December 18

“For most of us, those moments of acceptance, however or whenever they occurred, were followed by periods of doubt and denial.”

“First Step to Recovery”

I have been addicted to pornography since I was five. My father was addicted. At first it was file folders stuck in bookshelves or closets. By the time I entered puberty, he had evolved to file cabinets with fictitious labels on the drawers.

Twenty five years later, I was recovering in other programs but had successfully compartmentalized this part of my life so it never entered any step work. I eventually got home Internet, and the first question to the friend installing my computer was how to find pornography. This was the same computer I used for my research and education.

Many of us know what ensued—attempts to stop, deleting the images, promises to spend only thirty minutes, etc. Then came a day when the computer bogged down because the drive was full of porn. Without thinking, I bought storage disks and started migrating and filing my images. During this, I had the sickening and demoralizing realization that I had become my father. I had to develop disciplined filing practices to manage my porn. It was still some years before I found SAA, but this was one of the thousand blows that prepared me to be teachable when the time came. I now realize that these blows were my loving creator trying to show me the truth so I could find my true self.

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It takes what it takes, and I thank God for all the lessons that got me here.