JERUSALEM, Ark. – Back in high school, they taught us all about alcoholism and drug addiction, from the perils of the dreaded marijuana that causes people to cook their babies in the microwave, to the undeniable and extremely helpful observation that “crack is whack.”
While the latter aphorism didn’t do much to help Whitney Houston, I’ll never forget the words of wisdom handed down by such experts on addiction and dependency as my gym teacher, an inveterate drunk who spent class ogling the girls while flexing his muscles and fiddling with the whistle in his pocket (one hopes that’s what he was fiddling with in there, anyway).
“Kids, here’s what you have to remember,” he told us one day, standing in front of a large colored chart filled with information about drugs and booze. “The first sign you have a problem is not being able to admit you have a problem.”
Sitting there, it hit me: I don’t believe I’m addicted to anything, ergo, I must be addicted to everything.
True, I hadn’t even tried most of the entertaining chemicals we talked about during Substance Abuse Awareness Decade (or whatever they ended up calling the ’80s), but my denial concerning my addiction still was manifest. There I was, eating, drinking and breathing every day, and still unwilling to cop to my unyielding dependence on air, water and food.
The good news, I was told, was there was “Good News”: My addictions could be cured if I’d stop worshipping at the altar of Dionysus and get my ass to a proper Christian church, wherein the resident pastor would administer regular doses of disulfiram to his flock, presumably.
These days, I’ve beaten my addictions to alcohol and drugs (those drugs not advertised on television as panacea to my every ill, at least) but a new denial has taken root: I can’t bring myself to admit I’m addicted to porn.
Sure, I don’t actually watch much porn – but letting a lack of regular consumption allow me to believe I’m not an addict who is helpless against his own impulses would be to repeat the mistakes of my youth, back when I believed a person had to actually ingest heroin in order to become addicted to it. (Naïve, right?)
Luckily, the answer for porn addiction is the same as the answer for other addictions: God.
This brings me to a new problem, though: It seems several new Gods have been invented since the 80s, and I’m not sure which one would make the best porn addiction counselor.
Now, I’m no history buff, so it’s possible I’m wrong about some of these Gods being new. All I know is back when I was kid, there was only one God, and his name was Jesus.
Actually, it was slightly more complicated, because Jesus apparently was also his own father and a ghost, all at the same time. I found this confusing, kind of like Casper had somehow merged with Oedipus, but I figured I didn’t need to fully comprehend God’s nature just to attend his rehab clinic, so I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought.
Things are way more complicated for addicts now, though. Not only are there multiple Gods, but each seems to have His own prescription for beating porn addiction.
Jesus has many representatives on Earth when it comes to guiding people on the path to Porn Recovery. There’s Be Free in Christ (which sounds like it might be the rehab equivalent of a tube site), Faithful and True (much better than its atheist competitor, Fickle and False) and LifeStar Therapy, to name just a few.
Confusing the porn rehab picture, however, is an effort called “Purify Your Gaze” (not to confused with the Westboro Baptist Church-sponsored “Purify Your Gays”, which I believe involves kidnapping and fire), which wants to help me “reclaim my life from unwanted sexual behaviors.”
Purify Your Gaze is an Islamic organization, but it’s not clear to me whether I’d need to convert to Islam in order to sign up – or cancel my subscription to Charlie Hebdo, for that matter. Either way, I’m pretty sure I’d get lost once all the allahu akbar and la ilaha illa-llah stuff kicked up, because my Latin is terrible.
While the idea of getting God’s help to beat my addiction does appeal, I’m a pretty busy guy these days, so I don’t have a lot of time for praying, sermons, picnics or public burnings-in-effigy. As such, I’m thinking Buddhist porn rehab might be for me.
Unfortunately, like me, Buddhists aren’t big on actually doing things, so their big answer to porn addiction often is to just stop watching it. As such, one might expect there’s no such thing as a Buddhist rehab center for porn addiction – but if one assumed this, one would be wrong.
Building the New bills itself as “porn addiction recovery through mindfulness and compassion,” and their header graphic is a friendly-looking slacker out in the forest with his overstuffed backpack, so they’re off to a good start where imagery is concerned. After all, no neo-hippy could be this visibly happy if his addiction were porn, as opposed to chronically listening to old recordings of Phish concerts.
As you read down the page, however, the promising start quickly devolves into New Age touchy-feely-ness: Take a deep breath. Feel. What you are feeling in this moment will always be OK. Know that pain is always an acceptable part of life. We cannot have the beautiful flower without the mud.
No, what I’m feeling is not OK. That’s why I’m here in the first place, you smarmy little Jer Bear wannabe!
Clearly, the Buddhist approach is not for me. I’m in denial about my porn addiction and need to wake the fuck up, not hold hands with unwashed Californians and repeatedly whisper “Namaste” in hopes this will make me less likely to want to jerk off the next time Mila Kunis pops up on my TV screen pimping Jim Beam.
I guess all I can do is continue my search, but I’m quickly running out of options here. I don’t have enough money to cure my addiction through Scientology and suicide isn’t exactly my idea of a good “cure,” which rules out quite a few of my favorite cults.
Anybody know if the Yazidi are anti-porn?
