Just One Time

Hey Cadre family, Dr. Carrie here. Have you ever struggled with temptation? How about an addiction? Today I'm going to delve into the topic of porn addiction and I'm going to be super vulnerable and share with you about my experience with this. Now, this is a scary topic for me to talk about because there's a lot of shame associated with this topic. But I'm also here on the other side to tell you that there can be freedom from this addiction. And I want to share with you how I did that. So first, I'm going to take you down memory lane and walk you through what my experience was like as I was nearing the end of breaking off this addiction.

I remember watching porn And what I find so funny is I always went to my bedroom to watch porn because it felt safe in there and it felt like it was an okay place to do it because it's in the bed, right? So I'm just sharing that with my phone or computer screen instead of another person sharing that intimate experience. So I remember laying in my bed watching porn and I often did this when I was stressed. like during finals time in school, just during stressful situations, I would take a break and it would almost be like a reward to watch porn and just have that escape from reality because really that's what porn is.

It's an escape from reality. And that's what any addiction really is. When you're addicted to a substance of some kind, it's escaping reality by using that substance. And often that puts you into a different mental state And for watching porn, it becomes a euphoric state with dopamine release. So I remember watching porn and just having this immense, heavy guilt fall over me. I knew it was wrong. I knew it was so wrong. I knew it was detrimental to my own wellbeing. It was detrimental to my health.

It was detrimental to my future relationships and my current relationship. But yet I was still struggling with it. What's so interesting though is that amount of guilt that creeped in didn't make me stop. In fact, it almost kind of twisted my narrative in my head where I started justifying why I was doing this. isn't that bad. I'm not watching child pornography. It's not really impacting my relationship because I still have the urge to have sexual encounters with my partner. So it's really, I'm doing this when they're not around.

Just this whole story that would develop in my head to overcome that guilt and shame. Just amazing. It's just incredible what goes on in your mind. And then that battle that ensues because the guilt and the shame would be on the other side saying, you know this is detrimental. Even this one time is detrimental. Why are you doing this? And then it would spiral the other direction again. Why am I doing this? I'm doing this because I want to feel good and I deserve to feel good because I've been studying hard for these exams.

So this just constant narrative would almost like take me out of the ability to even enjoy what I was watching or enjoy my high per se. It's just so fascinating. So I just want to encourage you to know that if you've experienced something like that, there is healing and breakthrough on the other side of this kind of addiction. And I remember the one day when I finally decided to turn it off because I felt so guilty and I knew it was so detrimental to me and my relationships that I said, You know what?

I'm turning it off today. Sure, I can come back to it later if I want to, but I'm turning it off for today because I know this isn't good for me and I want to be able to break this off. And as I reflected later on that day, how empowered I felt that I was able to overcome it just that one time. And that doesn't mean that I didn't go back to it many more times after that and not shut it off. But that one time, that one decision I made shifted things for me. It showed me that I had the ability to overcome this, that I was strong enough to overcome it.

know that you are strong enough to overcome an addiction, any addiction. I don't care how long you've been addicted to something, I don't care how strong of an addiction it is, what the substance is, you have the strength to overcome this addiction. And it takes just that one time. Because what that did for me was that gave me that empowered feeling that almost felt like a high itself, so that I wanted that feeling. And then another week goes by, two weeks go by, and I make that same decision, I'm going to turn it off because I know this isn't good for me and I don't want to be addicted to this.

And then going forward a few weeks, a few months later to the point where I'm typing in a website and I go putting the phone down, not doing it. That empowered feeling started to grow inside me and become stronger so that I could actually start to overcome it before I even went to a website to watch porn. So I just want to encourage you Maybe just try it one time. One time in the middle of your addiction, in the middle of picking up that drug to smoke, snort, whatever it may be, whether it's porn for you, anything.

Just make the decision one time to stop it and see what that does for you. See if that gives you any of that empowered feeling that you can overcome this because I know you're strong enough to overcome this addiction just like I was. And I'm happy to say that I'm here sitting on the other side and I still struggle with that shame and that guilt that doesn't go away completely. But I now have the strength to overcome it the second I get the thought to even do it. So I don't even have to go into my bedroom, pull out my phone, start typing in a website.

I don't even have to go through any of those steps because I can just take that thought captive and say, no, I'm not walking down that path because I know it's a slippery slope. and I don't want to go back into that addiction. I know you can do this. Just try one time. Just make one decision one day differently and see what happens for you. Thanks for tuning in with me guys and thank you for listening to me be super vulnerable about this area of my life.