By Joni Hilton

Addicts and others write in with a wake-up call for today’s parents, who think their kids won’t succumb to this growing epidemic.  And how early can it start?  Our first writer traces his problem to the fourth grade:

You may use this in any way you want. It is a warning to all mothers.  I'm young, 17 years old, I started even younger.  I had an older friend by two years of school, we meshed really well.  We can tell what each other is thinking. I spent more time with him than my own brothers. This is a warning to all the mothers out there: Be careful of who your friends hang out with.  Satan is everywhere, school, media, it seems like everywhere you turn he is there enticing us to do a little of this or a little of that. Satan can even be in our church-- I once knew a young man who went to church drunk. When he told me this, my heart sank, how terrible. I hate to say this but most moms, and I say this from experience of my own mother and many of my friends, are oblivious to what their kids are doing. 

Here is my brief history that all could have been avoided by making one single choice. I can relate this back to one instance in my life. If I had acted differently I would be a different man. In fourth grade, my good buddy (who has cleaned up and is a few months away from a mission) who was in the sixth grade, just, entered middle school, was exposed to porn and he talked to me about it. So we crossed the field over to K-mart and we spent a couple of hours each day for a few weeks looking at a swimsuit magazine.

Now that is, by the world’s standards, not a big deal, Right? Wrong, a little swimsuit magazine about ruined my eternal life. It goes to show that the devil leads you carefully down to hell. So, my buddy and I got tired of walking to the store so we had an idea to buy the magazine. My friend wouldn't do it, so I decided I would. Now remember that I was in the fourth grade, I took it and went up to the counter, the lady gave me a funny look, I pulled out a pocket of quarters and dimes, like a little nine-year-old would, my life savings for a girly magazine.  She sold it to me! Who would sell that filth to a little boy? Satan would. After long that wasn't enough, so we got in a little deeper, a little deeper. We got so far in, so far. .And after looking at porn, it changes the way you look at women, you lust. Sin leads to other sin.  In the tenth grade I got a girlfriend. Mistake! Don't let your kids study date! Needless to say we became immoral. And I'm going to regret that for the rest of my life. Actually for all eternity.  All because of a little swimsuit magazine.

At the start of ninth grade I started smoking marijuana.  Most smokers don't start so young, but my buddy was a junior and he started and I got involved.   So here I am, pothead and an addict. The summer of my junior year my buddy and I decided when we were drunk that we needed to stop. So, we made a promise, to stop sinning against God.  And, it went well....until I went back to school, my good friend having graduated the year before, deserted me, in a sense, at school.  So I fell back in with my old friends and sin and sin we went. Two buddies and I decided we would sell weed to support our habit and to make a little profit on the side.  Well in a stupor from the night before, I decided to bring all the drugs with me to school. I had them under the seat in my car.  Someone told the school policeman that I had drugs in my car and to make a long story short, I was arrested spent a total of 26 days in jail. I even got charged as an adult. So I have that to deal with on my permanent record. I got kicked out of school and now I am attending an alternative school. All this because of a little boy’s desires, a swimsuit magazine.  People ask me how I got caught, I just tell them someone told on me. They reply " O man, that really bites." And I agree with them, but inside I tell myself that it was a blessing. I got out of the business.

It’s been six months since I last smoked weed, the day I was arrested. I now am trying to change my life around and things are going a lot better. I weep when I drive home from seminary. There are such righteous girls in my class. I want a righteous wife but, after the things I have done I know I don't deserve one. I don't even deserve a wife. I regret the day when I tell my wife the abominations I have been involved in. Now I tell you these things so you mothers out there can become more involved with your teenagers. My parents had no idea what was going one with me until I was arrested. Imagine that! Eight years. I've ruined my life before it has really even started. Satan is everywhere in schools. 

So mothers, get involved with your kids, make sure your husbands give them regular priesthood blessings. Your worthy husbands hold an awesome power, given to them by God, why don't we use it more often?  We all slip, when your kids slip you have to handle it in a perfect way or else the effort is lost.  This is a warning from a kid who has been there and back, raise your kids right!  Be a little suspicious they just got this great body from God and they are all using their agency, some in the wrong ways. You parents are veterans of sin, but us kids haven't dealt with it as much and need the counsel and comfort of our parents. – Name withheld

My heart breaks for you— and for your parents, because they have suffered on a completely different level, wondering if they were somehow to blame.  But I thank you from the bottom of that same heart, for reaching out to help others avoid this rocky path.  Please don’t feel you are undeserving of a righteous wife.  There is shame in sin, but no shame in repentance.  If Christ’s atonement was real—and I promise you it was—you can indeed start over, your sins “remembered no more.”

The next writer reminds us how strong pornography’s hold can be:

I know that once an image has been seen by the eyes, and is recorded in the brain, that it is not easy to erase. It's haunting to go to the temple, try to be a good person, and repent, when suddenly an old image appears in the minds' eye.

Once that image appears, a person has just corrupted that particular temple session for themselves. I know it takes much work to get these images out of the mind.

The porn industry works at producing more than 3000 new 'adult sites' every day. They certainly target the male population, but just as sad, they target the youth. Twelve to seventeen years olds are the main audience. Satan figures to attack the youth of today in order to corrupt the families of tomorrow.

And statistics show a rising influence upon females, as well.  It’s frightening to realize how pervasive this problem is.  And it can strike in homes where you’d never dream such a problem existed.  This dad writes:

A few years ago, a nice young man returned from his mission to go to college and participate as an athlete on the college’s track team.  He was thoughtful and kind.  He was immediately attracted to my daughter, who was also on the track team.  They started to date.  I noticed very quickly that he was overly/ unnaturally affectionate.  He just couldn't keep his hands off of her.  She made the comment to me a couple of weeks into their "friendship" that he always seemed "excited ".  I told her she needed to take this really slow and try not to be in those situations. He asked me if he could do some "odd jobs" for me out at my office in exchange for using my computer to do his homework.  I thought that was certainly innocent enough and said yes. 

 It was only a couple of days later I discovered in the history of the computer log, hours and hours of time spent on Brazilian porn sites.  Then his actions made more sense.  He had been home from his mission now only about 6 months.  I couldn’t help wondering what had happened on his mission to start this ? Or was it a problem before....? I didn't ask.  Anyway.  I met him that day and told him he could not date my daughter anymore and that he needed help right away.  I also told him I would be happy to get him some resources and that he needed to talk to his bishop that very day.  This was so serious, that his very future was in jeopardy. He did start to sob and admitted the problem and knew he needed help.  I know that he did start with some help but then he transferred to a different school. 

 I don't know what has happened to him.  I did tell my daughter what I had learned and we talked about ways in the future she could be confident in a choosing a worthy young man to marry.  These are good young men/ husbands /fathers  who become so trapped by this poison, and the road to give it up is so painful and frightening that it cannot be taken lightly anymore.  – Name Withheld

You’re right that we need to take swift action when pornography is involved.  It escalates quickly, and can destroy lives.  Several women wrote that their husbands were unable to have natural sexual relations with them, because they had unwittingly trained themselves only to respond to photographs!

This reader explains:

The worst problem with porn is that it breaks down a fundamental link in life.  That fundamental link is between committed love and physical pleasure.  First, there must be some mutual attraction between the couple. From there, we go to liking and admiration.  When we achieve respect and when all three of these elements are present love is a natural result.  If any one of these steps is overlooked, or channeled to another, then the chain is broken and love fails to materialize.

If one becomes "hooked" on pornography one has replaced like, respect, and love with lust.  It is a very easy road to travel, it leads to short periods of intense pleasure, but in the long run it is destructive to the very "love" that was supposed to be the basis of the relationship in the first place.  As the individual becomes focused on lust, the individual's ability to love and to engage in a loving relationship decreases as the end result being contemplated is not love or a loving relationship, but simply to find carnal gratification without even involving another person.  The addicted person has now replaced a loving, shared experience with a very shallow, meaningless, and lonely carnal relationship with him or herself.  The ability to find the happiness that comes with a deep committed relationship with another person becomes much harder to achieve.

Worst of all, the person finds their ability to commune with Heavenly Father sadly reduced.  Guilt can often create this barrier as can the isolation of spending time searching for and wallowing in the viewing of pornography instead of finding time to be with Heavenly Father.  Isn't it interesting that the very thing that each saint should fear, an eternity of life without association with God is the very thing that this addiction can easily create.  It becomes a wedge that separates the saint from Heavenly Father.

Satan is determined (hell-bent would apply here!) to destroy families, and driving a wedge between husband and wife is a very effective tactic.  He even gets the bonus of pulling the addict away from Father in Heaven. 

Another reader tells how he broke the vicious cycle:

I was hooked on pornography and could not stop turning on the computer to seek out more.  I'd stay up all night, forsaking sleep, food, everything.  What finally happened was I was forced to quit cold turkey when a family emergency called me away out of town for almost a year.

I had to pack up my computer while I was gone.  During that year I was unable to have any computer time to myself (there were always other family members around), and so that finally broke the hold it had on me.  That was enough for me to take over and regain my own control.

I have come to know that this problem, like so many others, occurs because we relinquish part of our free agency.  Regaining control requires a combination of an initial "enforced" separation (until the "hook" is sufficiently broken) and thereafter your own diligent efforts built upon that.  At first you feel alone, like there's a mountain of dirt before you and you only have a tiny little shovel.  But if you start shoveling anyway, and prove to the Lord that you're sincere, then

after a while you start to find your own efforts amplified by the aid of the Holy Ghost.  Then, after time, you begin to feel like you have traded that shovel for a heavy diesel powered earth mover.  Diligence brings greater power.  But the most important part is the initial "enforced" separation, of sufficient duration, where you can refocus your thinking and regain a good deal of your free agency back.  My computer is now in a high-traffic area of our house, with the monitor in full view of the entire room.  These things no longer bother me, and I have my temple recommend again.  I've gotten my life back and it is sweet.

Good for you.  Life is indeed sweet when we forsake our sins.  This bishop’s wife didn’t find such a happy ending:

…  I am about to get divorced from my husband of 28+ years, who has been a bishop twice, among other leadership callings in the Church.  He looked like a successful, upstanding member of the Church and community, but it turned out that he was battling an addiction to porn for most of the years of our marriage…  I tried to be understanding, compassionate, and supportive, as well as forgiving.... but I came to believe something that I heard, that kicking this kind of habit is harder than kicking a heroin or cocaine addiction because it involves the mind.  After so many lies and relapses, I could not handle it any more, and I am getting out.  This has devastated our children, but I am at peace with my decision.  His problem undermined everything good thing that we had once, such as love, trust, security, etc.  It warped the way he related to me, and caused him to loathe himself.  As a wise Stake President once said:  Satan is a patient fisherman.  He gets his hook into you, and slowly reels you in, before you know you have been caught.  It is a scourge!  It causes heartache and sorrow that is so devastating.  I only hope that he can get over this addiction and live a happier, more  wholesome life.  I just don't have the faith in him to stick around anymore to find out if he ever does.... and with so many times of breaking my trust in him, how could I ever be sure I could believe him?

How tragic that Satan won one, again.  Your marriage probably could have worked, if pornography hadn’t been part of the picture.  Experts do describe the addiction as similar to heroin, and it takes immense fortitude to conquer either one.

Last, I want to make a correction.  In last week’s list of books and resources to help with this problem, the new web site for the book, “Clean Hands, Pure Heart” by Philip A. Harrison is www.rosehavenpublishing.com  This book is being used “unofficially” in several 12 step groups, including some LDS Family Services sponsored groups, that deal specifically with recovery from pornography.

If you have experienced the pain of this scourge, and the joy of recovery, please write and tell us how you did it.  There are so many sufferers who need a helping hand.  Be sure to include your name and city.  Thanks, Joni