I Can't Break My Adult Content Addiction

(With a Pastoral Word for the Church)

Dear Pastor Mike, I’m struggling with adult content* and can’t seem to break free. I’ve prayed and confessed many times, but victory never seems to last. Does God know I really want to honor Him? Is it possible that I want to honor Him and He won’t help me? Or maybe my desire isn’t real enough?

I’ve broken other addictions, like alcohol, but this one still has a hold on me. I feel like so much of my energy goes into not sinning. As a single guy, I keep hoping that once I get married, the struggle will finally go away.

My Response

Thank you for reaching out (and for allowing me to share this publicly). I want you to know right away that you are not alone. This is one of the most common confessions I hear, from men, and increasingly from women.

I’m grateful for your honesty.

Let me do four things:

First, acknowledge the struggle.

Second, speak to your desire to honor God.

Third, offer a brief word about decision-making and habit change.

Finally, issue a call, not only to you, but to the church. (Again, thanks for letting me share this.)

1. Acknowledging the Unique Struggle

So let me start where you already are.

Yes, this is sin.

And you are right to want to quit. For many reasons, including the way this industry has exploited countless vulnerable people, I think you should run from this.

But recognizing an addiction and actually breaking it are two very different things.

After years of listening to people’s stories, I’ve become convinced that online addictions are uniquely difficult. In the past, when someone struggled with alcohol, we could say, “Pour it out.” When food was the issue, “Get it out of the house.” That distance created space, and in that space between a person and their struggle, freedom could begin to be worked on.

But many people today cannot simply remove the source.

Work requires smartphones. Banking, authentication apps, communication tools, QR codes, for many people, daily life now demands the very technology that quietly feeds the addiction. It’s a bit like requiring a recovering alcoholic to carry a bottle of vodka everywhere and then shaming her when she takes a drink.

She would throw it out… if she could.

So let me say this clearly: I see the complication, and I don’t simply dismiss it.

2. Your Desire to Honor God

This part matters more than you may realize.

You came to me freely. No one forced you. You confessed your struggle, named the problem, and expressed genuine grief over it. That tells me something important.

When you have agency, you act rightly.

Much of addiction, however, often operates beneath full and sustained conscious choice, in what psychologists call automaticity. Habits become reflexes. The brain defaults before the heart has time to speak. When there is little distance between temptation and access, our ability to deliberate is greatly reduced. Remember the illustration above, requiring a recovering alcoholic to carry around an open bottle of liquor? Her victory would likely be a much harder road if she wasn’t allowed to throw it out.

Here is the key distinction:

Your desire is rightly ordered. Your habits are not.

That is very different from someone who wants to rebel against God.

Even Evagrius, one of the classic Christian Desert Fathers, wrote openly about lustful thoughts and taught that there is a distinction between a thought’s appearance, the attention given to it, consent, and the habits that form over time (it’s worth looking up if you get a chance).

The apostle Paul gives voice to this experience too:

“For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing… Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:19, 24, ESV)

This is not defiance. It is bondage and a cry for rescue.

Know this: I hear your cry.

Defiance and bondage are different things.

Let me say this plainly: I see your heart. And God does too. Now, let’s talk about those habits.

3. A Brief Word on Decision-Making and Change

The good news is that the brain can change. Neural pathways can be reshaped but rarely through willpower alone.

Can God miraculously heal in an instant? Yes. I have seen it.

But often God takes us on a journey that does more than merely turn a desire off; He works to heal us and make our desires whole, or “rightly ordered,” as Augustine of Hippo would say.

Healing usually requires what addiction counselors call friction, intentional barriers that slow us down long enough for the brain to reengage and choose differently. With “necessary” technology, this is harder, but it is not impossible.

Because your job won’t simply let you throw away your work phone, bank access, or communication tools, you’ll need help, creativity, and community. Yes, community. You will need others.

You may need to:

* Ask permission to install accountability software on your work phone

* Leave work devices at the office for a season, if possible

* Ask a roommate or trusted friend to hold onto your phone or laptop after a certain hour

* Create non-negotiable, device-free times and spaces, and seek permission from a boss or supervisor to adhere to them

* Change friend groups, or even jobs. Radical removal of access can be Biblical. Depending on the addiction, you may need to run from certain situations (Gen. 39) or separate yourself from them (Matt. 18), especially when they require you to stay close to what is killing your heart.

You will almost certainly need help. That is not weakness; it is wisdom.

Scripture reminds us:

“Two are better than one… For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow.” (Ecclesiastes 4:9–10, ESV)

A Necessary Word About Marriage

I also want to gently address one hope you mentioned.

Marriage is a gift, but it is not a cure for addiction. In many cases, it doesn’t remove the struggle so much as reveal it more clearly.

Marriage magnifies.

It magnifies both the good and the bad you bring into it. Bringing an unresolved addiction into marriage often multiplies pain rather than healing it.

Freedom is not something we wait for marriage to give us; it is something we pursue now, by God’s grace, so that marriage can be a place of shared joy rather than hidden shame.

4. A Call to the Church (Out of the darkness and into the light.)

Let me speak plainly, not only to you, but to the wider church.

The assumption that digital addictions are easily dismissed no longer fits the world we live in. And the idea that everyone who struggles online desires to rebel against God is false.

Like you, many people would “dump it down the drain” if they could; believe me, many really want to.

The church has rightly named these behaviors as destructive. But too often, we’ve done so in ways that leave people trapped in shame rather than offering a real way to walk in the light.

Yes, digital addiction is similar to other addictions, but how we address digital addictions must match the reality of the world people live in.

I have heard people say; “The church is a hospital for sinners, not a cruise ship for saints.”

If we want people to find real freedom, we must bring the complexities of digital addiction into the open, without taboos, without fear, and without flattening every story into the same moral category.

For those who desire the light, our calling is not merely to warn, but to walk with them toward it.

Final Thoughts

I strongly encourage you to consider an addiction recovery group or counseling. These spaces often surprise people, not with condemnation, but with companionship; not with shame, but with hope.

This is not the time to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and simply apply more willpower. It’s time to humbly ask for help and inconvenience yourself to get it.

When you find a ministry that helps lead you into the light, rather than simply shaming your dark places, you begin to find the thing you are actually asking for: a rightly ordered life.

Grace does not mean effort is unnecessary. It means effort is no longer lonely.

And remember this promise:

“He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6, ESV)

That good work has already begun.

* He used a different word. I’ve replaced it with “adult content” to avoid censorship.