Porn addiction is the “Addiction No One Talks About” and Joshua Shea is here to knock that door down & bring to light the addiction that stays in the shadows of everyday life.
Growing up, his family was very conservative and at 7 years old he was sexually and mentally abused by a babysitter. At age 12, he started drinking and watching hard-core pornography after an older cousin introduced it to him one day. Then at 14, he got drunk for the first-time sneaking champagne at a wedding.
In his teenage years, he started drinking & watching porn heavily, and eventually, it consumed his life. He was able to go to a mom & pop style video store and rent a couple of adult films every day & buy his beer at the local mini-mart. Every day, multiple times a day, it would eventually distort his reality of what a healthy relationship is supposed to be. It would distort the way he saw women, and how he interacted with his own wife & kids.
There was a point where it all came crashing down, and he knew he needed to get help. In March of 2014, the Main State Police came to his door. After being off his bi-polar medication for some time, he was caught in a sting operation where one of the women he was watching was an underage female. This was the reality check that he needed, and during that ride in the back of the cop car, he says it was almost like a therapy session. He says those officers basically saved his life. He served 6 months in jail.
Looking back now, he says he lost his 20’s and most of his 30’s due to his addictions to porn & alcohol. With porn, the addiction for him was that no one says “no” and this idea would make him feel empowered. They wouldn’t tell him to take out the trash or that he did badly at work that week. He was disconnected from reality, from his own wife and kids & was not involved in their lives the way he should have been.
During his research into his own addiction, he found that it was really difficult to find comprehensive and accurate information on pornography addiction, so he decided to write his own self-help book. Something came to him & said, “You need to tell your story”. Dealing with this issue & recovering for over 6 years, he knew he had the knowledge & experience that would educate people going through porn addiction.
Not only men, but women would reach out to him about “Betrayal Trauma” and dealing with other side effects of someone else’s addiction, that are the unintended victims of pornography addicts. He also makes the point that 1 in 3 young adults under the age of 30 think they watch too much porn, which is a real problem that needs to be addressed without stigma.
Now Joshua is a successful author, counselor, and certified “Betrayal Trauma Coach” to help people going through this taboo type of addiction. He finds the best way to get through to an addict of porn, is to go through the wife or girlfriend first, and then when shame is out of the picture, they are receptive to change. He makes the point that he is not anti-pornography, but rather truly educating people the same way we do with drug & alcohol counseling.
This is Joshua Shea in his own words, on Knockin’ Doorz Down.
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