Facing addictionSteve suffers the consequences
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By COREY TAULE
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ctaule@postregister.com
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Over the next few days, the Post Register will be running stories examining the impact of pornography and sexual addiction on eastern Idaho and one local family, whose real names aren't being used. These stories contain adult content. The receptionist at the convention was young, pretty and friendly. "Steve," finished with graduate school, was attending a daylong meeting at a hotel in the Western city where he and "Rebecca" and their three kids had just settled. "What are you guys doing tonight?" she asked Steve and his colleagues. "We don't have anything going," Steve answered. After the meeting, the crowd at the convention desk dwindled to Steve, one friend and the receptionist. The friend left and Steve followed the woman to her motel room. Steve had told Rebecca he might have to work after the conference. "Steve's not here," Rebecca was told when she called his office. She called Steve's cell phone. Nothing. She called Steve's cell phone again. Nothing. All night. Steve had left his phone in the car, where its ring wouldn't plague his conscience. Steve had never stayed out all night. Rebecca knew what he was doing, and somewhere in his mind Steve understood that she was home with his children suffering through the worst night of her life. But he wouldn't leave and wouldn't call. Steve went straight to work the next morning and when he got home, Rebecca was sobbing. Rebecca called Steve's dad. "I don't want to leave, but I feel like I want to leave," she told him. It was the first time she'd said it out loud. To Steve, she repeated the question they had not been able to answer. "Why, why do you do this?" Rebecca screamed at him. "I don't know," he answered through his tears. Another new bishop. Another confession. Steve had begun to consider his struggle hopeless and thought that perhaps he ought to give up and simply immerse himself in the lifestyle his church had warned him against since he was a boy: immoral, irresponsible, self-indulgent. The move to the West had kept Steve and Rebecca so busy that they didn't have time to think about their problems. But abstinence is not the same as healing, and it was only a matter of time before Steve succumbed to temptation. Done crying, Rebecca sat in the oversized maroon chair to which she often retreated for solace. Over and over, she found herself returning to Moroni 7:40-47: I would speak unto you concerning hope, and But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever. Faith and hope must go together, she reasoned. I need to forgive Steve. If I'm kind and loving, he'll find the strength to change. Often she found herself thinking not about her husband, but the little boy who stumbled onto that picture of the naked blonde and later was manipulated by a friend's teenage brother. He didn't choose to become this person, she thought. Things out of his control helped mold who he is. Counselors say there comes a time when a troubled marriage becomes detrimental to children. But Rebecca never got to that point. She couldn't take Steve's kids from him, they loved him, and he loved them. She'd stick it out, no matter how bad he got. "At least my kids won't have to be the product of divorce," she thought, sinking deep into her maroon chair. The church's High Council requests that you appear at this time, the certified letter began. Whether you show up or not, a judgment will be made, the letter continued. It would be better if you were there. Rebecca was so sure Steve would be excommunicated from the Mormon church that she bought him underwear. If expelled, he'd no longer be able to wear the sacred undergarments worn by members of the church in good standing. He didn't have anything else. Steve and his dad met Rebecca in a foyer outside the High Council room of their local stake center. The door opened and Steve walked into the High Council room alone. He wore a white shirt, tie and slacks. His hands were ice cold and clammy. Twelve men, ranging in age from 30 to 70, sat around a dark wooden table that dominated the large rectangular room. Six men represented Steve. Six represented the church. Steve didn't know who was on his side, just that he was about to be judged. They'd left a seat open for him. He faced the stake president and his two counselors. Staring down from the wall behind them were portraits of the LDS church's First Presidency, including President Gordon B. Hinckley, and the 12 apostles, leaders of the worldwide church. "What have you done?" "Has this happened before?" Steve held back nothing. Coast to coast, boyhood through last week. Some of the men jotted notes on small pads in front of them. Locked out in the foyer, Steve's father and Rebecca made small talk. Time dragged on. Steve's dad disappeared for a while, leaving Rebecca alone with the hum of the fluorescent lights and not even a magazine to flip through. She had rushed to the Stake Center after teaching a Women's Relief Society lesson: "Ideas for Family Home Evening." But she felt a kind of peace. Steve's dad returned and finally Steve emerged two hours after he had walked through the door. The High Council met for 30 minutes and then called Steve, his father and Rebecca back into the room. "We prayed about this," the stake president said. "We feel very strongly that the Lord has answered our prayers. Our decision ... you will be excommunicated." Just like that, the Temple that had been the center of his life was now off-limits. He could not baptize his children into the church. He was no longer sealed to his family for eternity. Raised LDS, Steve had been cast out from the one thing that had been a constant in his life. He had yet to celebrate his 30th birthday. One by one, all 12 members of the High Council hugged Steve. Several wept. "We don't want this, but this is your step to get back," one told him. Another man offered this: His son had been excommunicated, but he'd worked his way back into the church. And I beheld multitudes of people who were sick, and who were afflicted with all manner of diseases, Steve read, sitting at his kitchen table before work, but once-familiar passages such as 1 Nephi 11:31 were now fuzzy in his mind. And with devils and unclean spirits; and the angel spake and showed all these things unto me. And they were healed by the power of the Lamb of God; and the devils and the unclean spirits were cast out. This much he got: Sickness could be healed, but only through his savior. Steve no longer had to live by the strict guidelines members of the LDS church accept. He didn't have to tithe 10 percent of his paycheck. He could drink a beer after work or a steaming mug of coffee with breakfast. He could cuss a blue streak after shanking his 9-iron into the bunker without apology. He could even masturbate to Internet porn without needing to confess. But now Steve wanted to live by these rules more than ever. Getting kicked out had been a spiritual and uplifting experience, akin in Steve's mind to receiving a speeding ticket. If you want your record clear, he reasoned, you've got to attend driving school and stop getting tickets. But for a decade he'd been unable. No matter how deep the shame and guilt, he returned to pornography. No matter how hard he tried to solve the problem himself, Steve would cheat on his wife. Dr. Judith Reisman, who has been studying pornography's impact on the human brain for decades, compares this pattern to researcher B.F. Skinner's famous rats in a box. The rats are conditioned to hit the lever and get their reward. Even if they are allowed to leave, the rats remain. The addict, Reisman said, remains chained to his pattern in order to earn his "reward." She calls it "modern slavery." After Steve's excommunication, Rebecca's dad suggested Steve see her cousin, a psychologist with a solid reputation. "He's really good and he deals with this," Rebecca's father said. Steve's experience with the counselor back East had soured him on the profession. Plus, to attend the sessions, he'd have to take eight hours off every week, which cut into his paycheck, a double expense. But he decided to give it another shot. The first session began with Steve telling Rebecca's cousin about the counselor they saw back East. "I don't want that to happen this time," Steve told him. Rebecca's cousin shook his head in disgust and Steve began to open up, telling his story in the same detail he had given to the High Council. Rebecca's cousin looked at Steve, a man of science and substantial education, and asked, "Have you ever had the thought that you have an addiction?" An addiction? Addicts drink Old Crow until their livers thicken and shut down. Addicts shoot smack until the skin on their faces breaks out in large sores resembling wasp stings. Addicts smoke Pall Malls until a short-tempered nursing home employee hooks them up to an oxygen tank and wheels them into a dirty room to watch daytime television. An addict? Am I an addict, Steve asked himself. The scientist in him broke down the problem and concluded: You're addicted when you try to stop and you can't. He had every reason to stop. He had taken huge risks to feed his addiction. He had tried and failed repeatedly to stop looking at online porn and cheating on his wife. He couldn't do it. "I am an addict," he thought. "I am a sex addict." The idea gave Rebecca some relief. For all these years, she'd wondered: "What am I doing wrong that makes him go to other women?" Steve continued to attend counseling and live the Mormon lifestyle. He felt better and things were good at home. But six months into counseling, the couple moved again, this time to eastern Idaho. In a new town, they did not seek a new counselor. A new co-worker and her husband invited Steve on an outing. And then another, but this time the husband couldn't make it. Experience told Steve where this could lead, but he couldn't say no. One day, while sitting together in his car, their hands touched and that was all it took. The affair lasted a couple of months, until after church one day, Steve took Rebecca into their bedroom, sat with her on the bed, and said, "I've got something to tell you." The move had solved nothing. Only this time it would not go away. Steve's co-worker did not want to end the affair. She kept calling his cell phone and sending him text messages. Rebecca wrote the woman a letter and when that didn't end it, called her and said with fierce determination, "You cannot call him. You cannot text him." That ended the harassment, but not Rebecca's heartache. She'd dared to believe their troubles were over. It was beginning to look as though she'd have to keep reliving this same story over and over again. COMING WEDNESDAY: Steve's road to recovery is long
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