by Charlton Clarke, M.A.

“In my off-hours, I started dabbling with some of the milder sex sites. No big deal. But as the years passed, these sites became more explicit. Soon I was ordering secret credit cards as a way to hide the expense. I was suddenly visiting sites--and staying for hours--where Web cams were showing things that had me dazed.”

This pain filled testimony came from an article about the senior vice president of a successful computer company whose life was ripped apart by sexual addiction. Does it surprise you that someone so successful could be a sex addict? There was a time in our culture when that might have come as a shock, but no longer. Today there are literally millions of men and women from every race, religion, and economic level whose lives are mired in sexual addiction.

Over the last 10 years the adult industry has grown from obscure little stores on the wrong side of town to a multi-billion dollar business that comes directly into people’s homes. According to one recent study, the adult entertainment industry makes more money annually than CBS, NBC, and ABC combined. Statistics like this one point to more than just a growing problem. They reveal just how deeply men and women in our culture are struggling.

Sexual addiction, whatever form it may take, is more than just the pursuit of physical gratification. It is the desperate grasping for intimacy and relationship. The power of sexual addiction is that it delivers a convincing counterfeit. Take pornography as an example. It can temporarily provide the user with a pseudo sense of intimacy without any of the risk of real relationship. A 2 dimensional woman will never reject the man she longingly gazes at through the monitor. But just like with all counterfeits, it never truly makes good on its promise. So, the gnawing hunger returns and with it brings intense shame.

As we wrestle with the conflict between our deep desires and our tendency toward counterfeits the words of C.S. Lewis come to mind. In his book, The Weight of Glory, he wrote "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

So, how does the process of recovery? How do we let go of this counterfeit? The first step is to venture out of shame induced isolation. So, often our addictions force us to hide in the shadows. We think to ourselves that if anyone else knew how we struggled they would run away in disgust. The truth of the matter is that we are never alone in our battle with addiction. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that, “no temptation has seized you except what is common to man.”

The only way to begin the journey of recovery is for us to risk what our addiction has insulated us from all along…real relationship. Real healing begins as we share our stories, fears, and failures with others we trust. It is in the context of relationship that we begin to experience the deeper desire for connection that we have been trying to fill with the counterfeits of sexual addiction.

The power of sexual addiction can never be challenged or broken simply by modifying certain behaviors. Like a weed in your garden, the root has to be treated or it will not stop growing no matter how many times you cut it down. Here is where we receive Lewis’ “offer of a holiday at sea.” God is inviting us to come out of the shadows of shame, explore the deep (and good) desires that lie at the root of our struggles, and to do neither alone.