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screeching halt.
My roommate and I decided to have a New Years Eve party. As
usual, I was smashingly drunk early in the evening. I continued to
drink wine coolers and peach Schnaaps until I passed out. I woke
up the next morning curled up in my bedroom closet, facedown in
a puddle of my own vomit. When I staggered into the bathroom
and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, eyes bloodshot,
skin pale, my hair caked with dried puke, I knew something had
to change.
I was forced to sober up and take a good look at my life and
where it was heading. Due to poor choices in roomates and bad
money management, I was hundreds of dollars in debt to my
landlord for back rent and damages to the apartment. I had
racked up several hundred dollars more in telephone charges to
976 sex line numbers. My parents graciously agreed to let me
move back in with them until I could get my crap together and
start acting like a man. Although this period of boozing lasted less
than two years, I went after the party life full-throttle in an
attempt to mask the pain I was feeling inside a pain I couldnt
even put my finger on. As I think back on all of the stupid
decisions I made while drunk and/or stoned I know it was purely
Gods grace and protection that kept me out of jail, the hospital,
or the morgue.
I enrolled in broadcasting school, graduated, and landed my first
radio job in a tiny timber town 100 miles from everything I knew.
When I moved away, I was sent off with a handful of Dads porn
magazines for company. They became my nightly companions as
I tried desperately to ward off overwhelming loneliness, boredom,
and fear. One weekend a former high school classmate came to
visit me. I took her to the local country bar where we hung out
with a couple of fellow DJs, linedanced, and drank pitchers of
beer. I ended up falling off the wagon and getting pretty drunk.
We made it back to my cabin where one thing led to another and
we ended up in bed together. I mention this because I had no
romantic feelings for this girl but I was still a virgin and the
enemy actually convinced me that I could get a handle on my
addiction if I were to just have sex. As if getting it out of my
system would somehow lessen my desire for it. Needless to say,
it didnt work. Not long after that I entered into a whirlwind
sexual relationship with my boss daughter. This relationship was
was loving and reassuring and I knew then that I could be honest
with her about my struggles and receive her support. However, I
also heard her giving me permission to continue. My viewing of
pornography did not seem like a big deal to her and I continued
to skirt around the fringes of addiction even after promising to
stop.
By the time I graduated to Internet pornography, our lives had
been turned upside down by the loss of our first baby, the birth of
our second, and a third difficult pregnancy that resulted in the
loss of one twin and the birth of another. The deaths of our
children and the pressures of parenthood had exacted a toll on
my psyche and I began to free-fall into severe addiction. I was
unbelievably angry at God and completely turned my back on
Him. The panic and anxiety attacks I had suffered from a few
years earlier returned with a vengeance. I was also suffering from
a deep depression and surfing porn on the Internet became a
means of escaping the pain. Interestingly, I entered into
psychotherapy but never once mentioned my addiction to
pornography. I simply did not recognize the connection between
the porn and my mental/emotional state. Porn was the CURE for
what ailed me, not a CONTRIBUTOR. At one point, I checked
myself into the psyche ward at St. Vincent Hospital only to check
myself out a few hours later because everyone else in there was
crazy! My addiction took on a life of its own morphing into
something I lost any control over. I no longer had to slink around
convenience or adult video stores. The porn came to me right
there in the comfort of my own home! At this point, I was
primarily a stay at home Dad (primarily because I found it difficult
to give up my porn surfing time for the productivity of
employment) and I literally spent hours surfing endless streams
of pleasure. Rather than spend time nurturing and enjoying my
children, I detached myself from them in favor of the next mouse
click. I would often become angry and yell at them if they
distracted me from my fantasy world with such mundane needs
as eating or diaper changes. It was not uncommon to find me
scrambling around the house at the last moment, rounding up
kids and cleaning them up before my wifes expected arrival so
as to give the impression that I had actually cared for them while
she was away. I was becoming a hollow shell of my former self,
concerned with nothing more than feeding my lust, checked out
of reality in favor of shooting up the next fantasy. I became