It took losing two wives before I finally admitted to myself that my use of porn was a serious problem. I finally realized I that porn and masturbation was running my life. That’s when I took the very big step (for me at the time) of calling a therapist to help me.

How did I end up in this mess?

Porn addiction, and more to the point, what it was doing to my personality, cost me two marriages. As an addict, I was riddled with feelings of shame, self-doubt, fear, and anger towards myself.  I realized that any self-respecting woman was not going to subject herself to a partner like me for very long.

Case in point: my second wife once caught me using porn, and the negative feelings that welled up as a result drove me to rip all four posts off our bed. I was so angry, so unbelievably embarrassed, that I felt the need to destroy something. The closest thing happened to be the bed, because I’d gotten caught in the bedroom.

I tried to grit my teeth and stop porn addiction by myself.  But that didn’t work very well. One night in particular I was fighting the urge to use porn in the middle of the night. Of course, by this point, I’d made it a point to get rid of all the porn in the house. This was before the time of instantly available internet porn. My go-to option was to get porn at a video store – which was closed since it was so late at night.

My addiction had such a grip on me, I actually devised a plan in my head to take a cinder block, put it in the trunk of my car, drive to the video store, smash the glass window with the cinder block, and break in to steal porn tapes. I didn't go through with the plan, thankfully, but I think it illustrates how serious a porn addiction can be. It’s every bit as powerful as a drug or alcohol addiction.

Finally, after experiencing moments like that, I began to see that I needed to figure out how to stop this thing from ruining my life. I got an extra part time job just to earn enough money to get counseling. And with help, I started to be able to get through the day without sneaking off to look at porn and masturbate.

I started to stop by calling someone, by reaching out for help from someone experienced in how to stop porn addiction. I clearly couldn't do it myself. This therapist recommended a few options for me, including group therapy, individual therapy, and a 12-step program. He devised a course of action for me and I followed it. Whenever I found a new strategy or plan that worked, I would do it until I found the next, better thing that worked. This is how I began to understand that my addiction to porn was actually a coping mechanism.

I had such a positive experience with counseling, I knew I wanted to continue to follow this path myself. I knew that I could help others gripped by addiction because I’d learned the way out.

Now I teach others what I most needed to learn: That you are not your addict, and your addict is not you. I teach them to talk back to their addict. Talking to your addict demystifies your story, and takes some of its power away. People might want to tell you that talking to yourself will make you go crazy – I counter that by saying that it will actually make you go sane.

Now, if I’m out in public, and an attractive woman is nearby, I no longer say to myself, “Look as long as you can, so later you can find a porn actress who looks like her.”  Instead, I now see women as human beings. I'm experiencing life now, not living in shame about my addiction.