Believing you are an addict

If you’ve ever been to a 12 step meeting you’ve heard the phrase, “Hi, my name is Zach and I’m an addict”.

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Almost everyone I’ve worked with thinks they’re “addicted to porn”.

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What if, instead of believing, “Hi, my name is Zach and I’m an addict” we believed something else.  

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I used to think that I was addicted to pornography, there was something in my brain that made it so I would return to pornography because I was “powerless against my addiction”. 

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I hated it.  

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I felt like I was trapped, incapable of real change because I would always be an addict. I felt like I would be forever at the mercy of this problem and I would always have to be on the look out to keep it at bay. 

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It was exhausting. 

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Eight years ago, after we had our twins, giving us six kids seven and under, my wife said to me, “I need you at home and if all these meetings you are going to for 12 steps and counselors aren’t making this better, I would rather have you here to help me with the kids.”

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It wasn’t a demand, but it was pretty close.  

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As I looked at the previous years and took stock of what I had learned and the progress I had made, I knew I had plateaued.  

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Now was the time to try something new, something different, something that I didn’t know how to do and that I had never done before. 

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I took a step back and started to look at my brain differently. I started to ask myself questions about what I was thinking and believing and doing that was keeping me tied to pornography viewing.

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In that work, something occurred to me.  

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At every meeting I had ever been to with the 12 steps the prescribed phrase to introduce yourself to the group is “I’m an addict”. 

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But not everyone uses that phrase. Some say, “I’m a recovering addict” and some say, “I used to be addicted.” 

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I realized that what they were really saying was that being an “addict” means I’m stuck, a victim, unchangeable. 

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What if you could believe, “I used to look at pornography, but now I don’t”?

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Your brain will find evidence that it true. Your emotions will drive actions that make it true. 

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Most importantly, you’ll begin to become free. 

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