazing!  And now I want to do everything I can to help others.

These posts will be the story of my recovery from start to finish.  I will spare you the details of my addictive behaviors, but rather focus on how it impacted me, how it impacted others, what it meant to be an addict, going through the ups and downs, withdrawals, failures, and finally success.  I hope that my story will help you.  I hope that my success will help lead you to your success.  If my dream comes true and this site becomes helpful to others, I hope they will share their story with me and I can incorporate it here to help even more people.

This is not about me.  This is about us.  This is about freedom!  We can do this together.  Follow me.  Help me.  Let me share my story with you.

Hi, my name is Mike…