The Story of Jack
A person hooked on pornography develops a one-track mind. His focus in life becomes single-minded and his view of others, especially of women, narrows.
In her book An Affair of the Mind, Laurie Hall shares the true-life story of her husband Jack, who had been severely addicted to pornography for over 20 years. She writes:
After indulging in fantasy for more than 20 years, Jack lost his ability to think about anything else. Dwelling so much on that which wasn’t true made him unable to think about that which was true. He lost his common sense and his ability to solve problems.
My husband, once a brilliant engineer, couldn’t even figure out how to turn a freezer so it would fit through the door into the cellar. He was absentminded in the extreme. He’d turn on the stove to make tea, forget to put the kettle on, and just walk out of the kitchen with the burner glowing red. He’d put wood into the wood stove and leave the door open, causing chimney fires. In the morning, it wasn’t unusual to find the outside door standing wide open. He’d have gone out for something the night before and forgotten to close it when he came in. Sometimes, when someone would ask him a question, he would start to answer, only to stop halfway into the reply and then freeze with his mouth open. His mind had gone completely blank. Jack always said he wanted other people to think he had it all together. So, for a long time, when other people were around, he’d manage the Herculean effort of staying focused enough so that only the most alert could see that he wasn’t tracking well. In the end, though, his checking out became apparent to people besides the children and me. Too much time fantasizing meant that he also lost his ability to do his work well. Finally, the man who was recognized three times as an outstanding employee was fired for being incompetent and lying to his boss. Once a regional manager for a large company, overseeing millions of dollars worth of equipment and managing half a dozen men, Jack had an expense account, a cellular phone, a company vehicle, and a comfortable middle-class salary.
Today, he is doing production work, packing 12-ounce bags of chocolates at $7.25 an hour. He stands at an assembly line seven-and-a-half hours a day, catching bags that come off the machine at a rate of 71 a minute. Then he puts them into boxes-24 to a box. Sometimes he scrapes chocolate off the factory floor. And every day when he leaves home, he carries his briefcase. If he forgets it, he comes back in to get it. He needs to remember what he was before he was brought to a piece of bread by means of a whorish woman. (Proverbs 6:26)
Laurie felt strongly that her husband had somehow damaged his brain and lost touch with reality through his pornography viewing and fantasizing. Of course, having no scientific backing for this theory, most people thought it was a ridiculous assumption. Still she writes: It wasn’t until Jack and I were separated and we met with Dr. Ron Miller that my observations were verified. After examining Jack, Dr. Miller looked at him and said: “You’ve destroyed your mind by fantasizing. You’ve dug a deep channel going in one direction. The rest of your mind is atrophied!”
CYPSA is committed in helping youth with porn addiction problems.
