Step 6: Change of Heart

KEY PRINCIPLE: Become entirely ready to have God remove all your character weaknesses.

During a recent priesthood lesson on integrity, I opened a can of worms into the discussion by bringing up online file sharing and piracy. I'm guessing that mohos who blog fit well into the category of those who would be tempted to do some online file sharing. They're techno-savvy, often musically inclined, etc.

I had a technology industry job once where my coworkers were extremely capable at... well, hacking. They had a good time breaking into the county courthouse's network to find out which of our coworkers and superiors had been arrested and why. Ok, that's a little off-topic, but the memories... Anyway, we also had a large library of illegally copied software, music, and movies going around. I've always gone through cycles with such things--indulging and then deleting it all in a fit of remorse... only to start doing it again later.

Enter: step 6.

It's not just about pornography anymore. [That's happily in part because I haven't been nearly as tempted with it lately. But, I'm sure there will be times of extreme temptation down the road at some point, so I continue with the steps.] Having a changed heart extends its influence past that issue to every issue of my life. Do I want what God wants? I need to desire not just to avoid copied music and pornography and... whatever the case may be... but I need to actually lose the desire to return to them.

How does one lose the desire for sin? Especially if that desire has become seemingly hard wired in my nervous system? Oh yeah, I guess that's the whole meaning of an addiction and the whole challenge of defeating it.

The Lord wants to bless you with a change of disposition that will unite you with Him in mind and heart, just as He is united with the Father. He wants to give you rest from your isolation from God the Father, the isolation that caused the fears which contributed to your addiction. He wants to make the Atonement effective in your life, here and now.

As you yield to the promptings of the Spirit and look to the Savior for salvation, not only from addiction but from character weaknesses, you can be assured that a new disposition or character will grow out of your willing heart. A growing desire to be sanctified by God will make you ready for a change in your very nature.

The manual points out the propensity people feel to take their struggles head on, by themselves. And it points out that that approach is precisely why people fail to overcome their addictions time and time again. I know I need "a higher power" involved in the mix, but when it comes down to the time to submit to God, I'd rather go amuse myself elsewhere. I'd rather stay home from church, read blogs, watch TV, or pretty much anything rather than study the scriptures and pray with real intent.

“No matter what the source of difficulty and no matter how you begin to obtain relief—through a qualified professional therapist, doctor, priesthood leader, friend, concerned parent, or loved one— no matter how you begin, those solutions will never provide a complete answer. The final healing comes through faith in Jesus Christ and His teachings, with a broken heart and a contrite spirit and obedience to His commandments” (Richard G. Scott, in Conference Report, Apr. 1994, 9; or Ensign, May 1994, 9).

Although there are many possible roads to addiction recovery, I think for me the only one that will work is one that involves--REALLY involves--Christ.

Step 5: Confession

It's been a while since I've stepped. I've got 4 down and 8 to go, so I don't know why I'm always so slow. Things won't take care of themselves automatically, I suppose. So, on to step 5.

“I would not dwell upon your crimes, to harrow up your soul, if it were not for your good” (Alma 39:7).
• Some people would claim that we dwell too much on negative things in life by taking steps 4 and 5 and that doing so can only add to our stress. In this verse, we are taught that facing shortcomings can do us good, not just “harrow up” (or distress) our souls. In what ways can steps 4 and 5 relieve you of stress and bring you more peace?

-Addiction Recovery Manual

With all the attempted suicides and self-hate that I see among young gay guys, it's easy to get carried away and apply the same soothing rhetoric to myself that I would like to extend to them. But the fact is, I'm not suicidal and have no real problem with self-hate. My problem is excusing myself.

I excuse myself from looking at porn because "I'm addicted," or I excuse myself from really stepping up and carefully studying the scriptures and participating in church. I excuse myself for masturbation. I excuse my selfishness.

Selfishness. That reminds me of the recent discussions I've seen about President Packer's pamphlet, To the One, in which he opines that many of the difficulties associated with being gay are attributable to selfishness. The rhetoric flying off that discussion was thick and deep, and frankly, irrelevant to me. Because, regardless of whether you want to take issue with the generalizability of that, regardless of whether you are prone to outrage that an apostle would say such a thing, I can't deny to myself how true it is in my case. I'm a very selfish person, I always have been, and it's no good trying to deny it.

...President Spencer W. Kimball: “Repentance can never come until one has bared his soul and admitted his actions without excuses or rationalizations. . . . Those persons who choose to meet the issue and transform their lives may find repentance the harder road at first, but they will find it the infinitely more desirable path as they taste of its fruits”

Being selfish is not going to make me happy. I'm fully convinced of that on an academic level. I love the scriptures where we're invited to lose our lives for Christ's sake, and that through so doing we will find ourselves. And, to be fair and honest, I've done a pretty good job of being unselfish in some ways in my life. But there is still a very deep-rooted desire within myself to look at porn, despite what it may do to my wife, despite how it may affect our family and marriage, despite its effects on my spirituality. I know what I want, and the largest effort of my daily life ends up being a puzzle of risk and consequence management, keeping the negative impact of my selfishness at a minimum, but harboring the selfishness through it all at the protected core of my life.

One major obsession of those who struggle with addiction is a great desire to look good to others. How would this desire keep you from improving and bringing “forth more fruit” (or good works)?

I've always been an approval junkie. It's a problem on this blog, certainly, because I tend to want to look consistent and sometimes avoid airing my dirty laundry (despite that doing so is one of the reasons this blog exists). I'm not looking for reassurances of my self-worth with this post, and I don't want to hear criticisms of President Packer. This post is just for me to say what I know is true: I have a fair number of problems in my life that still need to be dealt with. Primary among these problems is my selfishness. It's the center of my issues with porn, imagining a life of gay bliss, wasted time, hypocrisy, and so on. So, there you have my confession, hopefully unsoftened by my desire to look good.

You may fear that someone who really knew all your weaknesses and failings would reject you. But a priesthood leader or a trusted friend who understands the recovery process usually responds with understanding and compassion. How could such a response help you heal?

I suppose this speaks to my last post. My wife allows my confessions and responds with understanding and compassion. She doesn't excuse my faults, and I'm glad for that. But she stands by me regardless of my failings, and she lets me know that she wants me to be happy and she wants me to be the person I can be. I don't bring up my failings to her on a perpetual basis, because that wouldn't be fair to her. Luckily, I do have friends who are supportive and encouraging and who I trust not to give me improper guidance or misinformation when I confide in them. For all the love I receive from people both near and far who care about me, I say thanks.

Step 4: Truth

I guess I'd better interrupt gushing about how great my life is for a little down-to-earth reality check. I still have my unresolved issues, and they're still waiting to be worked out. 2007 started out pretty great in terms of avoiding porn, but I'm by no means out of the woods. So, it's about time I got back to doing the 12 steps.

Step 4 calls for a "searching and fearless written inventory of your life." I've read the description several times detailing exactly what this is intended to mean and how to go about doing it, but I'm still at a loss. This blog would be the ideal place to do it, I suppose, if I hadn't connected my real identity with it (for at least a handful of people). Now, I'm afraid I can never quite write things 100% frankly because I'll always be subject to the self-consciousness that is a part of dignified human interaction.

But a searching and fearless life inventory is bound to have many stories, some of which are not inappropriate to share. I guess I'll blog the ones I can and keep quiet the ones I can't. It is a bit of a shame though to leave such an incomplete overall story to make it seem contrived.

My efforts to rid myself of pornography addiction seem pretty closely intertwined with my being gay. They are two separate issues, yes, but in me they seem to be related so intimately I can never quite think of them separately. So, I'm going to try over the next while to remember the things that have happened in my life to make me who I am, how I've reacted to them, what my motivations have been, etc. In figuring it out, I'll be one step closer, and I will presumably have a great deal more personal insight.

One glorious result of completing step 4 is that you take a major step toward freeing yourself from behaviors that defined your past. The reflection of yourself that you will see as you complete this step can inspire you to change the direction of your life if you will let it. Because of the love and grace of the Savior, you do not have to be what you have been. By calling on the Lord for guidance as you examine your life, you will come to recognize your experiences as learning opportunities. You will find that uncovering weaknesses you have suffered with for so long will allow you to move forward to a new life.

-Addiction Recovery Manual

Step 3: Trust in God

Decide to turn your will and your life over to the care of God the Eternal Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.

Step 3 is the decision step. In the first two steps, we awakened to what we could not do for ourselves and what we needed God to do for us. Then in step 3 we were introduced to the only thing we could do for God. We could make a decision to open ourselves to Him and surrender our entire lives—past, present, and future—and our will about our lives to Him. Step 3 was an act of agency. It was the most important choice we ever made.

-Addiction Recovery Manual

I do love the Maxwell quote where he declares that the only thing we really have to give God is our will since everything else came from God to begin with. I've been pretty stingy with my will lately, it seems. I remember specifically making my will secondary to God's will when it came to the big things--marriage and career--but I keep trying to just push all the other details of my life to be what I want them to, rather than what God might have in mind for me.

I've been pursuing my own will for so long, it's hard to imagine my life any other way. The manual mentions not getting worked up over traffic jams and not fearing creditors as examples of how your life may change when you give control over to God. That sounds placid and delightful, but I can't imagine myself not getting upset over traffic. Traffic just makes me livid and that's all there is to it. The only way I really enjoy driving is when everyone else in the world stays off the roads (the fools! the bad drivers!).

So, this idea is kind of novelty to me even though it's not new. I'm trying to figure it out so I can apply it to help me overcome the porn addiction. The manual says, "You can accept with serenity the current reality of your condition when you trust in God’s ability to help you." I do accept the reality of my condition with comparative serenity. And I trust in God's ability to help me. But, if no change happens, does that put it on God's shoulders? I mean, if I've acknowledged that I'm incapable of doing this on my own, and now I'm trusting in God and giving him my will... who is to blame for when I screw up again? Isn't sacrificing one's will in this case just code for solving your problem the way God wants it to be solved?

Step 2: Hope

I've been tempted to look at porn recently. I've thought about it off and on all day. And I suppose that means it's time to recognize that the 12 step program actually extends beyond step 1.

Step 2 focuses on having hope through Jesus Christ. It seems like an appropriate follow-up after all the General Conference talks I heard that reminded me that the Savior is key in dealing with my life's challenges.

But here's the problem: relying on Christ to take away my sins means taking away my sins, not just making my sins okay. I need to actually stay away from the porn, not just feel like I'm doing the best that I can and therefore it's all okay. A friend of mine told me recently when we were discussing porn, "you have to allow yourself the experience of being human." I found that very comforting at the time, but on further reflection, it's the experience of being divine that I want to allow myself.

I'm looking to deny myself of all ungodliness, but I've been looking to do it in the wrong way. Apparently, and this is so hard for me to believe, I'm not strong enough to do it. I can't do it... I can't do it.

I can't do it.

Huh. That's not really a common refrain for a post about overcoming a problem.

And yet, that's the whole point. I have such a hard time letting it go and letting Christ in to deal with this. I don't know why. I've been sitting here staring at the page trying to do the workbook assignment for a long time this evening and I'm just not feeling the peace. I'm fighting it for some reason. I don't want to go pray. I want to go porn. (My immediate reaction is to delete that, or qualify it, or something... but it's true. It's a deep rooted want.)

My trigger response to this situation has been to steel myself for the fight ahead. The fight that will hurt and be miserable and that I'll almost certainly fail as I have every time in the past. I grit my teeth and think, "Nobody's going to control you, make you do the right thing, or get you through this but yourself. It's your battle to fight. Just make it happen."

But that's all wrong. I'm failing because I'm fighting alone. I'm trying to be strong enough, and I'm not strong enough. The Lord's yoke is easy and His burden is light. I don't have to do it alone. Why am I such a spiritual delinquint? Why can't I actually get myself to understand and believe this? To really feel it?

I've got to let go, and I don't know how. I need to avoid touching evil gifts. I need hope.

We should not underestimate or overlook the power of the Lord’s tender mercies. The simpleness, the sweetness, and the constancy of the tender mercies of the Lord will do much to fortify and protect us in the troubled times in which we do now and will yet live. When words cannot provide the solace we need or express the joy we feel, when it is simply futile to attempt to explain that which is unexplainable, when logic and reason cannot yield adequate understanding about the injustices and inequities of life, when mortal experience and evaluation are insufficient to produce a desired outcome, and when it seems that perhaps we are so totally alone, truly we are blessed by the tender mercies of the Lord and made mighty even unto the power of deliverance (see 1 Nephi 1:20).

Elder David A. Bednar

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Hopeful and hopeless

I saw a young man recently come into the ER with full blown AIDS. He had declined the best medical therapy once he got HIV believing somehow he could whip it all on his own by living a healthy lifestyle... eating his vegetables or something like that. Now he has several opportunistic infections and he looked unbelievably miserable. He asked me after we talked (although I could barely hear or understand him), "Are you going to be doing this after residency?" and I said no. He said, "You should. You're good at it. These other people make me feel terrible." I was most certainly NOT good at it. This is one of only a handful of AIDS patients I had ever seen. But I realized what he meant was that unlike the other ER staff (and regrettably, my senior resident as well), I wasn't treating him like a freak. Later he said reflectively as I was filling out paperwork, "I'm a bad person aren't I?"

This experience had sort of a strange effect on me. It made me feel so hopeless. Hopeless about the healthcare system. Hopeless about the ignorance people have regarding gays. Hopeless about people that I usually work so hard to believe the best about. It's also a feeling that hits me every time I read an editorial lambasting religions as categorically intolerant, which seems to be happening with increasing frequency. It's a hopelessness that just hits me when people insist on being stupid even when I feel they've been given ample opportunity to widen their understanding.

The second step in 12 steps is based on hope. I haven't really worked my way up to that point yet (yes, at this rate I will reach step 12 when I'm about 147 years old). But it occurs to me that I am quite hopeful regarding myself and my own progress--and shouldn't that matter most? Why should I let ignorance and bigotry from conservatives and liberals alike interrupt my personal progress and peace? Well. I guess I'll just keep trying to have hope on both levels--personal and societal.

Progress report

It's been a while since I determined to do the 12 step program for porn addiction. I haven't had any problems since then, but I realize that I've got to be proactive in doing the work on the steps or it won't be of any use.

People say individuals finally become willing to abstain when the pain of the problem becomes worse than the pain of the solution. Have you come to that point? If you have not and you continue in your addiction, you surely will reach that point because addiction is a progressive problem. Like a degenerative disease, it eats at your ability to function normally.

I thought this quote from the addiction manual was an interesting idea, although I'm not convinced it fully applies in the case of porn. I can imagine cases where it does apply: there are certainly case reports of porn users progressing to increasingly edgy porn to the point they engage in viewing illegal and frankly abhorrent images. I've heard (although I don't remember the specifics) that porn can progress to rape and murder.

However, it was precisely because the pain of the problem was so minimal that I've had a hard time getting started on the 12 steps. I was able to keep the porn on the down low, and without ever being confronted about it by my wife, things were quite comfortable all in all. The problem, of course, is that during this time I was losing opportunities to affirm my heterosexuality and to bond with my wife. I think sex was easier after looking at porn because I was more arousable. How stupid to become reliant on porn to have good sex. Sex should be a warm humanistic activity, not one where your highest highs involve a beige metal box with little blinking lights. It's a frustrating and complex situation for a gay man who wants to be deeply intimate with a woman.

Step 1: Honesty

Ok.

Deep breath.

I'm addicted to porn. My life is out of control. I can't stop.

Although I've been blogging for months, I have yet to really address porn in any constructive way. I just seem to acknowledge it and move on whenever there's a problem. And that's fine as far as it goes--my mental health is pretty good and I'm relatively happy. But it doesn't get rid of the problem. It just accommodates it, and that's not good enough anymore.

So, I'm going to take Samantha's advice and use the church's 12 step addiction recovery program. There's magic in that program. It has been proven scientifically again and again to produce results. Admittedly, there isn't the robust data for porn addiction that there is for other kinds of addictions, but I'm willing to give it a try. Doing something (anything!) proactive is progress for me.

So today is the start.

KEY PRINCIPLE: Admit that you, of yourself, are powerless to overcome your addictions and that your life has become unmanageable.

I started looking at porn of my own volition (not just glances in the school hallway) when I got back from my mission. I had seen an "internet phone book" in a member's house once and when flipping through it saw that the internet was largely full of porn sites. So, in a moment of idleness after being one of the first folks in the neighborhood to get the 'net, I typed in my search: "naked men". I was not disappointed. Far from it, the subsequent experience was one of the most intense of my life. I had certainly never seen male porn before, even at a glance, and I was suddenly so powerfully immersed in desires I had never admitted to anyone. My experience was certain to be repeated, and it was.

Over the years I learned about auto complete, browser caches, and the history. I was always ahead of the learning curve out of necessity, and I was rewarded with successfully clandestine indulgence. I became so brazen (and skilled) that I viewed porn in a number of unlikely and risky situations. I viewed it in places that had safeguards in place by subverting the admin's token precautions. It seemed that much more exciting and rewarding.

I became skilled enough with computers that I actually found myself catching other people viewing porn--a roommate who borrowed my computer, residents of my dorm,... others. As I realized how pervasive the problem was for others, I minimized its significance for me and advanced deeper and deeper into the trap. I abstained from R-rated movies religiously and listened and believed the counsel from church talks on the evils and snares of pornography. But, my duplicity didn't command a lot of my attention. I was already in the snare. I was hooked. I am hooked.

Despite efforts with my wife, counselors, bishops, and friends, I can't go longer than several weeks without turning back to it. I'm ashamed and repulsed by the prospect of how little control over my own actions I have. I'm inclined to minimize the problem when I discuss it with others--overestimate the time since I last slipped, underestimate the hours spent. And regardless of what I see as a healthy amount of insight into the subject, I can't get myself to really believe my problem is significant or that I must immediately change. I'm more comfortable with the prospect of change always being in the near future.

But not anymore. I'm powerless to overcome porn. My life has become unmanageable.