What It’s Like to Be Addicted to P*rn

Our next check-in is here: “I would never talk about paying for sex with strippers, never talk about looking at animal porn, and sure as hell never talk about being unfaithful to women.”

I’ve had a couple requests to do a “What It’s Like” about porn addiction, but I have ignored those, mainly because I was convinced there wouldn’t be enough people willing to write in about it. But, in recent months, I’ve had several people admit they’ve struggled with it, some of whom have used it as a replacement for drugs and booze, one they used to consider “healthy.”

To kick it off, I’m running an essay from an anonymous person who has tried and failed many times to defeat their sex and porn addiction.

Here’s a sample:

“There’s no individual therapy at Gentle Path. The staff believes “shame reduction” is the only way out of sex addiction, and so every unbelievably perverted, scandalous, depressing thing I had to confess or tell a therapist was done in a group setting, sometimes in front of all 25 of my peers. Things I’d never said out loud — not even to myself — I shared with relative strangers, some of whom had just checked in that day.”

My hope is this person’s honesty will encourage others to share their own struggles with porn and their plans on how to recover. These check-ins, like today’s essay, will be paywalled. As our anonymous contributor explains below, this is an addiction that many find uniquely stigmatizing. We trust those in the Small Bow circle to maintain the safety of our community.

Here are the details of how you can submit your entry:

All contributors will remain extremely anonymous.

Please keep contributions to under 500 words.

Send your stories here: tsbcheckins@thesmallbow.com

Subject: WHAT THIS IS LIKE

Anyone who submits gets three free months of TSB Sundays

—AJD

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If you’d like to become a paid subscriber and help TSB grow, click this button.

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Maybe I’m Not the Worst Person in the World After All

By Anonymous

15 years ago this spring, I walked out of the Gentle Path sex addiction rehab facility, ready to start a new life free of my old demons. Here’s the story of my time in rehab and an update on what it’s like now.

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I am a sex addict. Since age 19, I’ve been completely unable to control my use of pornography on the internet, my compulsive masturbation, my driving need to seduce women, and in recent years my nasty habit of spending hundreds of dollars a night in strip clubs, not so much making it rain as shamefully shoveling a wad of 20s at a stripper before scuttling away. In 2010, on the eve of my 30th birthday I flew to Hattiesburg, Miss., and finally decided to give myself a new chance at life.

The easiest way to break the ice at Gentle Path — the facility which famously had Tiger Woods as a patient after his public cheating scandals — is to mention how little resemblance the place bears to the lush, leafy green compound shown on the website of its mother hospital. I’d been stoked to get away from life and go to a place whose publicity shots just screamed “stereotypical rehab.” Tons of trees, a walking path, maybe a water feature or two? I could do 45 days there, no sweat. Problem is, the sprawling campus featured online (which I proudly showed my freaking grandparents to put them at ease) is where the drug and alcohol addicts get to go. Gentle Path is a few minutes down the road, adjacent to an Enterprise Rent-a-Car and sandwiched between two auto-glass shops. It’s on the former site of what locals fondly remember as “the sleaziest motel in Hattiesburg.”

There were very few trees and certainly no water feature. It’s not a residential area and train whistles — long, drawn-out train whistles — bellow incessantly through the night. I checked in one evening in early March, though that seems like a million years ago now. My time there was the hardest experience of my life, but I wouldn’t have traded it for the world. Frankly, sometimes I think I’d like to go back for more.