I am now facing many years in prison - David's story
I've been dealing with pornography addiction since about 10 years old. My addiction led me to seeking out more deviant types of pornography and ultimately to choosing to receive and view child pornography. I am now facing federal charges and many years in prison. I have been sober for 9 months and my marriage and life is improving every day.
My wife and I have started a blog to discuss our experience. Please feel free to check it out - www.fromshame2grace.com. There is hope, there is a way out.
God bless,
David
It is particularly poignant that David is now in custody awaiting sentencing. He is communicating his blog entries from jail, so that his wife Lisa can post them online and explain her own reaction and feelings.
The vast minority of guys who struggle with porn do not stumble into child pornography. However, David's story does remind us of the potential risk and dire consequences. The blog is a brave, honest and philosophical account of salvaging hope from these horrible circumstances.
Thank you David and Lisa for posting here.
Porn Game Over is Jason's self-help plan for quitting the habit. Click here for a fresh approach to internet pornography addiction...
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Hi, I know this is a
Hi,
I know this is a contentious issue but in my personal opinion I don't see porn or all problems with online porn as actual addiction. I know many people label problems with porn usage as addiction but I disagree and I don't think using the terminology of addiction is at all helpful.
In my opinion porn problems or a struggle with a porn viewing habit should be seen more in terms of obsession or compulsion. YES! OK I would have to agree that it may seem like I'm splitting hairs here and YES! Porn usage can often appear to share some symptoms with problems that look like addiction. But NOT all porn problems ARE addiction? Thus if someone is incorrectly labeled as having addiction when they don't have an addiction then I'd say that would be extremely unhelpful.
**Usually addiction is a technical medical term used by psychologists or psychiatrists or those in the medical profession but I noticed that in the USA psychiatry cannot agree on calling porn usage an addiction. So I think my opinion bears some credibility.
**With actual addictions there is some form of substance that is ingested by the body, such as with alcohol, illegal drugs such as heroin, cannabis, crack cocaine, etc. However, using or viewing online porn does NOT fit into this medical category you do not physically ingest anything. It is your psyche that is affected by seeing or viewing images, some may argue that there is still a physiological reaction i.e. arousal. YES! I would agree that there is a response & there is arousal but it's still not the same as physically ingesting a substance. The reaction is a hormonal response that would be triggered by a real sexual partner if that situation took place in reality. Porn specifically creates objectification & objectification leads ultimately to dis-association ( a splitting of the self, of the autonomous or whole self).
The harm caused by dis-association has more in common with some forms of mental illness than with medical addictions. Thus people who have a porn obsession or compulsion often also have porn dependency which is a state or condition that has little to do with addiction. People with porn dependency need the skilled support & help of an experienced counselor or psychotherapist and NOT I would argue a doctor or 12 step addiction program.
**In fact some people have become utterly identified with the label "porn addict" that its become their entire self identity which is extremely worrying in my opinion. The term addict also tends to stress more of a sense of helpless-ness or even that one is a victim of porn. Instead I personally prefer the term obsession or compulsion or porn depenedency because it tends to place more of an emphasis on using porn is a choice and a choice which we are ultimately responsible for. Therefore we can free ourselves from porn by enventually making different choices & by choosing to handle our feelings in a different way. That we are NOT victims of porn or victims of our feelings either. Thus we can change and we can leave he need for porn behind in the end if we want too.
wow David. i can't believe
wow David. i can't believe how open and honest you are being by sharing this whole experience on your website. i view too much porn (for quite a few years) and have never viewed child porn. but when i hear about child porn (even bad news stories), there is a kind of fascination in my mind and that scares me to death. it is like the ultimate taboo. so well done for bringing this out in the open and i have a load of respect for you and your wife.
Joseph D
What I find most interesting
What I find most interesting about child pornography from a therapeutic & psychological point of view. Is that in most "normal" heterosexual males the response to being shown images of naked little pre pubescent girls, is the reaction is NOT to find such images to be at in the slightest bit sexually arousing. i.e. images of naked little girls is not a turn on after all.
In fact I have in passing seen child porn images not that I was specifically looking for them, it was more by chance or accident really. But I was quite surprised by my own reactions because they were completely different from what I had expected them to be. I found images of naked girls under 15 to be either sexually neutral, or of not interest at all, or some images were actually repellent especially the more grossly explicit.
I think if you were to ask or talk to a psychologist about why most heterosexual males don't find pre pubescent a turn on. I'm sure they would be able to explain this, in that there are certain specific hardwired taboo's & sexual boundaries that normally operate. Plus little girls are not sexual developed beings in the same way post adolescent girls are and this does make a large difference in terms of being sexually attractive. Little girls before puberty do not have a well developed concept of sexuality or sense of what their sexuality is yet or what the power of their sexuality is in the broader sense. They may have some limited sense of sexiness but they wont know more beyond this yet & what information they may have will probably have come from the media or school friends?
Lets be clear here NOT all
Lets be clear here NOT all males (or females) are sexually wired in the same way, meaning that there is a wide variety of different people who have different reactions to sexually explicit imagery. I would suggest that the vast majority of males who use porn are not interested in viewing child porn, and that those who are interested in child porn are in fact in the minority. Or may have sexual wiring that predisposes them to such an interest for a number of reasons. In other words to put it another way those people that are interested in child porn and do find it sexually arousing I would suggest they are in an unusual minority.
I agree with Alex; it is
I agree with Alex; it is indeed unfathomable to most people how child pornography can be at all appealing. Even at my very lowest ebb, when I'd be glued to porn for a whole weekend and feel absolutely wretched, I've never felt inclined to start looking up images of children.
Several years ago when I used to download batches of images from adult newsgroups, I would occasionally find images of teenage girls amongst them. They weren't hardcore or even particularly explicit, but I still couldn't hit the delete key fast enough.
Perhaps men like Gary Glitter are predisposed to child porn due to some wiring fault, or a history of suffering some form of abuse themselves.
Yet at the same time we have men like David, who explains in his blog that he isn't a paedophile, hasn't been abused and simply let his porn habit get out of control. Like most of us, he used porn to run away from his problems.
I think all of this shows the terrible problems that porn addiction, and tolerance to increasing levels of porn, can potentially lead us into.
Hello Duncan, Completely
Hello Duncan,
Completely agree with your comments. I think David's case is possibly an unusual situation in the sense of being an ordinary man who allowed things to spiral out of control to an extreme, with dire personal consequences. I tend to think that those people (men mostly lets be honest here) who view & use child porn are highly likely to be individuals that have suffered some form of sexual abuse themselves probably as children? It is well known that those people who were abused frequently become abusers later on themselves, thus perpetuating the cycle of abusiveness. Or to put it another way the need to "use & view" child porn is not a symptom of a normal healthy individual in the psychological sense being a well balanced person. In other words using child porn is a symptom of something rather perverse or even pathological? Or to put yet another way most normal people don't want to view child porn and have no need of it.
I would guess that a lot of
I would guess that a lot of people whose porn addictions lead to child pornography are adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. In fact, I would guess that if each porn addict looked closely at the types of porn he or she seeks out and the way the "ritual" surrounding the viewing is set up, it would say a lot about various childhood issues.
For example, my husband's addiction to porn progressed to teenager porn (not illegal--the teenagers were of age and, probably in some cases, women in their 20s and even 30s posing as teenagers). Something I realized after a while was that he often set it up so that I would catch him looking at the porn. Well, I found out later that he was sexually abused at age 9 by a teenage girl in his neighborhood and that his mother walked in on the abuse. She blamed him for it and didn't even see it as abuse--didn't comfort him, didn't get him counseling. When all this came together, I realized that he was repeatedly acting out the abuse by looking at the teenager porn and putting me in the role of the "blaming, shaming mother."
Our first sexual experiences are so pivotal in shaping our arousal templates. It's amazing to realize that what turns us on is not so much a choice as it is an automatic response to our conditioning.
Hello Margaux, I think you
Hello Margaux,
I think you make a VERY powerful & very insightful point. I completely agree with you that first or early sexual experiences have a long lasting impact & if those experiences are negative ones or even traumatic ones (instead of loving, positive ones rich with intimacy) then that set's up chronic patterns that remain with us for many years, & yes often get repeatedly acted out.
[...] article source [...]
[...] article source [...]
I also want to add something
I also want to add something else: When I came to that realization about my husband's childhood sexual abuse being acted out with the porn, it led to my exploring in therapy why I so easily slipped into that "blaming, shaming mother" role. That's not to say I willingly chose that role (it's important for us partners to not take on undeserved guilt), but it did help illuminate some of my own unresolved childhood issues. I suppose I want to stress that, even though we partners are not to blame for the porn addict's behavior, it is important to explore how we fit into the dynamic and what that says about our own issues. I'm a huge advocate of partners seeking their own therapy for their experience with this porn problem.
This is a really interesting
This is a really interesting aspect.
When counselling someone who struggles with porn, it can be useful to explore their habit routines in some detail. What type of sex acts or situations are they drawn towards? Who are the characters in these scenarios? How do they relate to each other and what are the outcomes? Are there common fetishes or niches?
We reflect on this in a therapy setting, free from judgement or titillation at the details. But I also encourage people who are following a self-help plan to make the same exploration; to be their own therapist.
Guided by these insights, we can then discuss early learning experiences: family attitudes towards sex, childhood experiences with peers, initial exposure to porn, arousals and stimulation triggers. Sometimes, we will assist this exploration with hypnosis and relaxation techniques.
The correlation between early experiences and ongoing compulsive behaviour can be very revealing. To be able to take all of the crushing, unwanted, habitual routines and put them into context for the first time is an extremely empowering step forward.
I'd agree with Margaux that similar explorations can benefit partners too. It's useful to break down the porn addiction 'game' that partners are often forced to play, and examine potential roots for the roles and transactions. Without any implications of guilt or codependency, understanding the influence of their own early learning can help partners in their own recovery.
Sadly, in my view this is
Sadly, in my view this is were self help process's fall down, Why? because in my opinion you CANNOT BE your own psychotherapist or counselor. Self Help has its place in the scheme of things but it has its limits too. The reason I state this view is because we are talking about the unconscious nature of the human psyche here. We are talking about patterns of behavior which are "outside of" our everyday conscious awareness & thus you cannot be objective about your own unconscious behaviors by default.
This is precisely why I ended up going to see and work with a therapist, a skilled therapist at best can be act as a clear mirror to you. And by being that mirror he or she reflects to you what was previously outside your awareness, thus helping you to see consciously for the first time your actual patterns. This process of bring what was previously hidden & unconscious into conscious awareness can be extremely powerful & often is felt as literally a eureka moment (fresh insight). Once again I would say only by making the unconscious fully conscious can you recognize a pattern for what it is, & only be seeing a pattern of behavior can you regain control over it, then the power of the pattern to control you is reduced. What is unconscious drives us and what is conscious we have control & choice over.
Another small example of this
Another small example of this same process (above) is that you cannot do the Tarot cards for yourself and accurately interpret the cards after you have laid them out. Yet another person can easily read the same cards & give you an amazing reading of the cards in the same lay out.
Alex--I would agree with your
Alex--I would agree with your observations about self help. I came to those realizations about my husband's "ritual" on my own as more and more information revealed itself, but this is after years of therapy, which conditioned me to think in "therapy-like" terms (and then I presented the theory to my therapist, who confirmed I was on the right track). However, when it came to figuring out my OWN role, I did need the help of a therapist--I had some initial ideas about why I slipped into that role, but those couldn't be fully fleshed out until I talked to someone with a detached, objective view.
Jason--It is SO incredibly empowering to strip down a pattern and see it for what it really is. I would guess that it's incredibly hard to continue looking at porn--and get remotely excited--when you're aware that you're acting out your own childhood abuse or substituting your wife for your mother or substiting porn stars for someone who sickened and terrorized you way back when. For me, knowing that I was treating my husband like his insensitive, fucked-up mother totally killed any buzz I got by screaming at him and calling him a pervert. I don't think that, now that I have this knowledge, the dynamic would be able to continue were we still together.
David wrote a guest post for
David wrote a guest post for us. We published it the day he went into custody - http://www.covenanteyes.com/blog/2009/09/14/testimony-i-am-facing-8-year...
Thankyou to all of you for
Thankyou to all of you for being so open about this.
I feel I must stress that I have no direct experience of this kind of material, but just knowing that it is out there frightens me, especially when I read things like the above posts such as "several years ago when I used to download batches of images from adult newsgroups, I would occasionally find images of teenage girls amongst them."
I also find the ubiquitous use of the words teenager or "teen" for the purposes of titiliation in legal porn quite unsettling.
There was a tv show in the UK last year where a female presenter was investigating online pornography and the damage it does to young people. In one scene she was indiscriminantly clicking links on porn websites and was shocked at how quickly she got to things that were illegal.
As someone has already written "there is a kind of fascination in my mind and that scares me to death. it is like the ultimate taboo.". I think this is an understandable and common response - it's the reason that the tabloids love this kind of story.
David - I am so glad to hear that you are finding strength in your faith that is helping you to move forward. I will pray for you.
Online porn has certainly played a role in steering my sexuality in certain directions - and I am thankful that in my case those were directions that were harmful to me and me alone. When I read stories such as yours, David, part of me can only think "there but for the Grace of God go I".
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