I was a pornography addict working for an internet service provider who developed video over the internet. This was a blessing (if you ask my sponsor) and a curse (if you ask me). Like a drunk who went from hard liquor to beer, I shifted from hard core to chats, from chats to personals, and then from personals to on-line games with chat capabilities. I thought I could control this insidious obsession which promised immediate relief from any emotional discomfort. This visual opium was killing my soul. After meeting in person someone I met on-line, acting out with her, becoming suicidal, spending a month in an in-patient treatment center, and facing a possible divorce, I conceded my defeat.

I changed careers to a job with very limited time in front of the computer. One of my boundaries has been to not get on the internet without “book-ending” it; in other words, calling another sexaholic at the beginning and the end of my browsing experience. The pain of having to do that quenched my desire to waste time surfing those perilous waters of the cyber world. I only got on the net when I really had to do it.

With September 11 events, I justified my “need” to stay in touch with the latest news without book-ending my searches. “This is an emergency. I deserve to know what is happening in the world. Besides, I can handle this.” Pretty soon, I convinced myself that my recent five months of sobriety and hard work in recovery almost cured me of the internet addiction. Until one day when the stress of work, the struggle to save my marriage, and ignoring HALTs lit up that old fire in my belly. That familiar call of the wild tried to sell me once more on a few megabytes of my favorite drug. The truth is, that a gazillion bytes would not quiet the silent scream of my soul, but God can. Today I am no longer willing to trade my life for the fantasy of the right picture.

In my powerlessness, I began using a web address accountability service. Everywhere I browse, at home or at work, two people I trust in recovery get a list of the sites I visit and the time I spend on them. On hard days, book-ending still works. At my wife’s request, we got internet service at home through a family-targeted, filtered ISP that gets filtered once more with special software residing on our computer. My wife is the only one who has the internet access password. If I tried I could beat any of these systems, but today, I choose not to. I don’t know about tomorrow.