“What’s the one piece of advice you would give
to someone struggling with porn addiction?”
Matt Dobschuetz is a recovered porn addict and host of the Pornfree Radio podcast. Matt also leads a local recovery group in his local church near Chicago.
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Podcast: Pornfree Radio
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Transcript
Steve: Hey guys! Steve here with Belt of Truth Ministries. I’ve got Matt Dobschuetz on the line. Matt’s a recovered porn addict and host of the Porn Free Radio Podcast. Matt also leads a recover group in his local church near Chicago. So Matt, thanks for joining us today.
Matt: Yeah, thanks Stephen.
Steve: Yeah. Well I got a question for you. What’s the one piece of advice that you would give to somebody struggling with porn addiction?
Matt: Well the one thing that really helped me when I first went to my very first sort of recover group in 2001, was the leader got up and he quoted G.K. Chesterton and he said basically this quote, “anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” And the way I heard it, as someone who had struggled with trying to recover on my own and going through a cycle of repentance, or shame and repentance and then right back to the port and then going back and telling God I was never going to do this again and lying and hiding all that stuff. When I heard that quote, “anything worth doing is worth doing badly” I was like you know what, I’m going to really give this a try and I’m going to try to do everything possible even if I look bad, even if I’m not perfect and I’m going to come to this group every week and be honest and I’m going to trust people who have gone through this. I’m going to basically not worry about what I look like and worry about how I’m looking, but I’m just going to work on pursuing this in a new way. And so it’s interesting because I went to this group and I remember one thing that they did is they required you not to abstain from alcohol for the 9 months that you were in the group. I remember going out to beers with my co-workers a couple of weeks after I started, and I ordered a Sprite. It was like really conspicuous because people would normally see me have a beer. And they asked me “Matt, why are you having a Sprite?” At that moment I realized I could either tell my co-workers, who weren’t people of faith, the truth that I was a porn addict, that I was in a recovery group, and that I was working on this and it was so important to me that I was following this group’s rules just to get the breakthrough, or I could hide and play it off or something. And so I just made a decision then to just start telling people. If someone asked about what was going on with me, I was honest about my recovery. I wasn’t perfect back then, but that sort of commitment to honesty and even looking bad and being humble really broke through the self-dependence that I had really cultivated in my hidden addiction. I know you work or you blog for XXXChurch, and there was a quote by Paul Robinson, one of the guys who also blogs there, and he just talked about this idea of getting to a point of realizing in a recovery that it doesn’t mean if we acted out last night or if we’ve been 10 years sober, we’re no more loved by God. God loves us equally, regardless of where we’re at in our recovery and how perfect we’ve been doing things. And so the truth is, is that a lot of times we fall into this perfectionism, even as addicts, that if we can’t do this perfect, then we believe the lie that we can’t do this. And the truth is, is we can’t do it perfect but we can do this. And God is in the process with us and he’s really using this as an opportunity to refine us and to grow us. And some of my biggest…I’d love to say in 2001 I went cold turkey and that was the end. I had no more relapses or resets, but that’s not true. There were a few here and there through the years. But each time that happened, there was more refining of my character. There were new breakthroughs, new levels of intimacy with my wife, new levels of honesty. And it took some of those falls to really get to the bottom. That’s what I’d say. Anything worth doing is worth doing badly, so don’t be afraid to look bad and perfectionism shouldn’t be your goal.
Steve: I think that’s excellent advice. I totally agree with all that. Thanks Matt.
Matt: Cool!
Steve: Tell people where they can find out more about you online.
Matt: Well I host a podcast at pornfreeradio.com. It’s also on iTunes and Stitcher. It’s a podcast for motivated guys who want to give up porn. It’s a place to get hope and take action.
Steve: Okay. Well we’ll be sure to link to that in the show notes. Thanks again for your time and I wish you the best of luck in your ministry.
Matt: Yeah. And keep up the good writing.
Steve: Thank you. See you Matt.
Matt: See you.
