How People Get Better from Porn Addiction

An abridged version of "Patterns in Stories of Lasting Freedom from Porn Addiction"

Credit: Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

Previously, I published an extended, 114-page analysis of narratives demonstrating deep and lasting healing (and freedom) from compulsive-pornography use. Here is a more condensed, 56-page version—with a 23-page version here and an even shorter version coming soon in a book with Clay Olsen set to be published later this summer.

Although that word “addiction” invokes in the public imagination a drunk lying in the gutter—or someone shooting up illegal drugs, there are hundreds of compulsive-addictive behaviors in modern living—thanks to highly refined foods, drinks, and endless types of entertainment custom designed to be irresistible. One universal pattern that unites all these compulsive-addictive patterns: a surprising difficulty at leaving that habit behind, even when it’s causing great harm:

• “It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, nothing worked to break free” John recollected. “It didn’t seem to matter how much I hated it. Something about it just kept drawing me back, and I’d eventually find myself falling into it again.” 

• Tony related, “I kept telling myself that the next birthday, new year, or life event would be enough for me to outgrow [this], and I would put it all behind me. But I failed.” 

• Dave remembers saying over and over, “This is the last time…”—admitting, “I couldn’t even take myself serious…all these vows to God, and I kept on doing it—‘you even serious, bro?’”

• “I felt trapped… desperate to free myself but helpless to do so” writes Neal.

• “I gotta fix it,” Chris said—“And so I tried. Desperately for years to do that. And then just, you know, pray a thousand times to have this burden taken from me, but I just could not get rid of it.” 

These comments could be shared from people facing a wide variety of compulsive-addictive patterns, with people grappling with  alcohol, smoking, marijuana, other drugs or prescription pills potentially saying word for word the same things. In this case, these individuals are talking about pornography use, and their struggle to find lasting freedom from it. 

While there is much to be learned from everyone’s experience, we’ve been gathering over recent years the stories of those people not grappling anymore—and who have somehow found enduring and sustainable freedom from sexual compulsivity. What better place to look towards for clarity regarding the pathway to lasting healing than the stories of those who have actually found it? 

Once again, inclusion in the review required evidence of both a serious, enduring problem, followed by equally serious and sustained healing that followed. A book-length in-depth report is available elsewhere, along with a more abridged, 23-page version of these same results.   

Here, we provide a few illustrations of twelve themes that stood out to us across the stories of those who’ve found deeper, more lasting freedom (and healing) from compulsive-addictive behavior in relation to online media:

1. Humility and ownership of what’s been happening (and what needs to happen)

2. Regaining hope in the possibility of lasting freedom

3. Embracing a new source of confidence and power

4. Embracing a new source of comfort, love and connection 

5. Seeing identity and self differently

6. Learning a lot and rethinking the world 

7. Openness, honesty, vulnerability and accountability 

8. Healing the deeper pain that can drive relief-seeking 

9. Learning to mindfully work with thoughts, sensations, triggers and urges

10. Scaffolding daily life with custom-designed structure & boundaries

11. Heroic grit, resilience, patience and persistence

12. Getting outside of yourself through service 

We believe these patterns have broad applicability to many other compulsive habits, including chemical dependency. 

1. Humility and ownership of what’s been happening (and what needs to happen)

“You know, to me, I just thought it was a bad habit,” Stephen said, with Larry also saying, “I never thought of it as an addiction, only as a bad habit, or a weakness.” Phil likewise recalls, “I did not compute that I was addicted. My use had so much time in between binges …that I didn’t think it qualified as an addiction.” 

Neal similarly remembers telling himself that he was “not addicted,” before later realizing, “It had a grip on me…“I would try to pray and find myself getting up from prayer and walking to the computer to point my browser to porn sites. I tried exercise, to get myself out of the house and burn off some of the restlessness … I would return home, shower and head for the computer.” Another individual recalls, “I would occasionally memorize Bible verses, and … then hours later go look at porn”—asking, “Why can’t I stop…this dark thing in me?” 

“I did lots of things to try to stop pursuing, was a part of multiple support groups…counselor, books, music…gave my wife credit cards, mileage to work, even setting up a camera to film me,” said Josh, but ultimately, “nothing could stop me.” 

There’s always something people are sure will take the problem away: 

• “If I only do this it will change on my own,” Stephen said—“I had tried a lot of different things to stop the behavior, including quitting my job … moved my family to a new city, and thinking that if I get off the road, if I change my environment, I can stop this behavior on my own.”

• “I thought that when I got married it would cease to be an issue…wrong,” Larry said. “I thought when I joined the church that it would cease to be an issue, wrong again.”

• After 50 years where he had tried to “get it under control most of the time,” Chris spoke of many different milestones where he thought, “okay, this is the cure. I found it…This will certainly be the answer to my problems….I thought it was behind me. I really did.” Then, “this demon of demons raised its ugly head again and I was just so devastated.”

This inability to break free is a universal pattern with addiction. But it’s an acute awareness of this fact - of how stuck they are - that is a marker of those who actually find freedom. In what he described as “the first and the biggest step I have made in my recovery journey,” Roger said he came to admit he had become “powerless over the addiction and that I could not handle it alone.” Thus began what Roger called “the greatest journey of my life.” 

Stephen spoke of coming to understand more clearly the “unmanageability” of his life and how “out of control” it was. “Over time, I realized that no matter what I tried, no matter how firm my resolution, I just could not walk away from my fixation,” Neal similarly said. “I told myself it was just a harmless habit, that I could end it if I wanted or needed to end it, but I was deceiving myself.” 

James said, “I was a slave—I was living for lust. It was what drove and satisfied me.” Yet despite the “exhilaration to pursue” the stimulation, “no matter how much I got, left me empty.” 

Jessica compared her past experience to “feeling trapped in a cave”—and going around in circles unsure whether she would be able to ever get out, only to feel the relief of hearing “Hello? Is anybody in there?” 

“I wanted so badly to get out of the dark cave of pornography,” she recalled, but “the more I tried to find my way out, the more lost I became.”

This really is hurting me. In modern culture today, it isn’t surprising that many people don’t realize what pornography is doing to them, given our myriad ways of rationalizing it—“I justified in my mind that it wasn’t cheating,” Matt said—“it was images, fantasy, it was okay.”

So many grew up being introduced to porn early on before they could understand what it was doing to them—“I didn’t think it was wrong,” Chantel said. Jessica described the first moment she “faced the fact that the life I had been living was not acceptable,” which she called her “first step toward freedom.” 

“That wasn’t my character—but had become so,” Jack reflected—describing how he noticed a “stark change” in the person he had become.  Josh compared his personal deterioration to Smeagol becoming Gollum in Lord of the Rings, “this immense desire and hunger happens easily.” After giving into these obsessions all the time, he said, I was “barely recognizable to myself.” 

Yet this can stay hidden. Eric recollects attending a men’s conference “that completely opened my eyes to the destruction in my life.”

One man described coming to feel so desperate about his inability to control his behavior that he seriously considered suicide: “All those negative feelings and thoughts were rolling around, and I could not handle it anymore. The feeling of having a soul ripped into pieces, into me who I was, me who behaved in a certain way, me who I thought I was, me who spoke, me who dreamed, was too severe to live with.” 

Even so, one man remembers telling himself that “it was not infidelity” and that “it helped keep me faithful to my wife.” 

“I never thought I was hurting anyone by looking at some women on a screen, but I realized the major damage I did during the early years of my marriage,” said Eric—describing how he realized it was “skewing how I saw my wife.”

“At times intimacy with my wife wasn’t as exciting as what I was watching on the screen,” this man continued. “I began to compare her to those women.... My view of women was completely messed up.”

Chantel described feeling uncomfortable upon realizing she was “looking at people as objects” with “any little thing” potentially triggering her arousal.”

Confronted with the consequences. This awareness of worsening consequences expands humility, which appears to be vital for lasting healing. Sometimes this softening happens privately, and other times through confrontation: 

• “That all changed in 2010, when my wife caught me,” Larry said, “and there was no denying…. I was at rock bottom … I was so afraid that I was going to lose my family on top of everything else, that I was willing to do anything.” 

• “Eventually, my wife walked in on me,” Neal said. “Her catching me in the act was a relief, as my self-deception ended and I admitted to myself that I really had a problem I could not solve by myself.” 

Nick describes the “breaking point” of calling his wife after their 10-year anniversary and telling her he had relapsed again. She expressed, “I can’t do this any longer. I didn’t feel love for him anymore.” After proposing a separation, she told Nick, “I don’t hate you, but I hate how this makes me feel. I don’t know if this can change, and so I don’t know if I can stay.”

Yet even then, it took time for Nick to see how much help he needed, crediting his wife’s “courageous honesty with me” for the fact he “began pursuing health and freedom” through a more structured program.”

This breakthrough required more severe consequences for some - losing a job due to porn on his computer, and losing a house. Stephen said, “God helped me come to my senses by being arrested.”

Aaron describes hearing that pornography was natural, before having a spiritual experience where the “fear of God” was stamped into his heart, something he calls a “good fear” that can “save us from so many things” like “putting on a seatbelt to save you.” 

Others spoke about “healthy guilt” focused on actions rather than on “who I am”—compared with the “ton of guilt and shame because of the hypocrisy I was feeling.” Vinny said, “You know that you're in the process of change when you feel and then use ‘genuine regret’ for past behaviors as part of your motivation and fuel to keep moving forward”—comparing that with the “toxic shame” which “usually triggers self-hatred and self-flogging which are severely counterproductive to the change process.” 

Persuaded of evil behind the porn. One man said, “what I found out was what…really had been happening is I had been giving my heart to something very corrupt, evil, something that was destroying my life—and from my life was destroying others in the process.” 

Taylor spoke of seeing the truth about where this was coming from: “When you were first exposed to porn …  a door was opened. The enemy walked right in, sat down, and took jurisdiction, which is what we call a stronghold.” She explained further, “When we have a stronghold in our life, our eyes and ears filter through it …. It also affects the way we see ourselves, others, and even God.”

Believing there is an evil force involved leads some to feel a greater need for deliverance. More than just “a few outward alterations,” one man describes coming to see his need for a deeper “spiritual transformation that was going to require Jesus—the living God—to go into my inner being and begin to extract all the love of sin, the love of self, the pride, the love of the world. It was going to need to be something more than dealing with temptation or pornography—a real transformation.” 

Owning the healing and recovery process. Even after one or many moments of being confronted with the seriousness of one’s stuckness and the harm this behavioral pattern is doing, it can still be a process of taking responsibility and ownership for what needs to happen next. 

“I took the responsibility for my recovery,” said Stephen. Previously, he described his wife trying to take on that responsibility, “I have got to help my husband deal with this problem. I'm going to help him. So, she did. She really tried. She found a therapist. She found the books. In fact, she found multiple therapists. I participated in therapy. I read some of the books, but I let her read most of them and tell me what she found.” He admitted:

All of this time, I really was not accepting the responsibility, which was mine for my own recovery. I let her do a lot of the work. And she was doing it, I believe, honestly out of love and concern for the relationship….The responsibility is mine…. I have [the] responsibility to take the actions of recovery.”

Vinny described how he “finally faced the fact that I was accountable and responsible for my own decisions and actions over the years” and “really started taking responsibility for my own recovery process.”

A deeper awareness of where choice does exist is another reflection of deepening responsibility. “Remember that the choice to watch porn or not watch porn” is “a single decision each time” and “at that moment,” said one individual. “Each choice to do the right thing or the wrong thing is your choice. …You have a new choice for each temptation.” 

Stephen cautioned to “never give the impression” to a partner “that their behavior or their body shape or their sexuality in the bedroom or whatever is responsible for a man betraying the relationship.”

[That] is not where the responsibility lies….Some men will. But that is an excuse and not the truth. Nor is it her responsibility to make sure he's going to the meetings and reading the books and being accountable and all these things, right?

He then described responsibility carrying on to later years of maintaining sobriety: 

My sobriety date goes back to 2005 of August 25, and I'm grateful for that sobriety. But I still go to meetings every week. I still receive calls and make calls daily. I still continue to work the steps. I still read recovery literature, and I read the scriptures. …it is just a blessing to me to now read the scriptures and say, I know that the power that comes to me through Jesus Christ is available to me when I access it in an honest way. And it's there. 

“The true solution is, in fact, Jesus Christ, and the power of the atonement to heal,” Stephen concluded. “However, it doesn't come to us without effort on my part. That's [why] I say I'm responsible for my own recovery.” 

2. Regaining hope in the possibility of lasting freedom

It’s easy for anyone facing compulsive-addictive patterns to be persuaded that hope should die. In his story of five years of freedom, Dave said “The devil always made me think I was stuck in this sin and could not overcome it—bringing to mind that we’ve fallen so many times, and can never overcome it. He bombards us with those lies.” 

Jessica can still “remember the joy that came” with experiencing her first “porn-free break,” and a sense of “I can do it!” 

Michelle remembers feeling “hopeful” for “the first time in our marriage” after learning of a new program that could help her and her husband “find help without being shamed, condemned or simply fired on the spot.” After 50+ years, I didn’t think anything would work, I was too far gone,” Larry said. “I had made too many mistakes, had told too many lies, etc.” But when introduced to a 12-step program, he recalled, “For the first time in a long time, I had this thing called Hope.” 

David described a critical process of regaining “confidence, resources and hope that I’ve been searching for to win in the area of my sexual purity that I had lost in for so many years”—this, in the wake of a seemingly “endless cycle of going back to acting out sexually with pornography after promising yourself you wouldn’t go back.” 

Matt said, “When I asked Christ into my heart and life, to lead me and heal me—to direct my life and show me him, I felt lighter. I felt like I wasn’t as heavy—like there was a weight lifted off my shoulders. Like there was hope.” 

Men and women describe this hope growing further after beginning to see real improvements and progress. Vinny recollected: “I remember the amazing feelings of hope and confidence I started to feel when I was able to successfully start facing and replacing my urges and triggers without giving in. With each little success, my hope and confidence increased.”

He added, “Even though you still have moments of weakness,” as you keep working that success begins to happen, which generates “confidence that over time you really can overcome your unwanted behaviors.” 

That hope is critical to staying engaged enough in recovery to begin finding freedom for themselves. Chantel said: “I didn’t lose hope. There was one day I was sitting there thinking to myself, ‘wow, I don’t have these urges any more. It felt so good.’”  

This woman continued, “If you’re struggling, I want you to know there is hope.” 

3. Embracing a new source of confidence and power

More than simply being humbled about their past and hoping in the possibility of a new future, people described coming to develop new confidence in a power to both lead them into that future and comfort them in the present.   

Coming to believe for the first time. It was gaining faith that prompted some to finally realize what porn was doing to them and resolve to do something about it. As Thomas said: 

It was after I decided to become a Christian in my senior year of High School when I realized I should get rid of pornography in my life. Not because Jesus gets angry if I look at porn….like, some kind of angry jerk boss.

“Jesus is basically the opposite of that. He cares deeply for me and wants what's best for me — that's why he's given me rules.” Taylor reassured “Jesus is not mad at you nor is he ashamed of you, but He is fighting on your behalf.” 

Healing is still a process, even after encouraging spiritual experience. “After giving my life to the Lord, I found myself torn late one night,” another man said, describing surfing channels and arriving at an adult one. “I moved past it, then came back past it a second time.” 

“I really felt torn to view porn or follow Christ.”

“Two ingredients” were especially “indispensable” to receive higher help, in Ken’s experience: believing that (1) “God is really that good and merciful and willing” to set people free and (2) “He has the power and the ability to do it.” 

It was both of these ideas “coupled together” that gave Ken his own “confident assurance” in “crying out to God,” since his pleas—however desperate they sometimes felt—were “not hopeless because God is going to hear me when I cry out to Him.” 

Awakening to a new spiritual walk. Mark described using pornography so much that he had “become numb” to what was happening for years. “All I wanted to do was quench my impure sexual thirst, and it became a daily routine for me.” 

Yet he occasionally experienced “feelings of guilt and shame” over his “disgusting behavior and choices,” until, as he put it, “one spring day I decided to do something I hadn’t done in a long time. In the spirit of the prodigal son, I decided to return to my Heavenly Father.” 

Stephen described becoming persuaded that his “addiction is to lust” had “deep spiritual roots,” which led him to realize how critical it was to “seek a spiritual connection with the God of my understanding for the power to restore me to sanity.” 

Roger described turning back to “the spiritual path” as well, after realizing “that science and spirituality were brother and sister.” In his words, “Brother helps to explore the outer world, sister helps to explore the inner world.”  

“Without experiencing a spiritual awakening,” Vinny remarked, “we go throughout life pursuing the emptiness of money, fame, power, and respect in an attempt to find ‘happiness’”...which is why, from his experience, something like this is “critical for lasting transformation.”

Many stories reflect a new prioritization of spiritual matters. One woman said, “Jesus cares about you being whole and healthy and if you want true freedom, you have to care for your spirit and soul first.”

A unique source of support. Eric described becoming newly encouraged by coming to believe in a greater “power to find freedom.” Taylor emphasized the beautiful possibilities “if we would just rest in His power and His grace,” saying, “the good news is, Jesus can set us free from this.”

“If you feel humiliated and shameful for things of the past,” Eva said, “just know God is very merciful and as you come to him, you are literally born again. Take courage in that and allow that to give you light throughout your day.”

“This journey is difficult,” Brett said of his recovery, “but I’m now walking with integrity and purity, and you can too”—adding his witness that “the first step in this journey is that we must trust the only One who can conquer sin — Christ.”  Ken agreed that in his experience “ultimately, only God can set you free,” with Taylor similarly attesting, “He is the only one” with the power to do this. “I’m living a life I don’t deserve because of the work Christ did on my behalf,” another said.  

Taylor went on to share that from her experience, it was important to consciously verbalize desire for deliverance, by saying something like: “I surrender, I repent for partnering with…pornography and masturbation and I ask for your forgiveness, I choose to turn away from it I rebuke and divorce the spirit of porn in Jesus Name. Porn is not my savior. Jesus is my savior. And I close that door now in Jesus Name…I surrender my life including my mind back to you Amen”

In response to statements like “unless you believe in Jesus as Lord, you’ll never find lasting change,” Vinny said, “If you are a Christian, I get that. What about Muslims, Jews, those of other faiths, are they then unable to find transformation in their own journey because they do not share this belief?”

He went on to share his observation that a “spiritual walk” is “accessible to every man and woman, regardless of their particular religious faith”—with “just having ‘faith and hope and belief in a power greater than one’s self’” something that “can make a vital difference in their journey to freedom.” 

Finding a new highest authority. When God is “first,” Joshua shared, “everything else falls into place.” Whereas resisting porn feels difficult for many, he suggested this can “become natural when He is our master.” 

“Ultimately,” he suggested, “you will have to find a new master.” Nick added, “God has invited us to make Him our highest authority”—suggesting men and women need to “arrive at a place where we settle in our hearts that this command [from God] is always our very best choice—even when we can’t see why!” 

Nick described the impact in his and others’ lives for those who “willingly chose to put their lives under the authority of another whom they believed knew better than they did.”

“Have you come to that place with God?” he asks. “Until you reach this point, you will struggle mightily to be free of lust, pornography….susceptible to the lies that maybe that route has more promise, more life, than God’s way.” 

“To truly heal,” Stephen remarked, he needed to “put God back into the center of [his] life,” which the 12-steps helped him do. Arriving at a point of “fearing God alone, contenting yourself in Him,” and “trusting God beyond your own logic,” Nick said, “leads to a level of faith where ‘the doors of freedom begin to open wide.’” 

This involves coming to live “fully under the authority of God in your life, trusting at every turn that where He leads is the best way to go.” 

Trusting God more than emotions alone. Compared to trusting his own vacillating emotions, Josh spoke of new stability in his life that had come from “proving” God’s words in his life. As he put it, “Jesus is a rock who does not erode over time with my emotions. I’ve proven him at his words—by applying them to life in different areas. When I cast my burdens on him, he proves he cares because they lift off of me.” 

He went on to cite “amazing promises” reflected in teachings about the bread of life, not hungering or thirsting, finding peace, not being weary and heavy laden, and finding the “light of life.” Josh said, “as I’ve been trusting those, they have been proven true in my life,” explaining that it’s the person of Christ who anchors him, not his feelings. 

This man clarifies, “this is not just an emotional thing … he’s there whether I feel it or not.”

“The one thing that keeps these [lustful] spirits out is the word of God,” Chantel said, “Meditating on God’s word. Believe it or not, demons are so afraid of God’s word—which … is the ‘sword’ that’s ‘active and alive.’”  

For a Latter-day Saint man, “it was the thought of the holy covenant of chastity” that he made in “the Temple of God” that helped him turn away from porn. A new covenant of marriage contributed to the longest stretch of sobriety he’s ever had. “The images still try to lure me, make me search and look.  But the power I have gained through the covenant I made is astounding,” Jackson said. 

“Since [that] day the pull has grown weaker and weaker. I have had slips, but they are few and far between.”

One Catholic man, Mark, came to feel it was important  to “stay close to the sacraments of confession and Eucharist” for his sobriety. He says “that the graces I receive from daily Mass and frequent confession are the primary reason for my freedom from sexual sin.” He added, “I believe in my heart that the virtue of chastity can be obtained, and maintained, solely through the grace of God.” 

“I felt peace knowing that I was in a state of grace,” Mark said, “and that I was able to hear and feel God’s constant presence.” In that place, he said, “I felt an interior joy, the kind of joy that comes from the assurance that God is in charge of my life and that whatever I do and wherever I go, he is with me.”

This same man said, “I had a deep desire to be set free from this sin prior to entering the sacrament of holy matrimony”– desiring to “enter into the sacrament of marriage with a whole heart and a pure mind.” 

“The power to overcome does not lie within you alone,” Jackson reiterated. “I spent more than a decade trying to overcome this on my own. Every time, I failed. Not until I reached the brink of destruction did I truly do what it really takes to overcome. I put my fate in God’s hands and trusted the enabling power of Jesus Christ to make me strong enough to succeed.” 

Patience in a deeper seeking. Rather than a “quick” or “magic” process, Ken shared his own experience that it “usually doesn’t work that way” when it comes to freedom from compulsive-addictive patterns: 

It's through a process of deliverance and it's only through crying out to God consistently and learning to submit yourself to Him …  it's only by His grace that we can walk into freedom. 

He then added, “it was a continuous thing; it wasn't like I just cried out to the Lord once and I was free. God kept working in my life until finally one day I looked back and I was free….my life was no longer dominated by this.”

“Any relationship requires time and attention,” Josh said. “We come under God’s rule,” Nick explained; “by reading His Word regularly, by gathering weekly with other believers to hear and embrace truth, and by submitting our will to Him daily through prayer. We choose to listen to the advice of mentors and walk in accountability with others.” 

Chantel described noticing how many stories of lasting freedom from pornography involved fasting and prayer, which prompted her to also pray and to fast more. For John, an extended fast was consequential: “I went on a four-day fast—and everything changed. I’ve been totally free now for thirty years.” He further recollected how “The entire focus of my prayer life had changed dramatically over that time period.” 

Austin described how his prayers became more meaningful—making it “a very intentional thing—to be real with Jesus,” which he described as, “I’m not going to put on a religious show for you. This is who I am, and I want to meet with you.” 

This was different from his previous prayers, admitting that in that prior time of life, there was “no real humility in coming to the Lord—no sincerity and genuineness, no desire for Him.” So much so that he later realized how much of his prior worship was “just for me.”

A desperation and passion for God. What made the most difference, Ken remarked “was crying out to God” and “believing God wanted to, was willing and He was able to set me free.”

In Ken’s experience, it was “indispensable” to have the “kind desperation that says, 'I have to be delivered; I have to be set free’”—reflected in the ancient story of  “I must touch the hem of His garment to be made whole, and I'm not going to stop until that happens.” 

“That's the desperation we need to find freedom,” Ken said, adding that if people are “not desperate, they're not going to be willing to cry out to God until that happens.” He expressed his confidence that “the same God” who was able to cleanse and deliver her can “do it for you”:

But you have to cry out in faith and believe that God wants to do it and He will do it and keep crying out till it happens. That's the desperation we need. Not a hopelessness that there's no hope (‘maybe God might answer my prayer’) but a desperation that I have to be delivered, I have to be set free and Jesus will do it as you cry out to Him. 

“Don't stop until you get that deliverance and you get the freedom that you're asking for.” After decades of trying to be free from this compulsive-addictive pattern—“trying to be free, trying to do all the right things,” Ken said, “it wasn't until I really began to cry out to the Lord” that things changed. 

“As I cried out to Him persistently,” he added, “God answered that prayer in a bigger way than I could have hoped for. And today I'm in freedom that at one time I thought I would never ever experience.” 

4. Embracing a new source of comfort, love and connection 

As consequential as the negative effects of pornography are, there is something else porn offers in the moment that can feel positive to people. 

Porn as comfort, connection and consolation. People who find lasting freedom often speak of coming to understand what porn use had been “doing for them”:  

• “Porn can become our safe place, and when we need something whether it's love, affirmation, or peace, we run to it,” Taylor said. 

• “Anytime I felt lacking, pornography was always there to buoy me up again,” Nick recollects. 

As Matt put it, “pornography is not my problem, pornography is my solution.” Jessica described feeling repulsed by her first taste of pornography—“something in my gut told me this was wrong.” Yet she said “something drew me in,” namely, “these women were being accepted.” 

“I guess it helped me to feel that somebody out there was enjoying themselves,” she said, while adding, “this is what was required” of a young woman “in order to be accepted.” 

Matt reflected on “a porn star with sparkling eyes whose gaze would always make me feel seen,” even while remarking on the “ridiculous premises” involved in the films. They “invited me into a fantasy of feminine intimacy, where I was the object of adoration, where I was wanted”—a pull he admitted “can still be powerful in my life.” 

A long-term relationship of passion. Matt went on to emphasize the “relationship you have formed with porn over your lifetime”—quoting Henri Nouwen who said that sexual brokenness “reveals to us our enormous yearning for communion, the desires of our body to be touched, embraced, and safely held”—which “belong to the deepest longings of our heart.” 

“I had patterns of behavior that were more powerful,” Nick said, than his ability to work them away. “I couldn’t ‘want’ the change bad enough to make it happen….We can’t ‘want’ this bad enough to make it happen.” 

“Our brains have been significantly affected through the years…These have created behavioral pathways that we will travel down no matter what promises we have made to others. We cannot perform our way out. But we can train the brain.” 

Bringing attention to emotional needs. One man described a “light” that went on when he realized his struggle had “a lot less to do with pornography and more to do with my emotions, my feelings, how I process those.” He called this “one of the greatest aha moments I've had in recovery.”

“There really is strength and power in identifying … What void am I trying to feel when I do that?”

Self-care as basic kindness. “At the beginning, it’s hard to see our real needs,” Matt said—obscured as they are by strong emotions of regret, fear and sorrow—combined with the fact that the “habit of going to porn is a quick reflex and it feels automatic.” 

Matt suggested, since “very few men are adept at knowing their needs and taking care of them,” yet suggested that self-care was basically a reflection of “being kind to yourself” and “recognizing your worth.”

Seeing the truth about your heart. “Yeah, I was desperate” to change, Josh said, “but the truth was, I wanted it, I wanted pornography—even though it was destroying my life.” 

After all, it’s only “natural to pursue what we love.” He added, “My real life—the thing that was driving me in life was my desire for sexual pleasure—it was what I loved, thought about and consumed.”

Another man realized he was pursuing something that was “destroying my life—and from my life was destroying others in the process.” 

“It is a heart issue,” James said—“The reason I was going to pornography was that I was selfish.” 

Joshua agreed. “We are willing to get pleasure at the expense of others and use them as objects, not treating them as the human beings they are.”

“Don’t let this make you feel bad, but let it stir you to action,” he said. “You do not watch porn because ‘you’re a man’ or ‘you’re a woman’ or because you’re hopelessly addicted,” this man added. “You watch porn because you desire porn more than anything else.”

“Pornography is the antithesis or exact opposite of manhood and womanhood. And no one is hopelessly addicted to it,” Joshua said. “Remember, porn is selfish. The fight against porn is a fight against selfishness.”

Dismantling desire.  “In overcoming porn,” Joshua shared, “it is essentially that we dismantle it at that strong and immediate desire.” He continued, “I once thought that watching porn was an inescapable fate, something I was doomed to do for the rest of my life whether I wanted to or not. Now I am free from the desire to watch porn. I literally cannot believe who I was before.” 

John recollects asking in prayer, “God, you delivered my friend—I’ve been crying out…why haven’t you delivered me?” The answer, “Because you still like it.” 

“How can God deliver me from something I like and desire?” he realized. 

Whatever it takes. “When you're serious about changing unwanted behaviors,” Vinny said, “you have a mindset that says, ‘I will do whatever it takes to change’—which he called “unconditional willingness.” He continued: 

The opposite of this is a mindset of “conditional change.” You know you have this attitude when you find yourself saying things like, “I'll do anything to change so long as it doesn't involve [fill in the blank]" or “I'm fully committed to this process, but just don't ask me to . . .." 

“In my early years before I got really serious about my own recovery, I placed all kinds of conditions on my commitment to change.” Vinny reflected, “I think the main reason I hesitated to fully commit myself to the process is that I was afraid. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to survive without my drug of choice.”

The way Vinny overcame this fear was by reviewing all the real, truest and best reasons he could find to put this behavior behind me (in his “why statement”). His original list had included things like “My church leader tells me porn is bad.” “I’m afraid my wife will catch me, and she’ll leave me.” “I spend too much money doing this. It hurts me financially.” 

While there was nothing wrong with these motives, they just weren’t “strong enough.” As he began to look deeper, he saw even better “whys?” He began to see that his life was “controlled by porn”:

I don’t want to be a slave anymore. I want freedom to choose the direction of my life. I want to become the best man I can be and will never discover this with porn in my life. I must do this for me, and not anyone else. I hate my life with porn. I want to discover real intimacy with my wife. That will never happen with this addiction in my life.

“When the motive became powerful enough that’s when I just jumped in” and investing himself in tools, work and “start seeing some success.”

Chasing after other loves. After ceasing porn and masturbation, Eva described falling into depression and replacing her former loves with TV, which likewise effectively “separated me from God—because I had no time for him” and “I had no time for my husband or daughter.”

Later, she “replaced TV with career and describes herself as “fixated on trying to fill places that only God could.”

James recollected how video games became “my idol”— “I was there, literally in my heart, bowing down and worshiping that as my god.”

“You see, you can make anything a god. You can make freedom from sexual sin a god.”

Knowledge instead of a relationship. After falling into depression, one woman describes turning to “binging” “hours on sermons and podcast[s]”—“fixated” on seeking more knowledge, so much so that she “never truly built a relationship with Jesus.”

When it came to more direct communion, Eva says, “I would give maybe 15 minutes, compared with hours of podcasts. It wasn’t me and God’s connection, it was them and God’s connection. I knew about Him, but I didn’t know Him. None of it fulfilled me [compared with] building a true relationship with Jesus.”

“Yes, God speaks!” Eric said, “Sometimes audibly, but usually just a simple impression on our hearts.” 

Another spoke of coming to realize he too wasn’t really seeking a relationship. “James, you want to stop the sin, the pain—you don’t want a greater relationship to me. You don’t want to be close to me,” he said, describing the feeling he got in prayer. 

“When the battle changed from ‘try to stop looking at porn’—to ‘try to know God better,’ suddenly victory was mine over pornography. Because I wanted to know the Lord. The bible verses took on new life.” At that point, he said, “Jesus was really able to begin doing some massive work in my life.” 

Intimacy that beats porn. “If we allow God to come into those dark, hidden, and hurting places,” Taylor said, “God can first heal us” and then teach them “to come to Him instead.” 

As Vinny put it, “It is intimacy we seek, and intimacy we lack, and we ought to begin understanding what that looks like and feels like, because it is not just ‘sex.’”

“When I fell in love with Jesus, there was something that immediately, instinctively I knew “this is it—this is going to be the thing that carries me.” Austin continued, “That thing was the thing that I knew—I’m home, I’m right inside now, I’m going to have victory.” 

Citing David’s comment to Jonathan, “Your love is better to me than the love of women”—Austin said, “I can love Jesus and can have that relationship—and that can be real to me. That thing I was always seeking for—that void I was seeking inside, that I was trying to fill with love from other sources, now is filled with the love from Jesus. ….he is the supply, the source, I am receiving from him what I need and lack.”

When triggers arise pushing people to use, one man emphasizes the value in working through the message where “the brain says, I know how to get relief. You know how to get relief. Let's just do this.”

God first. Many describe finding another answer. “When Jesus entered into my life and offered me mercy and forgiveness and offered to be with me to the end of my age and offered himself to me, that changed me. I’m not that person anymore—not that Gollum creature”:

I saw what Jesus did—loved me and took my place, and seeing that for the first time really, allowed me to let go. That was life changing, because now Jesus was my desire—Jesus was what I was going after now. 

“I don’t want anything else to be first anymore.” 

“Every time you want to give into lust, it’s because you want to fill something in you that is empty,” Dave said, adding “God is the only one who can give you true satisfaction. He is living bread and water.”

“I had to first give my life to God,” Chantel said, “let[ting] him know you want to surrender your life to him, that you want him to be your one and only and you don’t want anything to come between him and the relationship you are building with him. That’s the first step.”

When one of her mentors told her “you have to love God more than you hate the sin,” Jessica said “that sounded great,” but “I had no clue how to do that.”

God loves me even in this and through this. Sometimes the continuing struggle appears to teach people more and more about the kind of being they say they are trusting. “I’d ask God for forgiveness, and then went and did it over and over and over,” Dave said. “But he forgave me all the times.” 

Chantel described praying for forgiveness—“it wasn’t easy, because even as I would pray and fast, I would still masturbate.” Rather than only feeling discouraged, this repetition of falling over and over, and reaching out for love over and over, seemed to teach something valuable. Thomas recounted: “One day, I decided that if I looked at porn, I wasn’t going to beat myself up about it. I would pick up and move on. I would trust this Christian message I had been told that God knows everything about me and loves me anyway.” 

One man felt a tug to read in Romans, “while we were still enemies, God wanted to prove his love for us, and sent Christ to die.” This text deeply moved him, as he felt love “despite everything I had done, the darkness I had lived in.” Even then, “God wanted to prove his love for me—and sent his son …to die the death that I really deserved.”

That became a turning point of three years of sobriety and a reborn marriage, with his wife saying of that moment, “I’d never seen him moved by anything he read in the Bible.”

“You would not believe how fast porn faded from my life after years of addiction when I changed my outlook,” Thomas continued. “Instead of letting the old tapes play in my head of, ‘I’m a piece of crap who can’t stop looking at smut,’ I went with, ‘I screwed up today, but God still loves me, and I’m gonna try to let that change me tomorrow, but if I don’t, God will still love me tomorrow too.’ And you know what? When I got rid of the part of the cycle where I beat myself up, the cycle broke down.  The thing driving me to look at porn was the fear of looking at porn. Crazy, right?”

Thomas said, “We all have our own struggles. Maybe it’s drugs or alcohol or cutting or sex or anger or one of a million other things for you. But you know what I believe? I believe that God made you, I believe that God knows everything about you, and I believe in the midst of that, God chooses to love you; and nothing can change that fact.”

You’re not just an addict. You’re a human being with an addiction. Your value doesn’t come from what you do, it starts with who you are. And who you are is loved by someone who was willing to do whatever it takes to save you from yourself. 

Moving beyond a fearful relationship. Some described a shift in how they came to approach God. About his period of appearance-focused, unsuccessful recovery, John reflected: “Fear will always keep you a slave. It lacks the power to set you free.”

“What set me free was love—love for God and love for others,” he said—sharing his prayer language changed to be, “God, I want to know You the best a man can know You. I want to walk intimately with You. Keep me from doing anything that hurts Your heart.” 

“I’ve hurt the heart of the one I love—the complete and total focus was I’m so fed up with hurting the heart of the one I love. God, I want to know you more intimately—my heart was broken because I was hurting the heart of the one I love.”

Rather than fearing the consequences of exposing the sin, he shifted his primary concern: “It was that I didn’t want to hurt the heart of the ones I loved—neither God, nor my beautiful wife, Lisa.”

“That was a game-changer. …Where my primary motivation before had been fear, my new motivation was love.” Reflecting on a key to his freedom that now spanned a decade, John said: 

Getting free became about something so much more….When I saw how much God loved me, it pained me greatly that I would ever do anything to hurt Him. How could I possibly go on grieving the One who loved me so deeply? 

Someone I can trust and love completely. Austin spoke of his newfound connection to the divine as akin to a husband and wife falling in love. “For me, seeing who Jesus was and what he did caused a response … out of gratitude, I want to commit my life to you. Out of gratitude for what you’ve done, my life is yours. And I want to be yours, and I want you to be mine. And out of that, there comes this commitment of, ‘I’m going to live this way.’” 

He described this as something that “captivates you and draws you to them,” making you want to “give yourself to them.”

Austin came to see his own “pride in relation to his humility, lowliness,” reflected in his willingness to be “coming under, serving me, washing my feet, even though I was walking over his name, even though I was dragging him through the mud—completely undid me. I didn’t know what to do with that. I saw—this is God, this is who he is at his heart. And I want that. That is so attractive to me.” 

Josh remarked on the grace offered in words like “I do not condemn you.”... “Surely goodness and lovingness will follow all the days of my life.” He said, “to be with me throughout all the days of my life, that kind of enduring mercy, I love that about Him.”

Pursuing God, instead of freedom. James recollects hearing someone trying to validate his progress in recovery by saying “it’s incredible what God’s done in your life.” But he said, “I sat there and I realized that God had done nothing in my life. It was all a work of James. I had worked so hard to clean the outside of the cup, yet I had no new heart from God. I wasn’t born again.”

So he began to cry out to God in a new way, to the point that three years ago he said, “the living God invaded my life … the battleships of the Spirit of God, they pulled up alongside my little fortress of sin and they unloaded with full force.and demolished it.” 

After witnessing that “radical work” God did in his life, James continued: 

That’s the only reason that I’m not going back to any sin …because I’m satisfied with Christ….Are there struggles? Are there battles against sin? You better believe it. This is an all-out war. But as [my] brother has said, “You are delivered by your desire for Christ because your desire for Christ is greater.” 

“You see, when you’re satisfied with Christ, you don’t need to go prostitute yourself to an idol….Because you’re satisfied with that intimacy you have…It’s not a burden to be alone with the lover of my soul….The burden is when I do sin.” 

“As long as you pursue freedom from pornography, as long as you’re thinking your problem is pornography addiction,” James suggested, “you’ll never find freedom.” He added, “The worst thing that can happen is that you do find freedom, while pursuing freedom from pornography. And then, you pat yourself on the back and you think that everything is fine,” despite the fact that you’re “not born again … not a lover of Christ” and “don’t have intimacy with Him.”

From his experience, James concluded that freedom wasn’t deep enough, “Freedom from sexual sin and from any sin doesn’t [come] from looking that sin in the eyes and saying “I better overcome that.” It comes from finding that which is more beautiful.”

“As you look to him…pursue Christ…trust in Him…see Him as better, then you’ll naturally overcome. …You will find freedom from the addiction to … sexual sin.” 

James shared the prayer he sometimes expresses: 

If You don’t help me I can’t stand …. against lust. I can’t stand against all the thousands of billboards and all the wicked ads, and all the perverted sexual Facebook pictures … I can’t stand against this, unless I’m standing and abiding in Your Son. Unless I’m trusting in Him alone for my joy, for my satisfaction, for my salvation alone. 

All his talk about “freedom from pornography,” he said” became a “god” earlier. “I wanted to be free of pornography, to be free of masturbation so badly. I wanted to get it out of my life.”

“My god was freedom, my God was not Christ. I was pursuing freedom instead of pursuing Christ….It was all this grief that was motivating his pursuit of freedom—instead of anything else.”

“It was not Christ.” By comparison, he describes himself now as having “the preciousness of Christ” and knowing “that He became sin for me…that is just incredible, it’s amazing.”

“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed,” James said, citing the Bible. “But it’s the Son who sets you free. It is not your own self,” citing Jeremiah as saying, “Cursed is the man who makes flesh his strength, but blessed is the man whose trust is in the Lord.” 

“In Ezekiel the Israelites were whoring with their idols. Why? They were not satisfied. Because they weren’t satisfied, they went and pursued their idols, and it left them even more empty. It says, “Even still you were not satisfied.” And that’s what so many people do.”

James concludes: “Don’t focus on freedom from pornography. Focus on Christ, then you will have freedom from pornography. I guarantee it.”

When I wake up in the morning, I’m not thinking, “Well, how can I have freedom today, and then pat myself on the back and feel good at the end of the day?” 

No, I’m waking up and I’m saying, “I want to behold the beauty of the Lord. My flesh faints for the Living God. I’m thirsting for Him. Earnestly am I going to seek the Lord.” 

And when going to bed, I’m going to meditate on the Lord in the watches of the night, and I’m going to see the victories that He gave me throughout the day because I was relying on Him … trusting in the arm of the Living God. 

Knowing the Lord is with me, the Lord will give me victory, the Lord will allow me to overcome. It’s not an Internet filter, it’s not an accountability partner. It’s beholding the beauty of Christ. That is the answer … It’s knowing Him.

James cautioned, “if I stop beholding the Living God I will fall into sin, just like King David did,” adding, “some of you, instead of seeking the Lord and being in the Word, being satisfied in the beauty of Christ, you ignore the Scriptures. You go running around on Facebook all day. You go running around in all the other pursuits of the world” …thinking, “Well, look what I’m doing for God.” 

“Listen, we can do a whole lot for the Lord. But if we’re not being satisfied in the Lord … we will not overcome. It’s a deadly idol to get your joy from your performance and not from the perfect performance of Jesus Christ.”

“That’s where my joy comes from, because even if I fall, Christ didn’t….Jesus Christ, who laid the foundations of the world, lived a perfect life in my place. And then He died on that Cross as a perfect, spotless sacrifice once and for all, to satisfy [what] I deserved … for all of an eternity.”

“And He rose again from the dead—He proved who He was. And that same victory that He had on Calvary, and that resurrection from the dead, He’ll give to the one who comes to Him, who stops trying to save himself, who gives up and surrenders, and says, ‘Lord, I cannot overcome this Goliath in my life. I cannot. The Goliath is too big, he’s too great.’”

That’s when, James says, Christ “comes in there, and He slays him on our behalf. That is the only hope of victory.” 

“Lord, satisfy us with your steadfast love in the morning, that we can rejoice and be glad all of our days,” he emphasizes. (Psalms 90:14)

I don’t have to go whoring after an idol….I don’t have to worry about the approval of man or what my friends think about me on Facebook….I don’t have to worry about my physical appearance. I don’t have to worry about how I’m performing, because Jesus Christ, in my place, performed perfectly. That’s freedom! And if you know that truth, it will set you free. 

“Come unto Me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, I will give you rest.” It’s not “come unto 60 days of freedom from pornography, and then you’ll have rest.”

That’s not true rest….I don’t wake up today and think, “Well, I better not look at pornography.” I wake up and say, “Where are you at, Lord? Satisfy me. Lord, open my mind, my heart, to see the wonders in your Word, to see the beauty of Christ, then I will overcome.” 

That’s my one pursuit—it’s a heart burning to know Jesus Christ—and in that there’s freedom. There’s no other source of freedom. No other source. 

A heart offered to another.John similarly “cried out in prayer to know God more intimately,” suggesting to others, “You need to cry out to know him” in reference to Jeremiah being told, “if you seek me and search me with all your heart, then I’m going to be found by you.” 

When “you start wanting him more than anything else—once you get to that place, it’s not about you—but about not hurting the heart of the one you love.”

“When you put the word of God in your heart and make it the focus of your life,” John continued, and “you desire truth more than anything else—you come into a place where you’re going to be easily delivered.” 

He added, “Once I realized how much it was hurting the heart of God—and how much it was hindering my ability to have communion and intimacy with God, I no longer liked it. I was delivered.” He quoted another pastor as saying: 

Make God your habit, and he’ll break your habit. Make God your addiction and you’ll break your addiction. Stop focusing on where you’re broken—and start focusing on how beautiful and amazing Jesus Christ is. 

This requires at a minimum, “a willing heart” Stephen said—one that is moveable and bendable in another direction over time. 

Relishing another life. All this involves a sweeter way of living that people found to be uniquely attractive. Reflecting on his 12 years of freedom, Jack described being shown “a better way of living”—including “a better kind of intimacy.”

Vinny spoke of “the aggressive pursuit of a great and happy life.” Josh, now 17 years sober, said, “Yeah, this was what my life was supposed to be like.”

“I wouldn't trade the freedom that comes with loving God and loving my wife for anything,” Colby reflected, with Logan saying, “It has been almost a year and a half since my last relapse and the freedom is indescribable.” 

“My relationship with God blossomed, my connection with him was made clear, that dark cloud or blanket was lifted off,” Aaron recounted. “I could pray, read and walk with him without any hindrance anymore,” concluding, “You can’t afford to have your walk with God stunted.”

5. Seeing identity and self differently 

Many describe the impact of coming to see their own identity more completely. “Finding true freedom is not just quitting a bad habit, it’s about discovering the real you,” said Matt. “Another thing that has helped me a lot is learning more about myself (my past and present—my true wants and needs),” said Roger. 

Seeking a truer identity. “In those brief moments of acting out and giving in to my old self, I felt control, mastery, and desirability…of women, at least for a few brief moments,” Nick said. In the same moment, however, “the very same action would leave me feeling controlled, mastered, and undesirable to anyone at all.” 

He went on to speak about the value of “redefining manhood”—to the point where our “sense of manliness” comes from God Himself. By cultivating a life of faith and growing trust, Nick suggested that God “will be at the center of your life and will reveal your true identity.”

Nick described often praying, “Lord, help me see myself the way You see me, and help me to become who You already know I am.” Another individual recalled praying, “Let me see myself the way you see me.” 

For many, this was a sense of self that transcended their own persona fundamentally:

• “I grew my identity in Christ.” 

• “I’m bought with a price—I’m not my own,” Josh said. “That’s what keeps me with the Lord—that authority structure, he’s there whether I feel it or not”—essentially bringing him into what the interviewer called a “relationship with a King.”

True worth. Eva describes grappling with feelings like, “you’re so disgusting, you’re so unworthy, how can God love me after everything”—which she attributes to “not feeling fulfilled” yet in her relationship with God. 

Whether in connection with the divine, or another way—people can come to see greater worth inside. “My ultimate value is in him,” Austin said. “I’m loved by him and I’m his child. He made me on purpose and I don’t need to look anywhere else for that value.”

This man didn’t always know this, and felt grateful for “the truth coming in and revealing who I was in light of Holy God.” After learning more in a recovery program, Larry remembers, “I began to feel that I was worth something again, that I was worth saving.” 

Jessica described a “drastic encounter with true love and acceptance that can be found only in Christ.” 

“With God, for the first time,” she said, “I understood what it meant to have worth, true worth, not a sexual worth. I realized that my body, with all of [its] quirks and inconsistencies, was fashioned exactly the way he planned.” She reflected: 

My life was knit together and measured out to fulfill a purpose. I had acceptance because I was accepted into his kingdom. I had love because he had died for me. I had a Father because I had him. All of that truth washed into my life and replaced the years of lies I had believed. Lies about myself, lies about sex, and lies about love.  

Seeing uncomfortable aspects of oneself. Josh likewise asked, “Lord show me how you see me?” Rather than seeing only beautiful reassurances, he described coming to understand how he had been “critical, judgmental, hold[ing] grudges, not as nice as [you] think you are – my whole idol of myself was being torn down.” 

This “got me to[a] place where I could actually listen,” Josh said. When the “truth comes, it sets you free.” So, even though it was hard, “when truth spoke to me, I didn’t fight it—I accepted it.”

Josh added that moments when he sees “who I really am apart from him” does some good—“that’s when he becomes more beautiful, and more attractive.” As he said, without those kinds of disappointing moments, he could easily conclude, “Jesus you’re great—but so am I!” 

Seeing oneself compassionately. “You know you're experiencing change when you're able to keep moving toward self-forgiveness,” Vinny said, adding that even when you “take full responsibility, you also realize that you have great intrinsic worth and value that has nothing to do with your addiction.”

We are not pieces of crap. We are not Evil. We are not freaks of nature. We are simply human beings with issues. And look who’s here working on those issues? We are! We’re working to correct the issue. That’s worth a huge “High Five” in my book. 

Taylor shared her own prayer that’s been helpful, “I choose to forgive myself just the way you forgive me, Jesus. You are not mad or ashamed of me.”

Not who I am. Even when seeing oneself in disappointing moments, this deeper knowledge of identity offers some reassurance: Namely, this wasn’t really who they were in the first place.  

Others reflected on times when they believed the opposite. As Thomas put it, “I basically stopped fighting and just accepted that the addiction was part of who I am. When I couldn’t get rid of my addiction, I started to believe it was who I was. I was a terrible person, and if I was a terrible person, I couldn’t expect to behave any differently. Every time I gave in to my addiction, it reinforced this idea and wrapped me tighter and tighter into my destructive behavior. I wanted to quit, but I couldn’t. It was my destiny.” (9)

This view of self makes healing and freedom almost impossible. Vinny said “you know you’re experiencing change when …you're able to start seeing yourself outside of your behaviors. We are NOT our addiction.” 

Rather than only talking about a struggle behaviorally—“how many relapses? What are you doing? Are you too bored?” Stephen recommended helpers “go back and say, actually, this is maybe an identity problem. Let's just talk about you as a child of God and where are you missing that?”

Becoming what we love. “We are all in the process of becoming,” A.W. Tozer writes. “We have already moved from what we were to what we are, and we are now moving toward what we shall be. The perturbing thought is not that we are becoming, but what we are becoming; not that we are moving; but toward what we are moving. We are becoming what we love.” 

Matt suggests that this compels us to grapple with this question: “What do we love? If we no longer are going to porn, where is our focus? What do we value?” That is, who are you without porn? 

“The turning point for me with recovery came with the realization that ‘what you behold is what you become,’” said another man. 

Becoming the type of person that doesn’t look at porn. Jon said he was “becoming the type of man that does not look at porn,” instead of “practicing behaviors that keep me from looking at porn.” 

This has felt like a “diametrically different approach” to recovery, leading him to focus on “who I am becoming” and helping him “live as that man.”

“It is no longer a daily struggle for me of battling temptation, avoidance behavior, etc.” This was and is this man’s singular “breakthrough.”

“I’m a different person than I was when I was looking at porn every day,” Matt said. 

6. Learning a lot and rethinking the world 

Some kind of learning process is a near universal part of people’s healing and recovery journeys, often facilitated by the discovery of some recovery ministry or available program of instruction: 

• “I had finally met a Christian man who could make sense of what was happening in my life,” Brett said.  

• “The additional education and sessions helped me immensely to realize that I wasn’t alone,” Tony said of the Overcome app. 

• Jorge described the discovery of the Fortify app as “the start of my real recovery”—saying, “I learned so much from the training and was encouraged by the forums that I wasn't alone! I went on a 7-month streak.”

It’s common to hear people describe multiple sources of information and education: 

• “I've read books, listened to podcasts, done the Fortify training. All that has helped and [has]been good help in reshaping my thoughts, my beliefs and presenting new tools.” 

• Roger spoke of having made “a bunch of self-discoveries” during his recovery process, thanks to a number of support organizations, online lectures, and “reading spiritual and philosophical literature.” 

This kind of a “better understand[ing] my addiction to lust through education,” as Stephen put it, was clearly impactful for many. 

Renewing and rewiring thought. More than one person emphasized that powerful recovery education wasn’t a simple change in perspective or shift in belief. “Many times, the church treats pornography as a belief problem,” Nick said. “But,” he says, “this isn’t always enough to cause their behavior to change. Pornography affects the neurochemistry of our brains. Belief in God alone cannot immediately reverse an addiction.”

“For most people, just improving your relationship with God simply won’t be enough” Nick continued from his own experience, “We have to rewire our thinking.”

Eric came to the same conclusion after he “asked God to take the desire away.” Instead, he said, “He asked me to ‘renew my mind.’”

“I had no clue how to do that,” he said, but described a process of coming to “truly know” what it means to be “transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). After being stuck in what he called a “death grip” for 15 years, he said, “transformation occurred as I changed the way I thought.” 

Roger describes a process of “reviewing my belief system since I started this journey” and reported having “successfully washed away some of the faulty core beliefs I had.” Nick described addressing “false core-beliefs that were driving my behavior.” Timothy described working “so that I do not even think pornographically.”

Understand the biological bondage. Many describe a new appreciation of what was really happening biologically with the addiction: “We are not merely making a poor moral choice when we choose to indulge in sexual sin,” Brett said. “A powerful chemical neurotransmitter called dopamine, or the ‘gotta have it’ molecule, is released in our brains when we view porn or act out sexually.” He added, “There is more knowledge about how the brain works now than ever before. Sexual addiction is not just a moral problem; it is also a brain problem.” 

“I knew nothing about the brain chemistry … and nothing about addiction,” Chris said, describing his prior view of this as merely “a bad habit you have to stop.” Nick likewise previously insisted he would stop porn once married to his wife, “but without seeing the pattern driving his addiction, nothing stopped.” He went on to describe the impact of being “shown how brain science complemented a foundation of biblical truth to create lasting change in my thoughts and actions.”

Deeper learning about patterns and influences. People described benefit from exploring past influences on current behavior: “There are roots for everything we do,” Taylor said, “so by walking through the healing process, whether it’s going to counseling, talking to a mentor, or having your own private times with Jesus, He will expose and heal those roots.”

“If a tree represented our life, what would they find? If someone were to cut our trunk and look at the roots underneath, which are our beliefs, world-views, traumas, or childhood, are the roots living or dying?” She added, “How healthy our roots are, shows how healthy the tree will be. So if we have undealt with trauma, unforgiveness, or shaky beliefs, our tree (our life) will be affected.” 

Vinny described “working more on preventing my unwanted behaviors by dealing with the underlying issues instead of waiting until I was in a crisis and then trying to resist acting out.” 

Education is not enough. “When I first started my journey, I was studying lots of porn-based literature, studies, No fap blogging, podcast listening,” one man said. While continuing to learn, he admitted this kind of porn recovery education is “measurably less, as I have concentrated my efforts into a different focus”—namely, “daily investments in building my character.”

Eva describes turning to “binging” “hours on sermons and podcasts” during a dark period, so “fixated” on seeking more head knowledge that she “never truly built a relationship with Jesus.” 

Matt warned those who “want to think ourselves into the right action,” cautioning that “our relationship with porn has been honed over years of repeated involvement. We have conditioned ourselves by returning to it, over and over.”

For that reason, Matt encouraged people beyond thinking and learning alone to action steps crucial for healing. “Any useful knowledge we acquire is quickly overridden by our own desire and cravings,” Matt added, which is why the AA Big Book famously says “self-knowledge availed us nothing.” 

“Our knowledge alone cannot change us.” He jokes about an adaptation of the play, Waiting for Godot, called “Waiting for Recovery” where two guys sit around “talking about recovery, but not doing anything. Spoiler alert: recovery never comes.” 

We won’t be “able to think our way out of this” he concludes, suggesting that some are motivated in their search to find “a less painful way to quit,” namely, “One that doesn’t involve giving up things we like, looking bad, or asking for help”—presuming that if we “find the right article or idea, we’ll do the right thing.” 

Yet Matt reiterated, there is a “big difference between being aware of a problem and deciding to change.””

Someone’s precious daughter. Many spoke of the impact of coming to see the true nature and worth of women (and men) differently. “Then I saw a video featuring a performer that I had followed for some time,” Tony recollects. “For a second, I saw through the façade [and] illusion and realized that porn is an act—a lie. It was only a second. A glimpse. But it was enough that I decided I needed to try a new strategy.” 

John described the impact of a “realization that that girl that I used to look at is made in the image and likeness of God—she’s some daddy’s little girl, she’s precious to God,” admitting, “When that revelation hit my heart, I could no longer look at a girl as a piece of meat, or as something for pleasure for me. I now saw her as crowned with glory and honor—because God said he crowned human beings with glory and honor, who were made in the likeness of God.” 

It’s this kind of “revelation in your heart” that John said people need most. “When I was bound to pornography, I didn’t have God’s heart for women.” By comparison, “If I see that woman as created in the likeness and image of God—when we truly get this in the heart, we’re totally set free.”

Describing the impact of this profound shift away from desiring porn, John said, “It used to be I had a desire for pornography—I could be enticed.” But after he began to experience a “renewing” of his mind and “getting God’s heart towards women,” he said, “once that happens, you won’t look upon women to look after them any longer.” 

Another man likewise said, “now I’m free. And it’s just beautiful, because I’m not lusting anymore. Because I see the worth that is in women.” 

That made what was happening to these women painful to realize: “What I’m watching—these actors in the porn industry, they’re basically slaves.”

“I knew I needed to quit because not only was I warping the sexual expectations in life,” Thomas said, “I was helping to perpetuate an entire industry that treats people like commodities.”

“Think for a moment about the reality that these are real people, many with tormented pasts and very painful childhoods, who have had that pain exploited,” Joshua said. “Just imagine them as a child crying in their bed at night, wishing they could escape their situation and to someday have a wonderful life.” 

He then describes learning about “the reality of how the porn industry many times takes people who are vulnerable (abused as children), and sometimes even homeless or runaways, and exploits them” - with additional pain “once they are inside the industry.” 

Many of these women in videos, he realized, were “hurting, desperate, in need of help and protection.” 

The gravity of this thought impacted him—“I had figuratively been preying on homeless and desperate women when I watched porn….watching on my computer the “tired, the poor, those yearning to breathe free”—covered up by a “mask of makeup and hygiene.” 

“That revelation startled me. My sin was far more evil than I had ever believed it to be.” Joshua is quoted at length below:

I started only then to see the women as human beings with souls, broken childhoods, people who were helpless and should have been cared for, but instead, were being taken advantage of. How would I feel about taking advantage of the girl whose father beat her? A girl who had been victimized over and over again by either family, friends, or strangers? Was that attractive? Did I think it was hot to exploit a girl who was a runaway because she couldn’t cope with molestation or a broken family or was forced to sell her body to feed her children? That was called prostitution and, in truth, that’s what porn is. 

The mask fell off. The women were no longer objects. They were real women with sometimes torturous pasts and vulnerable pain on those videos…who, as a man, I should be helping and not exploiting. I was being a predator without even knowing it.

To drive home the point, he later asked, “who is the most vulnerable and innocent person you know? Answer yes or no whether you would abuse that person so they are able to survive.” 

If a homeless woman “offered to give you oral sex in exchange for food and shelter,” what would you do? This man suggested that women in porn videos are “selling themselves like that.” 

“I could excuse any statistic because they were just numbers to me. I didn’t really associate the numbers with real people. But when faced with the reality that these women are wounded, hurting, and need to be cared for, that they were once children playing with toys and had dreams of being something other than abused, then my soul could not ignore the virtue within it.”

“With my ignorance lifted, I could not go back. Not only did I see the consequences of my actions and the reality of what I had been doing, but I was truly disgusted by it. I could not go back to my old ways.” 

“We have a natural desire to protect those who are defenseless and to be vehemently disgusted at the exploitation of the hurting. All that is needed to defeat the desire to watch porn is realizing what porn really is: Participation in the abuse and exploitation of another human being.”

Joshua acknowledged the personal impact of coming to a “legitimate sorrow for what you have done,” not in the spirit of “self-condemnation,” but in the sense of “how messed up this world really is and how messed up the thing is that you have been doing.” 

This new knowledge made him “sick”—not due to the “shame of being caught,” but instead “sick about the reality of how evil porn is and the damage it does on the people you are now loving and caring for.” 

“That knowledge changed me. I found humanity in the women who were having sex on the screen. The women were no longer things for my addiction; they were hurting people being forced or coerced into a life of shame and perpetual pain. From that moment forward, my addiction was only a few months away from being completely washed away.” 

Joshua shared how powerful it had been for him to “pray for the men and women who are being abused.” Pray for the “healing of their bodies, restoration of their broken hearts, rest from the pain and shame of their abuse, and encouragement to leave their situation.” He continues, “Even pray for those who are hurting them, that they, too, will change.” 

Seeing true love and intimacy. Dave recollects coming to see more clearly “the false concept of love” popular today, essentially “defining love as what porn is” and hinting that “everyone is having sex with everyone else.”

“And that’s not real love,” he said—a realization that helped him “overcome lust,” while appreciating that “urges to have sex are beautiful and designed for marriage.” By contrast, the “world has switched it up in such a perverse, wicked way—so that our generation is getting brainwashed more and more.” 

Even the women who were being mistreated, Jessica said “looked happy.” They “looked like they liked it.” Since she “wanted to be happy like them,” she drew the conclusion that “true happiness was found in sex.” 

Vinny described the power of “feeling and thinking differently, particularly when it comes to seeing and appreciating a whole person as opposed to narrowly focusing on body parts.” 

People in true recovery, Vinny said, “begin to realize that sexual thoughts and urges are a normal, healthy part of life and how they harness and direct those urges is the key.”

One woman Taylor said, “We know sex was made for the covenant of marriage, but what the enemy has tried to do is distort that very image, and give you this fake comfortable feeling while watching porn like it's normal when in fact watching people have sex is not normal.” 

“Now I talk about sex freely,” Jessica said, “but only in the way God intended.”

Colby said, “I refuse to force my wife to share me with actresses in pornography videos.”

Educating the heart. One man described a “steep and rapid growth curve” in his recovery journey, with every week bringing some kind of “revelation about myself, about my past patterns, and about what needed to change in my heart.”

This kind of education was crucial for lasting freedom, even among those who had encountered powerful spiritual awakenings prior: “When I was delivered, I still had to restrain myself—no I’m not going to look—but God started renewing my mind and it started getting into my heart.”

“It’s not truth that will keep us from deception,” John pointed out, “it’s the love of truth. It’s not just knowing truth—it’s loving truth. When you want that in the innermost parts of your heart more than you want anything else.” 

This is about cultivating a love for something even better than porn—through a “revelation in the heart.”  Josh described having brand new experiences with sacred truths he had been taught as a child—“all these things that I had heard in the church before, I saw with new eyes. I heard with new ears. The word had life in it for the first time. What was always taught to us became so personal and real.” 

One woman described beginning to see the word of God begin to enter her husband’s heart—including a moment where she saw him “being so broken over what he was reading and identifying so much over his sin—and seeing his own story in those pages.”

“The word of God needs to go from our minds to our hearts,” John said, “how that happens is through meditating on the word of God day and night, God said—you begin to mull, ponder, speak to yourself, ‘how does this scripture apply to me’—and as you continue, it somehow goes from your head to your heart.” Chantel spoke of the power of “meditating on God’s word” for dissipating dark energy. 

“Once the word gets into your heart,” John continued, “the deep places of our heart, they can threaten your life—to kill you—and you won’t change, because it’s so deep in here.”

“There’s a time period where you have to be renewed in mind and have to restrain ourselves,” he acknowledged—while reassuring, “But eventually, if you keep meditating you won’t even be tempted. You can’t be enticed by something you have no desire for.”

“What’s interesting now is pornography has flashed before me since—like in Europe—when I see that now, I’m repulsed by that,” John said. “What used to be like a magnet that would draw me in, God’s grace truly delivered me. And now I’m repulsed by it, and I don’t have any desire for it. So it literally changed the desires of my heart.”

7. Openness, honesty, vulnerability and accountability 

Many find that accountability with trusted people is critical to healing:

• “Becoming accountable to other trustworthy men was key for me.” 

• “I could not defeat this completely on my own.”

They described power in sharing more openly:

• David said it took him “a lot of courage to call by name what was happening in my life.”

• Jack spoke of the value of “finding someone you trust, that you can talk to, who’s not going to judge you … but will help you make a change and ask you the difficult questions.”

• Jackson described the impact of telling others about his struggle. “Were they taken aback? Yes. Did they reject me? Not even for a moment.” He added, “The people who love you will stand by you and help you get free.”

“I shared everything with him and he just hugged me and told me he loved me,” Barret said. “This was not what I expected.”

While any connection is good, Joshua emphasized how “important” it was “to get involved with men or women who have overcome porn in the past.” 

Confession as a ‘starting place for healing.’ “Though my story is a long litany of confessions that didn’t result in change,” Nick said, “I fully believe that confession was—and is—the right thing to do and is a significant step in changing a behavior.”

“Confession breaks the barriers we place between us and God, and between ourselves and others.” Nick calls confession “the starting place of everything” and “the beginning of our healing”– reflecting a “decision to get real about the places we have worked so hard to hide” and something that helps people “finally experience the kind of community that does transform us.” 

Mark “felt empty inside” after struggling so long, but had an “amazing feeling” from his experience confessing, which he believed was a reflection of being “set free from the sins that were keeping me in chains.”

What he didn’t realize is that he would be prompted to “come back hundreds upon hundreds of times” before he witnessed “the grip of pornography and all its attachments started to loosen its hold on me” and he would become “free” for good from that and “all its secondary effects of masturbation and disordered sexual thoughts and fantasies.” 

Rather than avoiding further confession, this man aimed to “make the time that I fell from grace to the time I received the Lord’s forgiveness as short as possible.”

Nick remarked on how often “we all sit in a room and long to be truly known, but instead we stay covered up.” It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who taught that believers have “fellowship with one another as believers,” while missing out on “fellowship as…as sinners.” That kind of “pious fellowship,” he points out, permits “no one to be a sinner” so that “everyone must conceal his sin from himself and the fellowship.” 

“When we open up our lives, we also give others permission to do the same,” Nick said. “We expose our weaknesses and our humanity, and so others decide they can do the same. In a similar fashion, when we project a false self who has it all together, people around us instinctively know to do likewise.”

“Don’t listen to the lie for a moment that says others would reject the real you,” Nick adds, assuring those struggling like he did that they are not the only ones who “long to have fellowship … in the wonderful journey of being transformed from honest places of sin and brokenness to places of God’s redemption and freedom.”

This same man confessed his struggle with pornography to his congregation while serving as its pastor, despite friends who had warned him that “people would leave when I went to this level of honesty with my church.” He says, “My experience was the exact opposite. When the pastor was able to stand up in a redemptive way and say, “I have sinned, but God has brought truth, transformation and freedom,” the revelation gave people in the congregation permission to face their own struggles.”

“Rather than allowing sexually compulsive behavior to stay hidden …  we brought it to the surface and began to deal honestly with its effect on people’s lives and marriages.” He described newfound joy and transformation: “Couples who had been struggling in silent pain were able to find grace and hope through safe groups … Women who felt as if they were in bondage because of a husband’s issues found their voice and grew in emotional maturity. Our church came alive like never before.”

Breaking through the myth of “I’m okay.” In prior attempts to quit, “I had tried everything but looking bad,” Matt said. “I avoided telling people about my problem. I hid it from my wife. I tried to figure it out in secret. And I failed over and over.” 

He describes finally sharing with other men a breath of fresh air. “I had been so painfully alone in my struggle. I didn’t even know what it meant to be in community as I sat in my small group that night and made a painful account of my journey to this point with pornography.”

A new life of openness and accountability. When we enter into what Nick calls a “life of confession”—described as “an ongoing decision to be real about who we were and who we were”—he says “we open our lives to all that God has for us.”

For some this new life involved online programs and software: 

• “I highly recommend placing accountability software on anything that can connect to the internet.” 

• “I signed up for Covenant Eyes,” Tony said. “At first, I was hesitant to have an accountability partner, but as the app kept insisting that the path to victory was outside of isolation, I turned to my aforementioned friend. He was happy that I had confided in him and asked if I would reciprocate. I’m happy to say that I’ve been victorious now for longer than ever before in the last 30 years of my life.”

One man described various places of connection and accountability: “weekly Safehouse meetings, check-ins in the group chat, individual calls with a few fighters, weekly group meetings in High Noon, participation in online gatherings around tough topics like the ones organized by NCOSE, checking-in with my spiritual father discussing complex topics with coaches, taking a teletherapy session if needed, connecting with nature and animals.” 

For those who are married, this new life of connection includes some degree of openly confiding in a spouse. Compared with earlier struggles “to open up to my wife about my sexual sin,” one man described learning “the power of living in honesty about my addiction.” 

As he became more open with his sweetheart, he said, “I was able to rebuild the trust that my porn addiction threatened. She now walks with me as a partner and encourager in my fight for purity.” 

“Having a secret eats at you so much,” another man admitted—recollecting times when he was “trying to have fun, but really can’t because you’ve wronged her.” 

This new life of accountability also includes for many seeking a mentor figure:

• Eric described the impact of getting “someone you trust to help disciple you. Don’t be afraid to ask someone in your church—even someone who’s older than you. Don’t be afraid to ask them to help you, meet with you weekly, talk over the phone.” 

• “During this time, I worked with my Bishop, the head of my congregation,” Jackson said. “Over the course of a few years living in [one location] my bishop changed a couple of times.  Two men who filled this position really served to influence me—both men had a profound impact on me through example and the times we spent talking together.”

Jessica described the “great deal of patience” shown by friends and mentors during her years of struggle, who “constantly listened to my tearful stories of failure and pulled me out of the pit of self-loathing I would throw myself into.” 

For some, this mentorship includes professional support. “Because of the trauma caused by my destructive behaviors to others and myself,” Stephen said, “I needed a qualified therapist to help me sort things out.” 

After reaching out to multiple professionals, Chris spoke of realizing “the landscape is kind of all over the map with regard to how people view this and what counsel they give, and the direction and suggestions they offer.” Finding a “qualified” therapist, as many of these people recommend, isn’t as easy as it looks. 

As Stephen said: 

If we find a therapist who says it's okay to do porn masturbation, we haven't found a therapist that's going to help us stop our addictive behaviors. If we have a therapist that doesn't understand the importance of the 12-steps and what that really means to make the spiritual connection that's required and recovery, then we probably haven't found the right therapist.

Neal remarking on one good therapist who gave him “hope that recovery is possible” and helped him “understand what I'm dealing with” while using his “agency in a positive way to move forward,” and “affirming that God is aware of me.”

Men helping men, women helping women. Many find it helpful to speak with a same-gender group. One man shared gratitude for “those men that walked with me over those years of recovery,” who had shared many lessons together that “equipped” them to begin to “renew” their “minds.” 

“Nick met with other men, and I met with wives who had been betrayed,” this man’s wife, Michelle, also said. “I could finally share my story, and though the women in the group each experienced different situations, they understood my feelings. Some of their marriages had ended, some husbands were still relapsing … but together we processed our stories.”

“My life was changed as I learned to walk in rigorous honesty,” Nick said. “The key is community,” Phil agreed—especially places that foster relationships which are “authentic, vulnerable and true.” Describing his recovery group, he said “These people knew me and I knew them. There were no usernames or screens to hide behind….We know the good, the bad, and the ugly of each other. There are tears, there is tons of laughter, there is learning and growth. 

“This little group of men is my rock,” Phil continued. “When I first started recovery I felt that only other gay men would be able to understand and could tolerate my situation.” But “in this group they all know my story and love me for who I am and they are not same sex attracted like I am.”

“I have found through recovery that I can be true to myself and my God, be honest and open in the right settings, and I can find the intimacy I’ve craved all of my life through good wholesome friendship.”

“Of all the things that have helped me most it has been groups,” Jorge said, recounting “a lot of healing and growth” he found in “live conversations with other guys in real time.”

“The regularity, the honesty and safety, the acceptance, and the acknowledgement that it is a journey. I wasn't rejected because of what I'd done.”

Jorge calls these group meetings “the cornerstone of my recovery”—suggesting that nothing had been “as powerful as just showing up to group meetings every week and being seen, and being there for others.” In particular, he highlighted how the frequent grace extended among the men impacted him: 

It takes many repetitions of turning up defeated and feeling sure you're a failure and to be met with warmth, understanding and encouragement to get back up, to start to unwork the old beliefs and lies that have long been held ("You're rejected," "No-one will love you if they know what you've done," etc).

“So often what I need to do to get me out of a spiral into self-focused pitying or catastrophizing is a connection to another guy to ask 'how are you doing?' It really is true,” Jorge affirmed, “the opposite of addiction isn't sobriety, it is connection.” 

Jason described the power of trying to live a godly life “in community” and “being known,” including in times when he acknowledges with his brothers any “step towards” temptation. 

“Having a couple of people who love and care for you even knowing about ‘your junk’ is so freeing!” Eric said, adding that it was a “big eye opener,” to have someone in your corner to “weekly to talk through life, pray with you and be able to ask you those tough questions” and not be “afraid to step on our toes in a loving way” in order to help others “begin to walk in freedom.”

Eric said he is “still in an accountability relationship—and will be the rest of his life.” 

“I have been walking in freedom for five years,” Colby said—describing an accountability network of men “building each other up with a sense of brotherhood” as central in that progress. Andrew described growing and developing these relationships with men “who knew everything about me”—pointing to his five years of freedom as reflecting the power of “establishing accountability in my life.” Colby admitted that he “can't imagine” being able to create something like that through anything other than “our shared love of the Lord and desires for purity.” 

Brett encouraged others to “be watchful when you are hungry, angry, lonely or tired (HALT).” He then added:

Talk with your accountability group about what you desire when you are in these states. Begin looking at the circumstances around you and identify stressors, such as marriage, work or finances. Look for the triggers, and then choose to stay in the pain and process it with others rather than trying to numb it with porn or other addictions….Process ways you can respond better together. Be relational with your pain. The biblical idea of “weeping with those who weep” and “rejoicing with those who rejoice” (Romans 12:15) is a learned skill for many of us, and it takes practice. Let others into your pain, celebrations, joy — live life in color with close friends rather than just keeping things on the surface. 

Resistance towards openness. Like other key patterns in stories of lasting freedom, the kind of openness provokes real resistance.“I desperately did not want to come forward and get honest about it. I just wanted to stop,” Stephen said—mentioning how often he heard people say, “put it behind you, right?”

So Stephen “just continued on that same idea that I could do it on my own”—which is “so common” in the hundreds of people he’s worked with since finding lasting freedom: “The common feeling is I've just got to deal with this on my own. I can't come forward. There's too much shame associated with [it].” 

Nick admits the deep resistance many feel to sharing openly themselves, since in their heart of hearts, many of us simply “don’t want to be fully aware of what [we] have done and the impact it can have on others….Hiding is hard, but confessing sounds infinitely more challenging and messy.”

“You can go to a group and talk about struggles with work or alcohol,” Brett said, “but when you say you struggle with sexual issues, it clears the room.” As people feel an understandable interest in hiding their sexual struggles, he adds, they also “learn to hide from and deceive even” themselves. 

That continued secrecy can even be part of what reinforces the pattern to continue. Neal said, “Secrecy seems to be not only part of my sense of embarrassment but a fundamental attraction of internet pornography.” Matt agreed, “secretive behavior actually fuels the excitement.” Yet “at its core,” he said, “beneath the lust and orgasms, we are relying on ourselves to meet our own needs.”

Jason described sharing his struggle generically—but just “enough”—and resisting sharing fully what he was facing. He reflected, “I always believed in God—but didn’t trust him with everything. Thought that this thing was too dirty, too dark to share with anybody.”

It wasn’t easy to open up and tell his pastor, friends, father and mother, but Dave also described “relief” at opening up to those who loved him about his struggle with darkness. “You worry they will think you’re disgusting,” he remembered, “But if you really want to overcome lust, you will open up to whomever can help you—especially in the faith, and people you trust.” 

For many, openness still just never makes sense. As Jessica, raised in a Christian community, put it, “for me it was worth far more to keep face and keep the acceptance than it was to risk the shame and humiliation of admitting I was a fraud.”

That’s how she felt at least until one evening “one of my youth leaders admitted that she too, had been living a lie” and “was coming forward that night to confess that and place her faith in Christ.” 

Jessica was sure she would be condemned and judged—and was dumbfounded to see how she was “met with overwhelming joy and acceptance”—including people coming forward to congratulate her. “They were happy for her. They were rejoicing. I sat beside her, completely stunned.” 

That moment was a spiritual pivot in her experience—communicating to her, “it’s time to stop running” and leading her to feel “forced to face the reality of [her] life.”

Openness and honesty can have a rippling effect. Vinny soon learned that “once I was completely honest with myself, and stopped blaming others, I was able to start being more open and honest with my spouse.”

“You know that you're ready for long-term, lasting change when you start letting go of secrecy, excuses and blaming,” Vinny added. “You may not be ready to share everything with a spouse or partner, but you are at least being totally straight and honest with yourself.”

Confession and accountability aren’t enough. To be clear, confession alone doesn’t seem to be sufficient on its own for many. John describes feeling puzzled “why I wasn’t able to get free when I opened up and confessed my struggle” to a faith leader earlier, coming to understand the  deeper process of heart change that was required. 

Nick recollects confessing his problem to his religious leaders at an earlier period, believing that this would fix his problem—without any further action, plans or changes. It’s easy for people to think that getting something “out in the open” means “I will be free”—which, Nick says, risks “making an idol of confession.”

He cautioned, “confession does not set us free; Jesus alone can do it. Confession is what puts us in the starting blocks for what Jesus most wants to do in our life—bring lasting change”—which he argues results in “new patterns, new decisions, and new community experienced over time.” 

“No course or accountability has the power to set you free, “one woman cautioned. “Ultimately, it always goes back to Jesus and what our relationship with Him looks like. The first thing I ask the girls I counsel is to tell me what their relationship with Jesus looks like. More often than not, they tell me it's not where they want it to be and they feel some sort of distance from Him. And that right there is what I focus on more than anything else.” 

Another man agreed, “You will never get victory through Internet filters and accountability partners. It just won’t work”—adding, “It blows my mind how many people out there are not focusing on the root”:

The root issue is you’re not satisfied in the beauty of the Lord, because if you saw what He did on that Cross for your sins … when you feel the temptation to lust … you behold Christ! You’re satisfied with His likeness.” 

Committing in front of each other. More than confession and disclosure of mistakes and weakness, this includes “making commitments in front of another human being” as “one of the most powerful habits you can create.” Others in our lives can then “witness and help take ownership for our goals and commitments.” 

The act of sharing one’s plan with someone else, Matt further emphasized, means someone else knows what you are “actively committed to doing to stay porn free rather than just a passive commitment to not do a behavior.” 

Logan said, “Accountability has actually transformed my brain and my habits.” 

Drawing friends and supportive community close. As part of this valuable connection and support, general community (who may not know specifically about your problem) seems to be significant as well. Chantel said: 

Surround yourself with a community who understands that you want to quit—a community that wants to help you quit. A community that wants to help you be pure in the sight of God—and that you want to be changed.

“I joined the church,” she reported. “A community that helps you stay in the Word. Now I enjoy friendships with Godly young men because I know they are my brothers in Christ,” Jessica said. “Now I trust people—even love people.”

“God has been placing people in my life for a season,” Eva said, including some who reinforced her faith and “breathed a lot of values into me.” 

Although she had been to church, Eva had never seen anyone worship at home. When she came into her friend’s room, she was surprised to see her listening to gospel music. Her friend said, “girl, you never heard this before? This is good stuff—listen to it.” 

“I found myself worshiping God with her in the room—we would praise God and worship, and it was such a beautiful thing.” 

The impact of not being alone anymore. Stephen still remembers the day he became “willing to become honest”—which “radical honesty,” in his words, “brought me out of this shell of this confinement, this withdrawal.” 

New reservoirs of hope can arise from opening up like this, as Stephen reflected:  

• “18 years ago, when my circumstances appeared to be bleak, I chose to have a willing heart, and chose to be rigorously honest, I finally let go of all the facades and justifications. Counterintuitively, this letting go did not bring feelings of despair; instead, I began to see it as the golden doorway of hope.”

• “Just the act of being in a group and talking to guys who felt very similarly,” another said, “brought a lot of healing and hope…helped me feel it was possible.”

Another reflected on how a willingness to turn towards God in his experience meant “that I will be known. I will be seen”—emphasizing the impact of what this means: “God will know that I'm willing to be seen for honestly who I am and what I am doing.”

“In that honesty, the scriptures mean more to me….instead of feeling like I'm a hypocrite, I see the scriptures as something to boost me and my hope for not just recovery, but for forgiveness.” 

8. Healing the deeper pain that can drive relief-seeking 

“We all have hurts in our lives,” Eric said. “Maybe someone physically hurt you, or you went through a  divorce or mental and verbal abuse etc, the list can go on and on.”

“There are roots (deep reasons) for everything we do, and it all starts when we're children,” one woman said. “How you were exposed to porn, the way your parents treated you, the way your friends or past boyfriends/girlfriends talked to you, it all plays a part.” 

“We live in a broken, fallen world. You can grow up in a perfect family with tons of support and still get hurt,” Brett said. 

How exactly to work through these past hurts in a healthy way is not easy to find, with Matt speaking of how easy it is to be “running from, suppressing, ignoring” earlier relationship dynamics. Brett admitted, “Some people can process their pain relationally with others, but many of us can’t do that. We don’t know how.” 

Nonetheless, it was common to hear people emphasize this as critical for their healing and freedom. People spoke of the power of having “discovered the wounds” and “uncover[ing] wounds of my past.”

One man described sharing for the first time a secret he had held for 15 years of being taken advantage of sexually as a teenager at a men’s purity group - describing it as “a truly terrifying moment, but one that so needed to happen, to help bring freedom and healing to my very being. Being open and transparent has been a life saver for me.” 

Reconciliation and healing in relationships. Another person remarked how “earlier this year, I finally got brave enough to confront my family member over the inappropriate sexual advances that occurred when I was a teenager 26 years ago.”

“This was something that I had longed to do for so many years, and although a difficult topic to bring up, it was the best move I could have made. My family member also had wanted to bring this up and never could. We had a very honest conversation about how it messed both of us up, and got to forgive one another and have moved on. A truly restorative process took place.” 

Although it’s important to not rush a forgiveness process, the result of a health[y] one can make a tremendous difference—especially when considering the cost of “hold[ing] onto major bitterness or unforgiveness towards someone for something they did to us.” 

“You know you're experiencing change,” Vinny said, “when you're able” move towards softness of heart towards yourself and “the forgiveness of others!” 

Healing deeper than the band-aid. This involves finding a deeper healing for those wounds than porn can ever provide: “Most of the time there’s a wounding in our heart that we need to deal with,” Eric said, “and a lot of times we’re medicating that wound in our heart with pornography.”

This helps explain the value of “talking through and identifying hurts in your life that you didn’t even realize you had,” Eric said. “Once I realized mine,” he added, he decided to “bring it to God” and “God began to heal me.” This was “a big step in beginning to walk in freedom from pornography.” 

Interconnected roots. This kind of talking through past hurts helped “expose so many root issues behind negative behaviors, thoughts, or feelings I was exhibiting,” Colby said. “I didn't realize how intertwined life traumas and sexual actions were, and how they were connected.” 

There is power in “access[ing] the wound that makes you return to unhealthy addictive patterns,” Brett emphasized—sharing the value in his own life of asking, ‘Where have I been wounded and how do those wounds affect me today?’”

“Have you been hurt by abuse? Divorce? High school? If we don’t identify these wounds, we’ll end up treating the symptoms rather than the root problems. You must explore your own story with safe people. Discover where you’ve been wounded and allow yourself to process that pain. Then you can find healing.”

Phil spoke about the impact of “working on childhood trauma that may have created the addict in the first place”—admitting that he’s discovered more than he anticipated, “I am still working through a ton of issues.”

Overall, he said, “I am finding that my childhood experiences and trauma [play] a huge role in our addictions as well.” 

Growing new trust. Nick spoke of becoming “the kind of people who are trustworthy,” while suggesting  that true freedom is the result of “learning to trust again” in your own relationships, rather than “simply convincing others to trust you.” 

Nick added from his experience, “If you want others to trust you, you must learn to trust God completely”—a being who can model for us what a trusting relationship looks like: 

At the root of trust is the idea that no matter what happens we can depend on someone being there for us. That person is consistent in their love and care for us, so much so that they always have our best interests in mind.  

“I learned that at the core of sexual bondage, there’s often an intimacy wound,” Brett continued. “Now when I struggle, I understand why and have resources to help. My intimacy wounds are healing, and I’m learning how to trust my wife and the Lord with all of me. You were likely wounded in a relationship, and that’s where you’ll find healing.”

The unique impact of intimacy trauma. “One of the largest reasons that a person becomes addicted to pornography,” Nolan said, “is that they had a very damaging experience with intimacy and love sometime in either their distant or recent past. 

“I know that particular fact especially rang true for me, and that the ability to become connected again to the feelings of intimacy and love took a very, very long time (35 years, in fact), and that healing from damage like that is incredibly difficult to do.” 

Nolan went on to describe how the love of a pet made a difference for him:  

I know that might sound a bit crazy at first, but it really was that simple. I never had cats growing up, and I didn't really have that much interaction with dogs, either. Highly paid and qualified therapists didn't seem able to break through my armor, either, and I really, truly think it's because those therapists were human. And whether or not those therapists had the best of intentions didn't really matter to me, because they were still human. And because humans had hurt me my entire life, I couldn't trust humans. Yet a simple cat who can at first seem aloof was the only creature that could somehow heal me. I cried that day with incredibly intense body-wracking sobs but somehow that emotional release and intensity was able to heal all the emotional damage that my parents and other people had caused me over my lifetime.

After three years of trying to find freedom from pornography—and not finding the power of other spiritual approaches—Nolan said, “a simple interaction with a cat that didn't abandon me in the darkest moments of my soul when I really, really needed someone (or something) to love me despite all of the flaws and addictions I had acquired over my lifetime.”

He continued, “Once someone is able to truly feel real intimacy again, the urges to watch pornography start to disappear quite quickly, at least in my experience.” 

9. Learning to mindfully work with thoughts, sensations, triggers and urges 

Mindfulness in various forms was brought up as having played a measurable difference. For instance, David described growing in his “awareness of internal emotions and external triggers making me vulnerable to temptation” and how “knowing how the body responds during addictive thinking and developing tools to combat that thought process made a huge difference in creating new and healthy patterns.” 

Watching thoughts. Vinny described the value of becoming progressively better at “thinking about your thinking.” New ways of working with thoughts can prompt a fresh sense of power. Dave described a “lie” he always “gave into and believed” when he was stuck in the compulsive-addictive pattern, “every time I got tempted through a thought, I always thought I was helpless—like I already got that thought of sinning, so I can’t overcome it, so I might as well do it.” 

Over time, Dave came to learn he had a greater sense of control, partly through realizing “that thought is not my thought—it is of the devil. He wants to tempt me right now. Nice try, devil. But you don’t [get] me this time.” 

No longer willing to be manipulated like this, Dave then reflected on a new way of responding that returned the power to him, “He always got you this way, but now you act differently. Now all of a sudden, you lay down your phone and put on praise [worship] songs.” At that point, the dark energy is bewildered, “what is he doing? He always did this before”—leaving that evil force “shivering, ‘my tactic is over—I can’t control him anymore.’” 

Summarizing, Dave said, “I got this thought, it’s over—I might as well sin”—no!” In addition to recognizing where that thought was coming from—and responding to it differently, he added the Biblical counsel to “take that thought captive.”

Seeing craving more clearly. “Through years of porn use, I had created powerful habits around my certain feelings and thoughts,” Matt said. “When I experienced an emotional trigger, it would lead to agreeing with mistaken beliefs and conclusions. At this point, I would engage craving.”

Yet he came to understand, “Craving is not something that happens to you; it’s something you actively do.” He continued, “my craving did not come from external sources like women and sexy TV shows. It was a habit that came from within”—wherein I began thinking that “porn or a porn behavior would feel good right now.”…and the person heads towards their own version of Miller Time.”

“Sexual triggers start to have less power over you because you know what to do with them,” Vinny said. “I remember during my heavy addiction years, whenever I would try to resist my addiction urges, I always had a powerful and dominant thought in the back of my mind that said, “you might as well give in to your urge because eventually you're going to do it anyway. You might resist for a while but giving in is inevitable.” 

“Living as a free man, do the urges to view porn magically stop? Does living in freedom mean you will never again feel the desire to watch porn?” Dan asked. “No. I can tell you from my own experience that while the urges do decrease….as long as you are a functioning human male, the urges to watch porn will continue to surface.”  He continued, “If living in freedom doesn’t mean you stop feeling the urge to watch porn, what is freedom then? Freedom is knowing how to process those urges in a healthy, effective way.”

The difference between you struggling with porn a year from now and you living in blissful freedom is not whether you will HAVE those urges. The difference is how you handle them. And the good news is, this is a skill that can be learned.

As Dan attempted to describe it to others, “You still experience urges to watch porn. And when the urges come, you’re not concerned. You know exactly how to handle it. You’ve developed the skill to process the urge. You have a clear plan that works. And as time goes on, you get better and better at it. The more urges you process, the more you develop that skill (just like any skill!).” He went on to share a skill that worked for him that he calls P.A.T.H.:“P—Pause, A—Acknowledge, T—Timer, H—High five!”

“I learned that the urge had no chance of killing me,” Roger said. “I learned to successfully surf the urges.”

Watchfulness for surrounding triggers. Mindful awareness of triggering thoughts, emotions, sensations and situations is also a significant factor. As Taylor said: 

Think about when you’re most triggered, whether it's a certain time of day, or after a certain situation. It could be when you’re stressed, bored, frustrated, and instead of scrolling on your phone or watching TV, use that time to talk to Jesus or declare the word of God over yourself. 

When noticing difficult feelings, Chris described how important it was to “process what I'm feeling.” For him, that meant “make a call or go to your knees.”

More than simply noticing challenging trigger moments, Vinny reminded, “as we become aware of things that drive our setbacks, we must prepare a plan or strategy that reduces or eliminates that trigger, or we will simply stay in ‘the loop’ as it is sometimes referred to, repeat it over and over, which leads to a loss of motivation and hope.”

This kind of growing awareness of the “environmental and emotional triggers” fueling unwanted behaviors is another good sign—with this same man continuing:

You start to recognize when your sexual energy is heightened and you begin to refocus and redirect it to healthy outlets like physical exercise, improving relationships, being productive at work, pursuing interests and hobbies and many more. If you do have a slip, you're more aware of the things that led up to that slip and you're better prepared to be successful next time. 

10. Scaffolding daily life with custom-designed structure & boundaries 

In addition to whatever internal changes of mind and heart are taking place, it’s common to see men and women finding lasting freedom from compulsive-addictive patterns putting in place a system of discipline involving specific behavioral boundaries and established patterns to guide a wise response to temptation.  

Establishing a more structured gameplan. For many, a significant part of healing was embracing or establishing some kind of a “plan of action” or “gameplan.” Jorge spoke of an overall recovery plan, based around a 30 day schedule, and a weekly 7 day plan tuned to the week’s demands. 

All this can be less intuitive than it may seem, especially for those anticipating more immediate and dramatic miracles. Nick recollects his youth pastor hearing an early confession, without sharing any other recommendations for steps or plans. Since that time, he recalls, “I prayed for deliverance. I believed, and expected, that God could come in a moment and erase my desires, setting me free from this battle.” 

“Instead He surprised me,” Nick said—going on to describe being introduced to a “plan to help pastors” like him who were struggling in this area. “So long as our behavior was not illegal and hadn’t crossed lines with other people, they wanted to help us break free from pornography and keep our jobs. This was an amazing, grace-filled offer which provided a thoroughly structured and redemptive opportunity for transformation.”

From that time,  he described “drawing up” a “plan of action” in collaboration with his wife which they followed for years. Looking back, Neal felt his continued struggles in part reflected the fact that he simply “didn’t have the right game plan.” Eric described a “gameplan I could look at on paper” and which he could “practically do to move towards freedom,” which made him feel like he was “finally moving forward.” 

The structure of a formal program. Related to a formalized plan are formalized programs to support recovery and nurture growth. These range from personal plans to online programs, to in-person faith ministries, to the 12-steps itself. 

One person spoke of the value of “thoroughly structured” plans and programs (29). Programs like Fortify and Freedom Fight which look broadly across lifestyle were mentioned as especially helpful, with participants like David hailing those which are “well rounded and comprehensive” and which “addresses all facets of porn addiction.” (12)

Rather than an alternative to God, these men saw these programs as regarded by believers as tools in his hands. David said, “God has used Freedom Fight to transform my walk with Him. Before going through the program I was still a slave to the bondage of my sin. Now I walk confidently in my purity as Christ calls me to. I’ve now had seven months of abstinence from porn and masturbation and am helping other men find freedom as well.” Logan described the same program as “a huge blessing and weapon in my fight for sexual purity and has made all the difference.” 

Creating a safe sanctuary & avoiding confrontation. “When we’re constantly living in an environment that’s unsafe, it creates anxiety in us,” Matt said—which itself can be an “emotional trigger.” This man then suggested, “do everything you can to create safety in your home and in other areas you can control in your world”—trusting this safety will “lead to a calmer mind.”

Whatever bold declarations and commitments have been made—and whatever crippling consequences have been experienced—Joshua noted that those don’t always seem to matter in a moment of temptation. “In the moment of decision, however…that brokenness from the last time [I used porn] didn’t seem real and didn’t seem to matter.” 

In his experience, Joshua said, “the desire to watch pornography will always win” since it is “such a powerful desire and feels so immediate” that he would “always give in each time the battle begins tipping, even the slightest, in that direction.” 

“The desire for not watching porn can even be stronger ninety-nine percent of the time. But in the moments of vulnerability,” then “the desire for watching porn becomes the strongest” and “most immediate.”  Joshua quotes the ancient Chinese war strategist Sun Tzu, “if your opponent is more powerful than you, avoid a confrontation.” 

As reported in Ted Roberts’ Seven Pillars of Freedom workbook, two MIT researchers concluded in a study that “Men’s self-control when sexually aroused doesn’t come from willpower but from avoiding situations in which one will become aroused and lose control.”

“This single thought changed my whole approach to lust and pornography” Nick said. “You and I were not made to have the willpower to avoid sexual sin when aroused. Do you hear that? You cannot become ‘tough enough’ to avoid pornography when you’re sitting at the computer alone, your heart rate is up, your inhibitions are down, and beautiful women are one click away. The victory is found in not being in that chair in that moment!” 

This man elaborated, “I had always believed if I was just stronger in that moment of intense temptation, I could be victorious. I have learned that the secret is to not be in that intense moment of temptation!” As a result, Nick said, “I have learned boundaries. I have adopted limits.” 

Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. This explains why it’s common for people experiencing lasting freedom to say things like, “Wherever the places are that you are most vulnerable to temptation, make a plan to remove yourself from those places and mitigate the risk by making it more difficult to watch porn in those places.” 

To illustrate, Nick said: “Putting off hard work became a means for porn to get in, so I have boundaries about how I work and study.” Nick has also “chosen to limit my use of the Internet, TV viewing and cell phone use, in order to be free to do what God has called me to do.” This includes not having internet on his phone, which he suggested is “not smart at all”—referring to his friend who said “If your iPhone causes you to sin, pluck it out!” 

This man asked, “What limits do you need to willingly live under?” before suggesting, “remember, purity is not a process of making better choices in the face of extreme temptation, but in avoiding the situation that creates extreme temptation for you. Boundaries are the only way to get there!” 

Alongside or a part of this, people describe many specific steps they took. “I continuously take steps to separate myself from opportunities to make dumb choices,” Thomas said—reflecting on how he “waited years before getting a smartphone after they came out for this very reason.” (9) Jason said, “I got rid of my cell phone, got rid of every outlet—had to get to the point that [I] had to take [a]way every potential hazard.” 

This kind of external structure involves “construct[ing] meaningful guardrails around behavior” as Nick calls it. Referring to this structure, Alex said, “there are things and steps and content and people out there that can help and be with me through this and come around me in this fight.” Another described feeling inspired to see other helpful adjustments in his behavioral patterns –“okay, this is going to lead to pornography, don’t do this, don’t do that. And just being obedient to that.” 

“I didn't know what it meant to put boundaries and bottom lines in place and honestly abide by them,” Stephen admitted—before reiterating twice the immense value of doing just that, “I have to set boundaries to stay safe….I must be willing to set and keep healthy boundaries and bottom lines for safety.”

“The alcoholics would say it this way: I've been traveling the road of recovery for years, but the ditch is still right there.” Stephen then explained, this means “I'm still in mortality. I'm walking this narrow pathway of recovery, which doesn't give me allowances on the left or the right. I have to stay on the path.” 

“In order to give myself some room to gain sobriety and get out of the fog of mind I eliminated as many triggers as I could,” Roger said—speaking of eliminating the “situation triggers” after he had “discovered patterns.” 

“I gradually locked doors behind. I went through the materials I consumed in YouTube and I unfollowed the channels that were questionable to my value system,” Roger said by way of illustration. “I deleted [certain phone] numbers….I purified the content in all of my social accounts.”

“Gradually I have withdrawn from some other things too. I do not read the news feed, I use Facebook and twitter only for strictly assigned tasks, I enter Instagram twice a year literally for a minute or two, I do not watch stories, I do not consume short videos, I nearly do not watch YouTube (although there are a lot of good things there).” 

Mark made the decision to “rid” himself of all the “pornographic triggers in his life—like R-rated and PG-13 movies and certain magazines.” He also decided to “remove any opportunity [to] watch television unless I was in the company of others, so as to foster accountability and promote chastity”—which led to several early “periods of freedom from lust.” 

Stepping back from certain lifestyles. For one woman who had struggled, this included no longer “dressing indecent”—something she felt God had convicted her of. As Chantel explained, “if I want to be pure for God, I want to remove a lustful spirit” and “stop welcoming the lustful spirit upon me.” She continued, “because I realized that dressing lustfully kept the spirits on me, so I started eliminating that from my life, I started changing my wardrobe.” 

“I began to protect myself from sex the best I knew how,” Jessica said. “I asked my roommates to stop talking about it. I stayed away from the young men for awhile and did my best to focus on developing my relationship with Christ.” 

“Having Godly standards for sexuality these days is very difficult, especially in our college setting,” Logan acknowledged, before describing how he found strength from Christ to do that.

“Lust is toxic for me,” another man said,” and “I must treat lust as an addiction. Consequently, any pursuit of lust has a negative emotional and spiritual effect on me.”

“I withdrew from masturbating at the same time as from porn and sex” one man said. “When two neurons fire together they wire together. If I was going to leave porn behind then I had to leave masturbation behind as well.” 

All this reflects a progressive growth in sensitivity to lust, manifest in the attention people give to careful boundaries in technological usage, media and entertainment, and places they go to (or don’t go to). 

Adjusting the environmental system you’ve designed. Many spoke of the value of identifying emotional triggers, mistaken beliefs and weak links as a way to guide their adjustments and projections– asking: “what feelings or emotions most often trigger you? What are the most common thoughts or beliefs that go through your head that lead to craving? And what in your environment makes it easy to use porn?”

Matt described no filtered internet, a smartphone always within three feet, and social media sites as vulnerabilities and weak links. For instance, “I had a weak link—my computer. I was unprotected back then. I didn’t have any filter software on it. I didn’t have accountability or boundaries, so it was easy to slip into a binge whenever I engaged craving.” 

“Whether it’s our bedtime habits, our phones, our computers, our smart TVs, our streaming subscriptions, our social media—if porn is always a click away for us, it’s hard to change our habits. Especially with powerful emotional triggers. We’re like the recently recovered alcoholic who still has a fridge stocked with beer.” 

Once you identify some of these challenges, you create commitments in your plan mapped to these growth areas. “To break a habit,” Craig Perra says,” you have to make a habit. The key is your new habits need to be mapped to your biggest challenges.” More than simply what he calls a “go to the gym and eat healthier” plan—this is “an active commitment to improve the areas that directly contribute to your porn habit.” 

Matt described how his recovery began to resemble more of a “personal development plan for a growth-minded, healthy person”—something that reflects, “more of who you are becoming in your life, not just the behaviors you are avoiding.” 

Active and positive commitments. It’s common for plans to be as passive as “I have this filtered, and I have this cut off, and I don’t do this, and I don’t do that.” This kind of a “laundry list” of rigid rules has “no energy to it,” Matt suggests. 

Mental focus thus goes primarily to what you are avoiding—“not feeling something” and “something not happening.” 

“We can’t recover with just porn-avoiding strategies,” Matt said. “Recovery is active. We need something to replace not only that time with, but the identity we relate to.” This involves becoming “actively committed” to specific, targeted and regular practices “to stay porn free” instead of only a “passive commitment to not do a behavior.”

So many of her prior efforts to overcome pornography, Jessica came to realize, “stemmed from a hatred” of “pornography.” “I hated the guilt, I hated myself—but I had nothing to replace that hatred.” As a result, “there was no other recourse, no escape but to go back.” 

Matt advocates for a systematic examination of “what happened” and “what can be done better.” It’s in the commitment to continual improvement that freedom comes, in his experience.

“Along the way, I also replaced my bad behavior with good behavior,” Roger said. “I started running, roller-skating and scrapbooking.”  “I connected with people more,” he added, “and I practiced cautiousness when alone.” 

Connecting with the real world. It’s these kinds of structural, systematic, behavioral adjustments that are so often helpful. Rather than just the addictive patterns itself directly changing, the rest of life had to change too—both as a protection, and as another way to signal a heart truly committed.

“The year after my life was different,” said Eva, after making a new commitment to healing; “there was a process my life had to go through,” and she went on to describe shifts in television viewing, then, eventually, how fixated she was on work. 

“Get away from your computer when you feel even a hint of the desire to watch pornography,” Joshua said. “Put your computer where it can be seen by others.” But more than that: 

Go into public places and your neighborhoods; engage in the world around you. We live in a real world with real adventure. Go to the gym rather than watch TV; go on a road trip with a friend and make a friend if you don’t have any. Don’t just stay inside your home all weekend…take a walk under the stars. 

Matt described a personal rule to “go to bed with my wife each night.” 

Establishing an escape hatch. Establish “places away from technology, in the early days especially, to go when you are feeling the urge,” Joshua shared from his experience. “Don’t stop to rationalize or it will be too late.” 

He said it was valuable to write on a piece of paper, “when I am tempted to watch porn I will leave”—meaning you have “already decided before” that you won’t linger.”

In addition to boundaries and bottom lines, this kind of life discipline also involves almost ritualistic commitments in how urges and temptations would be addressed:

• One man described “Fleeing temptation when it arrives” or “infusing that challenging moment with something uplifting—“Always put on a worship song—set yourself in the presence of God.” 

• Likewise, in a moment of temptation to porn or masturbation, Timothy spoke of the crucial step of “discipline”—“I walked away from what I was doing and did something else. Even just playing video games was ‘better.’" He then said with some surprise, “Eventually the concept of pornography just started to become repulsive to me and because of that it has become much easier to deny those temptations.”

These responses could also involve “using the tactics we learned”—with Eric saying “and let me tell you it wasn’t easy,” with “a lot of ups and downs.” But he found success in “walking in freedom” with the “power of the Holy Spirit and a lot of obedience.” In addition to “head knowledge,” Colby likewise highlighted the value of specific “practices to fight the habits, behaviors, and thoughts that lead to the prison of pornography.” Another man attested how to “fight back stronger and harder by laying down techniques, strategies and encouraging me to be creative in helping me to control this addiction.” 

Fostering a new impulsiveness. “Be as impulsive in your removing and detaching from the situation as the temptation is impulsive. Do not deliberate, just act.” 

“The desire for porn is quick, nearly impulsive,” Joshua elaborated. “You have to be just as impulsive at saying no to your temptation….if you hesitate for even a moment” then it’s more likely you will go there.” 

“You have to be decisive and immediately leave the situation you’re in.”

Growing sensitivity to slips. It’s common to see this kind of a gradual deepening in commitment behaviorally, mirroring more and more sensitivity to departures from the ideal—with Vinny noticing that in the natural process of recovery “what I considered a slip or setback started to change.”

“Where at first a slip might be looking at pornography, over time I evolved to the place where just looking at someone and starting to fantasize was a slip.” 

Rather than mere behavioral superficialities, then, we see in these structural cares a growing firmness of commitment. In place of a willingness to skirt the edge, men and women become more and more willing to throw the whole thing overboard: “I wanted to eliminate this thing from my life—I wanted to kill it,” Chantel said, “Some things you let die—but some things you must kill, or it will consume you.”

11. Heroic grit, resilience, patience and persistence 

“It's human nature,” Vinny remarked, “especially when we're struggling with addiction, to want everything ‘right now.’” He elaborated:

One of the signs that you are changing is that you have a sense of patience in your recovery process. You realize that when it comes to real, lasting change there are no “quick fixes.” While you do have a sense of urgency about wanting to change, and you're seeking to have little successes each day, you're willing to be patient and keep moving down your own personal path of change for as long as it takes. Too often, we see Impact Suite members who drop out … because they “couldn't wait for change.” They wanted it right now, [their] way, on their terms. (26)

That patience is especially important during times where natural motivation, connection and inspiration recedes—as well as times when porn’s own withdrawal effects emerge. One man spoke of having to endure “nights and days of doubtful thoughts and many bodily withdrawals.” 

People encounter life again without the numbing agents. In his first year of sobriety, Chris was surprised that “I still had problems….I thought it was going to be heavenly that everything would go great, but it didn't, but I realized, well, I no longer have my drug of choice to medicate with in a numb out. And that's why I'm forced now to feel what I'm feeling, to process what I'm feeling.” (21)

Once people “stop all the self-protecting schemes,” Nick said, “pain is the inevitable consequence.” Yet “unmasking” the pain” and “dealing with core issues” is where everything begins. (29)

Josh described coming to understand these stretching moments a chance to further purify and refine his heart, even though they “send me for a loop” and are “not fun.”

Compared with what he called the “honeymoon phase, top of the world” kind of relationship, “me and Jesus”—Josh described how “the Lord takes you deeper”—by asking, “Do you want me? All these emotions, they’re great—but do you really want me?”

Much like a couple gets to choose whether to love each other when the romantic passion ebbs, this gives a chance for the person to choose what they really want to love. Josh reiterated how the “word of god has become so much more real and precious during those times when he withdraws.” 

“He wants us to want him—he’s doing something during those times,” he concluded. When people wonder “why are you doing this, why are you pulling away from me” in his view, it could be “creating a stronger bond by pulling back.”

Daily replenishing. More generally, these men and women spoke of a need for ongoing, regular realignment with their higher commitments and aspirations to God. That includes basic practices like ongoing repentance. Josh also described pulling back himself, and how helpful it was to be aware of this—when, in his words, he “put Jesus on the shelf” and without realizing it “finds all my pleasure and spend[s] a lot of time with the world.” At that point, Josh tries to “repent and let go of worldly stuff and get back into his work, his mindset…learn to wait on the Lord.” 

And a continued pursuit of God. One man described the added peace and joy that came from “a daily exercise to put on the full armor of God and to fill my life with things that invite the Holy Ghost.”

A woman described working to “completely lay yourself down, and allow God in. Practically that could look like you seeking Him morning and night, reading your bible, singing to Him, loving on Him, and letting Him love all over you.”

“Trust in Him at all times” from Psalm 62:8, reflects James’ own life’s practice, along with a deep resilience in pursuing new insights, “I never gave up my search for answers.” That includes positivity at good things to come from it all:  “Through my struggles, Heavenly Father was preparing me and my family to receive greater joy and healing,” said one man. And Josh said, “he’s going to get me where he wants to get me. Hands of the potter are always on—always shaping, forming.” (37)

Faith and hope both play a role in keeping people moving forward—with one sometimes playing a role when the other feels weak: “For the upcoming months and weeks, I slowly started to lose hope but not faith as I trusted in the Lord.” 

There’s also a sustaining power to simple practices like daily gratitude—“Being thankful for the little things,” Josh said.  

Keenly interested on a daily basis. More than patience alone, consistency requires a firmness of resolve. As Vinny put it: 

Another sign of change is that you bring a sense of urgency to the process. If you find yourself being complacent and saying to yourself, “I'll get around to that tomorrow” or “yeah I know that's important, but not that important”... it simply means that you need to refocus, recommit and get back on the path persistently and consistently engaging in the “daily routines” and “daily self-cares” that bring about real change. 

Roger, like many, came to see his recovery as a matter of life and death—both in securing his freedom and retaining it. “I know that if I do not want to destroy my body and die spiritually, I have to comply with my new life rules. Stephen likewise spoke of the need to have “a willing heart to live in recovery. This must be my true desire. I must choose to be fully committed to the work of recovery with a humble attitude.” (20)

Summarizing a leading indicator of those who will find lasting change, Vinny said, “Staying keenly interested, on a daily basis, in your recovery” —which he defines as “the aggressive pursuit of a great and happy life.” 

Not giving up with a relapse. “A lot of people will find themselves going back into the ditch,” one man said—before insisting, “That is not the end of the world.” 

“I still slipped. I still fell. But I’d learned that it was a journey and not a light switch,” Tony added, explaining, “a fall does not negate all of the progress that went before it.” 

On a deeper level, Chris described the impact of feeling loved throughout some of these difficulties:

It's really remarkable to me that I felt God's love through this entire journey….I knew he wasn't pleased with some of my behaviors, but I never questioned his love for me….that love has always been felt. It's, you know, “get back up, you can do this.” And I hope everyone who struggles with some form of addiction gets that feeling….to pull ourselves back up when we fall. And the truth is we will fall. We all do. But he's there lovingly, lifting us up and helping us. Back on that path to grab hold and to go a few more steps forward. 

“There's no well, sorry you reach your quota, your limit is up,” Chris likewise said.

Staying with it. Soon after his marriage, Mark also decided to become a “daily communicant” following his marriage (partaking of the Catholic sacrament daily). “I cannot count the number of hours I prayed before the Blessed Sacrament for freedom from this sin. I begged God to grant me the strength to pursue and obtain the virtue of chastity” (he now has 7 years of freedom). 

Along the way, Mark described different spiritual experiences he had feeling the Lord’s love—which helped move him towards freedom:

• “I wish I could tell you that this is all it took for the scales to fall from my eyes,” he said after a special spiritual experience. 

• “I wish I could tell you that I walked out” of the confessional that day, Mark said, “and never looked back.” But, as is the case with many of us, we don’t always learn the lesson the first time we hear it.” He continued, “It wasn’t long before I forgot how offensive my behaviors were to God, and I fell back into my old ways.”

Others shared similar language after what they had hoped to be major turning points in their stories, including Jessica here:

• “I would love to be able to say that the change was instant, but it wasn’t. I would love to be able to say that the next morning I woke up and had no recollection of the previous four years of addiction. I can’t. The next morning, I still had the same flesh I had the day before. My body still craved that high. I had been in it so long that I felt sometimes I ran on autopilot. My mind would say, ‘I’m not going to do that today,’ but my feet would walk into the computer room and I would fall again.”

• “I would love to tell you that I prayed with my accountability partners and that was it, but that was not the case—with months to come of still grappling with “lust” and “the underlying issues of low self-esteem, mistrust, and a twisted view of sex.” 

The length of the recovery process, although arduous, appeared to teach people profound lessons about who they were, what life was about, and the nature of God. Instead of feeling embarrassed and ashamed by how long recovery took, Mark expressed gratitude: “As I reflect back on those days, I am reminded of how gentle and patient God is with each one of his children,” while choosing to “reveal only what we can handle at the time.” 

12. Getting outside of yourself through service 

One individual referred to Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill W, who knew that he could not stay sober if he wasn't “working with other alcoholics.” He added, “I have felt that in my own life, I will not be sober if I wasn't committed to working with other people because that work with other people gives me strength, gives me hope … I need that strength.”

Living for others. Nick was struck to see more clearly the “depth of my addiction to self and to feeling good,” something that he realizes his “whole life was centered around.”

Nick came to believe that his porn struggles “came long after other unholy obsessions,” including putting his “wants and needs above those of everyone else.” He continued, “Our journey toward freedom must become “one of serving and loving others”—wherein we “remove ourselves from the center.”

Compared with “little boys” who “do what feels good, want it right now, and make life all about them,” Nick continued, “grown men” have “learned to wait, do what is right” and “care about other[s],” in an “ongoing process of discovering that life is about others.”

Mark recounted how his “vocation as a husband and father” of four children helped him “stay pure,” since he needed “all the graces he could receive” to be the “Christ-like example” he was “called to be for my four pure gifts from God.” 

“You will never experience ultimate and lasting freedom until this journey ceases to be about you and becomes all about others around you” Nick added. “This is rebirth,” he said—“a new heaven, a new earth, and a new us!”

Reaching for others seeking freedom. Several individuals run groups for others in the Church or facilitate a 12-step program supporting others in recovery. “Every Friday morning tomorrow morning, I'll be on a Zoom addiction recovery meeting,” Chris said, “and I've been able to now assist other men [as] sponsors to multiple men helping them in their recovery.”

“Once those chains are broken, you want to help everyone else find it” Eric said – with clear benefits for the individuals helping too. “I began to make progress as I began to focus on others,” Jackson said. “I made many friends who I became a … confidant too.  I found in my heart a special place for those less fortunate than myself.  As I helped them with their struggles, I found the power to face mine.” “Service to others has made a big difference,” Roger agreed.

Others reflect on pouring themselves into others in more general ways—including “becoming more involved at my church” and helping family, with one man describing how he has been able to “continue walking in light with my wife—to serve her, love her.”

Since one of the limitations of our methodology is not being able to ask everyone the same questions, it’s worth pointing out here that there are at least three areas that figured prominently in our statistical analysis of healing and recovery from pornography addiction that didn’t show up as frequently in these recovery narratives: 

1. The ‘big three’ of nutrition, physical activity and sleep rest. Compared with those who hadn’t found freedom from pornography, a significantly greater percentage of people (between 21 and 29% more) told us, “I get pretty good sleep that leaves me mostly rested” and “I regularly eat healthy foods,” with more modest differences showing up in, “I’m physically active and exercise when I can” and “I regularly have a chance to get outside and get some direct sunlight.” 

2. The ‘other big three’ of mental diet, mental activity, and mental rest. Some other significant differences were evidence between freedom-finders and those still struggling in “I pay attention to what kind of news and entertainment media I take into my mind” (30 point spread) and “I limit media that makes me mad, sad or fearful” (12 points)—along with 24 and 36 point differences in “I regularly meditate, do yoga or experience stillness and silence in other ways (like art) to help my mind rest” and “I manage my stress quite well.”

3. Reducing dependence in other areas. There was an especially significant 47 point difference between people with or without lasting freedom from pornography in “I have experienced healing from other compulsive patterns in my life (e.g., substance, media, spending)” and a smaller 10 and 13 points difference in “I’ve reduced dependence on alcohol or other recreational substances” and “I’ve tapered back on antidepressants, antianxiety drugs or other prescribed medication that was affecting my emotions.”

Closing Reflections

It’s been common in this project to pause in awe at what we’re seeing—the beauty and marvel of it all.  These stories of people who have found lasting healing and freedom are not fairy tales, however. And it’s important to appreciate the realities of what this looks like.

The nature of true freedom. True freedom and healing doesn’t mean you are no longer drawn to what you’ve left behind:

• “I still find myself tempted and it is definitely a day-by-day task,” Timothy said.

• “I can’t say that it’s been an easy road,” Tony said. “It’s not even always easy now but there are more days that are easy than difficult. I’m not foolish enough to think I’m ever completely safe, yet I finally have hope that I can stay out of the mire in which I previously stayed.”

• “Ever since” finding more significant freedom, James said “you know what? There are landmines all around me and every step counts. … Christians do fall, we’re not perfect. But I tell you, I am not what I used to be. I am a [servant] of Christ. It’s my greatest joy to serve Him. He’s my Master. I can’t believe it!… for 21 years my master was the computer … Yet God had mercy on me.”

• “There are mornings I wake up and my body wants to relive its glory days,” Jessica said. “I spend those moments basking in my Savior. In the grace that covers me. In the truth that sets me free. And there, as my desires find their fulfillment in Christ, I find that there is no greater love.” She added, “I wish I could tell you that it doesn’t bother me anymore,” Jessica said. But she has “come to realize” over the years that on some level, she will always have to endure this vulnerability and weakness. “This side of glory there will never be a time when my body completely forgets the thrills it once knew, but that thrill is overpowered by the joy that comes from simply loving God.” 

A few other closing meta observations are worth making—stand-out insights from participants in the study:

1. Whole life recovery. Compared to his early recovery when he saw himself as having a “problem” with pornography—but with the rest of his life being “essentially pretty good,” Nick came to realize “at every single turn” that “pornography was the symptom of much deeper struggles in my heart.” 

As this man addressed this weakness with pornography, he recounted how God had “graciously taken him” into a “new place in all these other areas as well.” 

2. Multifaceted healing support. “Transformation requires the retraining of our brain, the consistent interaction with other truth-speakers, and a whole lot of God’s empowering grace,” Nick suggests. 

3. Narrative diversity, with not all parts always required. However important one element of recovery may be for some, it’s not always the case for others. For instance, even while some swear by accountability as indispensable, Aaron described a powerful spiritual experience where the “addiction just stopped in its tracks”—without accountability partners and strategies.

Where consistent themes exist in the analysis above, they also almost always look differently in personal application. This includes diverse ways people connect, learn and foster healing. 

4. Caution in seeing any one part as “all you need.” Several people cautioned against seeing any one element of recovery as sole salvation. For instance, some came to realize that a special relationship (a new spouse) or a big turning point event (getting married) would not be their sole solution. Others spoke of coming to see accountability more realistically: “I used to think that if I just got enough courage to tell someone about my addiction to pornography, then they could help keep me accountable, and this struggle I have would all disappear,” said one individual.

“Well one day, I found enough strength in The Lord to tell someone, and did it change things? Yes. Did it make it all go away? No.”

Taylor also suggested that it was “important for women and men to know that no [educational] course or accountability has the power [on its own] to set you free.” 

Looking across themes, you get a sense of a broader pattern:

• Education is critical—but knowledge alone won’t change you. 

• Confession is a powerful blessing, but isn’t all that is needed. Nick describes two seemingly contradictory ideas: “we must confess in order to bring freedom, and confession will never be enough by itself to establish us in that freedom.”

• Accountability is helpful, but can’t alone free you.  

• Close relationships help, but neither are they the final solution. 

• Intimate connection in marriage is also a blessing, but won’t take this away. 

This encourages appreciation for the appropriate role of different parts in the whole. As you can see, it’s helpful overall neither to overstate or understate the value of different aspects of recovery. 

All this naturally begs the question, is there anything that is the “ultimate” solution? 

5. One exception to the “nothing is salvation” rule? Many people described learning for themselves about the sufficiency of God: 

• “He is the only one” with the power to do this, Taylor said.

• “Ultimately” Ken repeatedly insisted “only God can set you free.” 

For Christians, their faith centers on Jesus Christ: “I learned that the Savior alone is the source of strength and refuge that will provide healing and recovery. It was only when I turned to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ with full purpose of heart that I was strengthened to overcome my addiction.”

It’s worth pointing out again Vinny’s observation that a “spiritual walk” is “accessible to every man and woman, regardless of their particular religious faith”—with “just having ‘faith and hope and belief in a power greater than one’s self,’” something that “can make a vital difference in their journey to freedom.” 

6. Even then, believers shouldn’t expect God to magically make this go away. Just as anything can be distorted in addiction, even the proper role of a higher power can become so—with some describing the temptation of simply asking God for the problem to go away immediately and instantly. 

Nick described being surprised that his prayer for deliverance wasn’t answered by God coming “in a moment and erasing my desires, setting me free.” Instead, he was ushered into a plan of growth, learning and grace-filled change. 

“There is hope. You can find lasting freedom,” another man asserted. But in his experience, he cautioned, “you won’t find it alone, with just you and Jesus.” He went on to encourage steps like “breaking isolation and learning to ask for help” as places where trust and freedom can likewise grow.

7. People end up prioritizing things differently. As you can see above, some parts of recovery end up being more important than others—“Listen,” Thomas said, “I also have good people around me who help keep me in healthy patterns….But none of that would have mattered without the very center of the equation changing” (referring to the change of heart he pursued through spiritual means). 

Likewise, even though deep sorrow or anxiety is well-accepted as a contributing factor to compulsive-addictive patterns, James pushed back on the idea one man shared with him “I think my real problem is depression, and I use pornography to self-comfort….but I am stuck.” 

“I’ll tell you, that’s true!” James said. “You get depressed and you feel lonely; you fall into self-pity; you run to pornography. So, you’re right—the root issue here is not pornography. But the root issue here also is not depression.” He elaborated: 

“The root issue here is not being satisfied in Christ. Because by not being satisfied in the Lord and dwelling in the house of the Lord and beholding the beauty of the Lord, you get depressed. You lose that perfect peace that Isaiah 26:3 talks about, and therefore you get lonely. And when you get lonely you feel a void inside, and you think, “Well, I need to fill that void.” And instead of repenting and taking the way of escape, you then run to pornography, you run to an idol. And you raise that up, and it doesn’t satisfy. 

Parting encouragement. Even with these qualifiers, the joy and peace (and love) that comes from deep healing and freedom makes all the soul-stretching work worth it. Throughout people’s stories, there are many touching words of direct encouragement to those reading. I close with a few: 

• One man who had been walking in freedom for three and half years, said “my marriage and relationship with God has never been better. I’m experiencing truly what God intended for marriage to feel like.” Then he added, “If you are currently struggling in this area, this can be your story.”

• Even with all the difficulties faced, Dave shared that from his experience one day you will likely see the good has come from the experience of overcoming the struggle: “God is shaping you—and the beautiful thing about it…that thing that you suffered through all these years, that will be your testimony.” 

• “I know that this journey towards freedom isn’t easy,” Taylor shared by way of encouragement, before adding, “but I truly believe that freedom is possible for every single one of you! Don’t give up on yourself, keep fighting, and rest in the knowledge that Jesus loves you and cares more about your freedom than you do.”

• John, who found lasting healing after an internal change of his heart, encouraged: “If you’ve been trying to get free for a while and feel like you’ve been spinning your wheels, I’d encourage you to really examine your motivation. Start praying differently. Begin crying out to know God intimately. Ask Him for a deep sorrow over things that grieve His heart. Make it about genuine love for God and others rather than fear of personal loss. When you do, you’ll find the power to walk out what you couldn’t walk out before. Remember, love never fails.”

• “If you decide to, you can beat this addiction and have the happiness you desire. Get help,” said another. “Use the programs available to you.  Reach out to leaders, family and friends. Most of all, reach out to God and don’t give up. The fight will never be over, but you will be able to master yourself and put the addiction away. It took me over a decade, don’t be upset if it takes time. You, like me can become Fortified and resist this new drug.  I promise.”

• Joshua encourages people to “never surrender” in this pursuit for freedom.

We say the same: Never surrender. Stay hopeful. Keep believing. Keep connecting. Keep learning. And keep getting up!