Todd,

It is a sobering and painful picture for sure.  If you know of some websites of organizations that can help Christians and/or pastors who are in trouble or on the edge, why not post links to those sites?  Some may feel uncomfortable emailing your directly.  Just a thought.

This is a new phenomena, because of the internet.  It would be as if, in the old days, nude women and all kinds of sexual perverts went carousing around on your front lawn, inviting you to join them… and you can’t kick them off, because they claim freedom (of speech, etc.).

Too bad our government doesn’t have the guts to “just say no.” Nobody knows what indecency is anymore… let’s take a vote… one man’s indecency is another man’s freedom to live life as he wants…

...Bernie
http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/247

A great program that I recently have come across and that has provided me with a great deal of victory can be found at settingcaptivesfree.com.  They have a 60-day course towards overcoming pornography addiction and also have information on SafeEyes, an internet filter that also has accountability aspects. The great thing about this program is that it also pairs you with an accountability partner who emails you daily.

Hi guys,

I am a recovered member of Sex Addicts Anonymous. The scary part of the 54% figure is not that it is especially high, but that it tracks evenly with the population. There have been sex addicts since the dawn of time. The difference is that the transmission of these images is so much easier to access. Pat Carnes, a therapist specializing in sex addiction, calls it the crack cocaine of its time. It addicts, and for many (including me) it addicts the first time you use it.

For me, compulsive sex was something that I indulged in as a teenager and in my college years. It was marked by occasional forays into masturbation and magazines, with strip clubs thrown in for good measure. I was addicted then, to be sure. But the expense and the exposed nature of the media at that time made being an addict very difficult.

Not since 1995--when I discovered that the internet was a well-suited carrier for sexual images of all sorts. My acting out (as we call the use of compulsive sex) became more frequent, to the point of me losing hours from work, from my family--and to affairs with other women and men (homosexuality was not the issue, it was accessing the high).

The advice given on this site so far is well-intentioned, but it is like putting a band-aid on a dam break. Filtering software does not work for a real sex addict like me. Other people monitoring me will not stop a real sex addict like me. And the consequences of my behavior will not stop me, if I am a real sex addict. Even KNOWING I am a real sex addict does not help me. Because at certain times, I am without defense against acting out.

The classic model of alcoholism goes like this: Physical craving (when I drink I need more), mental obsession (I have a mind which cannot leave alcohol alone despite that fact), and spiritual malady (I am afflicted with a selfish, or sinful, if you like, nature that blocks me off from the sunlight of the Spirit, a Higher Power which can keep me from that first drink.

With sex addiction, it’s a bit different. In fact, it’s worse. Only 10% of the world’s population is even capable of becoming an alcoholic addict, because the nature of that addiction has to do with what happens once the alcoholic takes a drink. Alcoholics cannot process alcohol the way we do. When a normal person around alcohol, like myself, drinks, I get tipsy and then sick, and I don’t want anymore. When an alcoholic drinks, their body processes alcohol a bit different and they crave alcohol once they drink.

The physical craving cannot be produced without alcohol in an alcoholic, or without drugs for a drug addict. Once an addict in these areas has de-toxed, they do not any longer have a physical craving to drink. They may have mental obsession and a spiritual malady, but they are dry.

For sex addicts, when we act out the drug is in our heads. Our minds cannot tell the difference between the fantasy of the event and the event itself (for most of us the fantasy SEEMED more real than the event). And so whether we are in obsession around sex or acting out physically with porn or a partner, we can have a physical craving AT THE SAME TIME we have a mental obsession. In other words, in AA you can have such a thing as a dry drunk (a person who is not spiritually or mentally sober, but who is not currently drinking).  In SAA, if I am in not in fit spiritual condition, then I will have a mental obsession (not a passing thought, but a line of thinking in which I am engaged) that will cause a physical craving. And I do not know at ANY time where that physical craving will take me.

The program of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, from the Big Book, as applied to my addiction, has effectively removed my obsession to act out, and has given me a way of life that can solve all my problems, through a Higher Power I know as Jesus Christ, my Savior. I have had a spiritual awakening. I have recovered, and I have been given the power to help others to recover.

I am not cured, however--my recovery is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. The 12 Steps are the method I use to maintain that condition.

Anyone can become a sex addict. Anyone. And studies have shown that acting out on the internet can actually lead a person to places he/she would never normally visit. It is not a virtual reality. It is actual reality, for our minds do not know true from false in our addiction. So someone looking at pictures of adult women can easily be led towards children. When in the disease, we have no power, choice, or control over our actions because of the physical craving.

This is why filtering devices don’t work--because the addict will obsess about ways to find a way around it, which triggers the physical craving and then it’s Katie-Bar-The-Door.

This is why accountability does not work for a sex addict in physical craving--you think I actually CARE that you know that I act out. You already do, if I am giving you “accountability” for me.

The only treatment I KNOW works, the only solution is a spiritual experience that gives us a relationship with God. The only method that works with any consistency in my experience is the 12 Steps of AA adapted for sex addiction.

Don’t pray for sex addicts to stop acting out. It doesn’t work. Instead, pray for us to have a spiritual awakening to Jesus Christ through the 12 Steps, accompanied by intensive work with other addicts. By intensive, I mean dozens at a time, for me. It’s the only thing that works, in my experience, for a real sex addict like myself, who had lost all power choice and control over his acting out.

One more point: At each moment in my acting out career, I KNEW that what I was doing was immoral (i.e. untrue to God’s plan for me). I had no choice to BE moral. And my position in a church? Nope. Didn’t help me either. I have a distinctive memory that spells out how powerful this disease is.

I leave work at my church early one day to go to a library and check the chat rooms for folks to act out with. I find one, and get their address and start to head over. My spirit is screaming “NO, TURN RIGHT” when I get to the onramp. My car turns left. Every time.

This isn’t about immorality. I am not saying that the behavior isn’t immoral. I am saying that we who were addicted KNEW it was immoral, and could not stop anyway.

You can all give me your opinions about how you THINK this illness of body, mind and spirit works. I’ve been in the belly of this particular beast. I feel a bit like Captain Picard, who, having escaped the Borg, knows exactly how the Borg works. That of course will never keep me from acting out. But I have a relationship with a Higher Power that has given me new birth--the side effect is that I am cut off from the choice to act out sexually. The problem has been removed. It is the only way I know that works.

I sponsor dozens of sex addicts. Many have recovered. Please feel free to email me at if you have a problem with compulsive sex. I have many sponsees throughout the world. I am sure I can find one within an hour’s flight of you who has found a solution to this problem.

-A Sex Addict Anonymous
2 1/2 years free of his addiction

Thanks for this article. I told my wife a week ago that the world is turning into the Truman Show. The Truman Show is a movie starring Jim Carey about a man brought up in an artificially created world and made to believe for the first thirty years of his life that everything he saw and everyone he knew was real. None of it was.

While I flipped through the channels of our TV I saw nothing but lewd sexual dipictions of scantily clad women and sex acts. I had no choice but to turn the TV off in order to escape. The reason this reminded me of the Truman Show is because it feels like we are being surrounded by images of sexuality on TV, in theatres, in magazines, on billboards, on VHS and DVD, even in video games. Satan wants us and our children to believe that this is the real world when in actuality it’s all just fantasy. None of what we are being shown is truly attainable; the money, houses, cars or the women. It’s all just imagery that evaporates as soon as we think we’ve attained it.

In the movie, Truman somehow began to realize that he was being deceived. To prove his theory he set out on a dangerous journey. He fought the waves of the sea that battered him until he was unconcious. When he awoke, he sailed right into the end of the massive studio that had been created to keep him contained. Truman was devastaed to learn that his whole life had been a lie. The voice of the studio’s creator attempted to make him stay. But even though his world was plush and filled with everything he could desire, Truman chose what was real over what was fake.

In Hebrews 11:25-26 it says about Moses, “24By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.” NIV.

We have to become like Truman who fought treacherous waves for what was real even though the artificial gave him what looked appealing and satisfying. We must become like Moses who understood that the pleasure of sin was fleeting and temporal but has grave consequences.

Although the pleasures of sin are real the promises that lure us into sin are never lasting. We must trust God’s promises that are yes and AMEN. His word promises us a crown of life when we resist temptations. We can walk with a clear conscious and our heads uplifted when we walk according to His word. He will strengthen us to overcome every temptation. There is always a way of escape. When we submit ourselves to God and resist the devil, the bible promises us that he will flee. Please pray for every believer to walk worhty of their calling. Pray that we will coose what is real, the blessings of the Lord. God bless…

I too would have to reitterate xxxchurch.com - it’s a great site!  Also check purityonline.  another great resource for helping with this addiction!