On the Prayer Wall, I once read a comment from someone who was inquiring why there seemed to be so little success in the endeavor to refrain from internet porn. He presented his point of view in a non-judgmental way, and the question certainly is valid.

I once read a book about recovery and relapse. The counselor stated that in order to understand how addicts relapse, we must understand how they recover. The steps that are taken when one is healing are the same ones that are avoided when one is bound for relapse. For example, there is a phrase in recovery referred to as "adjustment reaction." These reactions are normal emotional and behavioral responses to the changes in a person's life once he begins abstaining from pornographic viewing. A sense of health and peace and God's assistance certainly is experienced, but so too are sentiments of longing to view again, feeling that one really wasn't so bad off in the doing, restlessness and irritability. Tools that are absolutely necessary for maintaining health and holiness--such as prayer, charitable activity and accountability--are gradually excluded from one's daily routine because the adjustment to change is uncomfortable.

Even before a person returns to internet porn, these fatal departures from recovery are leading up to a relapse. One can and so often says, "I know what I am supposed to be doing in order to stay away from this sickness." However, it is the doing of what we know that makes all the difference. Sustained healthy habits of recovery are the only thing that can help the porn addict. Discovering and using recovery tools helps interrupt the dysfunctions which occur when a person begins reacting to the adjustment of sane living.

The author goes on to say that one must make a commitment to become involved in a daily structured program, learning or re-learning healthy patterns of living. For recovery carries with it the responsibility of change. And one can never be both in recovery and relapse at the same time. We are always doing either one or the other. So one must be watchful for indicators of relapse, which sometimes are quite subtle, but detectable nonetheless.

Finally, it is important to remember that healing is a process. In fact, it is a life-long work in progress. And while we do the prep-work necessary for the healing to take place, it is God who does the healing. As one Jesuit insightfully stated, the purpose of the "dark night of the soul" is so that the Lord can move--in areas where we cannot see what is happening--and do correctly and in time what we in our haste would destroy through the need to fix things immediately.

This is not pessimism or an offering of loopholes. It is just a reminder that while miracles abound, everything is not going to jump into its proper place right away. It took time to become unhealthy. It will take time to become whole. With God, that time will come. 

 -Fr. Jim

Reader's please take the time to read the many other contributing works by Father Jim.