quit porn addiction

Let’s get something out of the way - this blog isn’t particularly concerned with religious affairs. It’s not a celebrity scandals blog either. But sometimes, a news story pops up with genuine relevance to porn addiction. This one just happens to combine all three topics…

Here are the facts as I see them:

• Michael Guglielmucci is a young pastor and musician with a large following in Australia.
• In 2006, Michael announced that he was suffering from an aggressive form of cancer, and his bravery and humility was an inspiration to many. He spoke widely about his struggle with illness, and released the hit song Healer, inspired by his experience. Many people donated money to the Guglielmucci cancer cause.
• Last week, Michael admitted that he doesn’t have cancer at all. Completely alone, he had conducted an elaborate hoax. Of course, this was met with mass disbelief and shock.
• He explained that he was covering up for a 16-year obsession with pornography, and his ploy had escalated out of control. Cue further shock and horror.

So what’s actually going on with Michael Guglielmucci? Many people are scratching their heads. Well I don’t know, but I’ve got a pretty strong hunch…

Some clues:

• Michael’s father, Danny Guglielmucci, is a highly dynamic minister himself, and founder of Edge Church International. Unsuprisingly, Danny advocates some powerful ideals about how a man should conduct himself. It’s potent stuff indeed.
• From this, we can build a picture of Michael’s introduction to the realities of sexuality. Danny said this about his son’s porn revelation: “It’s horrendous because we don’t have that sort of stuff around. He was raised in a Christian home; we’ve never brought that stuff into our home.”

Now I don’t advocate parents leaving porn around the house either. I happen to believe that it’s useful for parents to nourish their kids with support, information and reassurance. This includes all those tricky issues thrown up by a child’s developing sexuality.

I wonder what lessons Micheal learned in his early formative years. Strong injuctions against sexual thoughts, masturbation and those bikini girls on the TV? Considering Danny’s convictions, fairly likely, I’d say, and then some.

Michael’s upbringing may have been intensely righteous. And it sounds like his issues with porn were intensely painful too. To quote his father again:

“Michael has had a severe addiction to pornography. The addiction to pornography started when he was 12… when he was about 12 he did vomit all the time, he’d get really really sick.”

“He was in the Adelaide Children’s Hospital for seven weeks at one stage; he didn’t eat and we thought we were going to lose him.”

“He was feeling like he was letting God down, letting his family down, his church, his friends.”

I feel for the kid, I really do.

So again, pornography isn’t the culprit here. This isn’t a search for blame. I don’t claim to know all the factors in Michael’s story. But it is a message of teaching perspective, and in this case, the intensity of Michael’s learned perspective led to obsession and tragic humiliation.

Here’s the call: a little more openness, and a little less righteous hero-building, can really benefit your child. Yes he might still have developed a fondness for porn, but I suggest he would have been better equipped to prevent fondness turning into troubling obsession.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 11:45 pm and is filed under In the news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.