I’ve been clean for over 5 years now and thought I’d share my experiences in case it helped anyone else! This is very hard for me to talk about because when what happened happens people always assume guilt and muck sticks! But hopefully it can help someone avoid similar issues!

So my story starts when I was a preteen and I started to find my dads porn mags! They weren’t exactly well hidden and they were quite hardcore, this was my first real exposure to anything sexual except the odd embarrassing wet dreams! Then as i was a bit of a tech whiz as a kid we ended up with computers and broadband before most of my peers! The home computer kept getting viruses and after looking through my dads browser history which he knew nothing about I was exposed to loads of porn! Ironically I was worried about getting into trouble and so I never said anything and every now and then I would take a peek at the history!

This was the start of a very long addiction, I had various girlfriends and did everything I could to hide it, I tried to stop and would relapse every few months! I later married and wanted to ask my wife for help but didn’t know how to tell her that I’d been lying to her about it for our entire relationship!

Like most addictions I’ve read about, I wasn’t getting as much from it so I’d do more and more and started looking at more and more extreme things (nothing illegal but maybe pushing the boundaries).

Then in my mid-thirties I had a mental breakdown after being over worked in my job for long period of time and of course my addiction got worse, I’d go on various porn sites and I’d end up on adult chats and basically I’d talk about whatever anyone wanted and I’d basically get off to porn and by winding up people in chat by trying to generate as much outrage as I could! Anything to invoke a response!

A few months later I was just getting my life back on track after leaving the job which broke me, finding new work, and things had settled down I was once again trying to go through my period of abstinence, hoping that this would be the time that I got over it! I was working away and talking to my wife on the phone and I could tell something was wrong but she couldn’t tell me what was wrong and I was worried about her! So I decided to head home to her and was almost home when I was pulled over by the police

I made no resistance as it was 2am and I was shattered and barely knew what was going on but I was cuffed and thrown in a cell! Being quite claustrophobic this was an experience that would haunt me, I got no sleep, hours passed with me freaking out and I was still really none the wiser over what I was really accused of! It wasn’t for some time after that I was pulled into an interview room where my appointed lawyer explained it all to me!

Apparently while I was on one of the chat rooms months earlier I said something which raised some red flags and that caused them to investigate me! Now let me be clear I never did what I was accused of I had a conversation on a chat room largely led by an undercover police officer who basically engineered the conversation to say what they wanted me to!

That was enough apparently for them to head to my home and confiscate ever piece of technology and throw me in a cell! I then explained to the lawyer who was clear that they had no evidence of any actual wrongdoing and then I likewise explained to the officers about it all! I spent hours in an interview while they expertly tried to twist my words to their own meaning! I gave them all my passwords and they took my personal and work laptops and let me go pending investigation!

I then go home and of course have to explain everything to my wife! At this point i had nothing left to hide regarding my porn addiction so I just told her everything, she’s been told what I was accused of but no details so I explain it all and apologised for what I had done! At this point I feel oddly liberated, my life feels over and i don’t see how my life could ever recover after something like this!

After an awful few months I am cleared of all allegations and was never even charged with an offense, my devices are returned and I’m able to start trying to rebuild my relationship which obviously takes a lot of work! After our reunion, my wife has been awfully supportive which has helped no end!

Obviously the trauma of all this has created a mass aversion to anything porn, even the light sex in most tv series these days just repulses me! My marriage is now much improved as I’m able to be honest about everything! Yes there is still a massive amount of shame about this but my wife isn’t adding to that! Believe it or not our sex life is also better as I’m able to give her my all!

Obviously, mine is an extreme story but i would urge you all to not let it get quite as far as mine! Porn addictions is a real thing and like all addictions can escalate and is very difficult to overcome on your own! Seek help, your loved ones will probably be far more supportive than you think and can really help you!