Hooked on Porn

I’m a 34-year-old Christian man, and I have been hooked on pornography.

I’ve sat in front of a screen for countless hours and just looked and looked and looked. I’ve thought ‘Now I really have to go to bed,’ and then sat there for an hour more. I’ve looked at films, video clips and photos of people who have sex. I’ve watched porn for hours, and for years. I’ve watched it at home in my flat, at school, at my work and on my mobile phone. I’ve watched it during coffee breaks, at night, in the morning, and in fact right before I went up on the stage to lead worship in my church!

I’ve been terribly preoccupied with sex. And every time I’ve looked at porn I’ve been terrified of being found out. Of being caught red-handed. I’ve turned the sound off or almost completely off, so that at least I could hear a little groaning. I’ve learnt many tricks to hide my tracks: delete the log, change passwords and so on. There and then, while I watched it, while I masturbated, it seemed so good. SO good! So enjoyable. The women on the screen were mine. They liked me! They didn’t demand anything of me, never criticised me or treated me badly. They were simply there, with no commitments. It was so easy and felt so good.

Immediately after, however, I felt absolutely terrible. I felt so ashamed! I always felt totally worthless after looking at it. ‘A Christian shouldn’t be doing this,’ I thought. I felt like I was the only person in the world who did it. What would people think if they knew? If they knew, I would lose everything. Who would have anything to do with me? So I had to keep it to myself, and I did, for years. Keeping this inside me year in and year out was a heavy burden.

What was the solution? Of course, there IS a solution. I started to say that I HAD been hooked on pornography. If you’re reading this and recognise yourself here, please don’t doubt it. No matter how dark the darkness is, the sun’s rays can dispel it. I started to think about what kind of life I’d like to live. Did I really want to live a hidden life? Did I only want to receive affirmation from a screen? Life is empty if you only get good self-esteem from films and pictures on a screen. It’s hollow but also very false. It’s a lie! So after some time I confided to an adult I trusted. It wasn’t someone I knew well, but someone I trusted. Now, not everything was fixed immediately, but it was a beginning; someone knew what I had done, someone believed that I could in fact stop, and perhaps most importantly, someone prayed for me.

A conversation like that was the first step to me being free from porn. And now I’m FREE!