The moment I realized pornography was not a sin, the addiction vanished.
Pornography Addiction?
The Guilt Cycle: Oppression’s Mightiest Weapon
I was raised in a strict Mormon (LDS) household. We went to church every Sunday, we faithfully observed the tenets of our religion, and most importantly, we refrained from anything that was not virtuous, lovely, or of good report.
We were led to believe that deviating from these beliefs repelled The Holy Ghost and invited Satan’s influence into one’s life; a rather terrifying prospect for a true believer.
It became clear that the chains I had been bound in were not the chains of pornography, as I had been led to believe; but the chains of guilt, powered by oppressive lies.
When I was five years old, my cousin and I were exploring what we called “the creek”. It was a small, man-made canal that ran from his neighborhood to my grand-parents neighborhood. As we were navigating through the bushes, trees, and their thorns; I happened upon a pornographic magazine. It was the first time either of us had seen the entirety of the nude female body. We knew we weren’t supposed to look, but we did anyway. In that moment, the seeds of my dark addiction had been cast.
Throughout my teens and early adulthood I would frequent my favorite porn sites; taking every precaution to ensure that my secret would be kept safe from everybody else, including my bishop. In the Mormon church, your bishop is the patriarch of your local church community, something akin to a priest. Whenever you sought forgiveness for a crime against God, you sought it first from your bishop.
I would talk the Mormon talk, but in my heart I knew I was participating in one of the most unholy sins a Mormon youth could participate in.
The resulting cognitive dissonance was unbearable. When I was alone, I often turned to prayer; asking God to deliver me from the chains of pornography.
In the Mormon church we were taught that any personal fault can be overcome, that God would not allow anyone to suffer through anything they could not handle. There are even proposed formulas for doing so. Some of these formulas come from The Book of Mormon, some from The Bible, and some from the men who make up the church’s lineage of prophets.
I believed they were all indisputable and holy truths. Promises from God himself, delivered to the modern-day prophet in order to help the chosen.
I didn’t just try them, I anchored my soul to these recipes for deliverance.
The more I engaged these promises, the more my pornography addiction blossomed. The answer I gave myself for this unexpected twist was that I had found the way to redemption, and the adversary (the Mormon pet name for Satan) launched a full-scale assault of temptations and persuasions on me because he was unhappy about the prospect of losing another soul to righteousness.
So I continued to fight with all the strength I could muster. Yet, all the same, it seemed that with every ounce of energy I expended on the task, every weapon I wielded against it, the addiction’s power grew exponentially in proportion to my own.
It chewed me up and spit me out over and over and over again.
I found myself regularly pouring my heart out to God. I would literally spend hours in prayer. A few times I had prayed all night with nothing to show for it but bruises on my knees from the hard knurled carpet, tear-burned cheeks, and a worthless, decimated soul.
“Why aren’t you keeping your promises? What am I doing wrong?”
Life continued in this way for some time. My self-esteem had all but vanished, but I “knew” the church was true so I continued pushing forward.
Without going through the gruesome details of how I lost my faith, I’ll bring us to the point of this story.
After several years of research into the history of the LDS church, I had accumulated a vast amount of knowledge and understanding on the topic.
Then it happened. One morning, after getting up and starting my morning rituals, I realized I no longer believed in the Mormon church.
There is only so much truth you can learn, so many facts you can accumulate, only so much dissonance your mind can handle before your mind restructures your belief systems for you.
It wasn’t even a choice. I simply was not capable of believing something that was so obviously, unquestionably, and irrevocably false.
It was really more of a realization than anything else. My internal dialogue went something like this: “Wow, weird. I don’t believe that anymore. I can’t believe that anymore. The Mormon church is completely false. The church is not true. The church is absolutely not true. Holy shit! The church is NOT true!”
The next, nearly immediately, realization was that if the church is a lie then everything they’ve been spouting must be lies as well. All of their tenets, rules, commandments … it’s all just bullshit too.
And then, quite specifically, it hit me like a ton of bricks; there is absolutely nothing wrong with pornography.
I can attest to the very real power of such a realization. In the matter of seconds, what I thought was a pornography addiction had utterly and completely vanished. There wasn’t even a hint of it still alive anywhere within myself. The turmoil and angst, the self-hatred, the self-deprecation, the feeling that I was not worthy of God’s promises, that I was beyond redemption; it was like none of it ever even existed.
Now, over twenty years later since that split-second moment — I have never once had another issue with pornography. Not one. Not even the semblance of a trillionth of a fraction of the possibility of one.
Over the years, that which I was blinded from seeing then has become ever the more clear to me now. What I thought was an addiction to pornographic material was actually a very powerful guilt cycle. From self-defilement, to self-hatred, to a feeling of emptiness, to filling the emptiness with momentary pleasure, and back to self-defilement. On and on it goes; fueled by oppression and false ideas.
If pornography was this evil, slithering, sinful thing; my “addiction” would have long since continued.
My wife and I will even enjoy it together on occasion, and that sick inner-feeling has never returned.
If you suffer from such an addiction, you have my sympathy. I know what it’s like struggling against a demon you can’t defeat.
I’m not going to tell you that you need to leave your faith; though, that may very well be the problem. But what I will say, and what is the only possible advice I can otherwise give you, aside from seeking professional help should you feel you need it, would be to take a long hard look at your life. Extend your perspective outward, as far as you can to see if, by chance, there isn’t some guilt-driven engine powering the monster from afar.
I can’t say with a certainty that this will work for you. We are, after all, very different creatures with complex histories and behaviors. What I can say for certain is that addictions can be overcome.
So if you find yourself in the position of fighting what seems to be an insurmountable problem, having followed what you believe to be the given truths on the matter, yet you suffer still; you may wish to consider the very real possibility that:
- you’re not actually dealing with an addiction,
- what you believe to be the unassailable truth of the matter is not actually true,
- or both.
Whatever the case may be, I sincerely hope you figure it out and find the self-love and peace that we all seek and deserve.
