/ By admindesert

Why I Chose Porn Addiction Rehab At Desert Solace – The Most Important Choice I’ve Ever Made

Many people have asked me over the years why I made the decision to do my porn addiction rehab at Desert Solace instead of choosing other options, like individual outpatient therapy with a CSAT (certified sexual addiction) therapist, or just going to 12-step support groups like Sexaholics Anonymous. I figure if the people I know are asking me this question, it’s possible that there’s a lot of people out there who are considering getting more intensive treatment for a porn or sex addiction, but don’t know anyone who has actually gone to rehab for porn addiction. If that’s you, you’re in the right place!

This post is going to be a bit more personal for me than other posts because I’ll be sharing from my own experience. Keep in mind that I’m not a therapist or an expert on sexual addiction treatment. However, I have been through my own personal recovery for porn addiction and continue to live and work my own recovery going on five years now. I’ve sponsored dozens of men through SA and I’ve worked for an addiction treatment center during those five years. So I feel like I know some things about recovery and I’ll be sharing from that perspective.

My Struggle with Addiction

I could fill up pages and pages with my own story of addiction, but I don’t have room for that here and it’s not necessary to answer the question of why I chose porn addiction rehab over other options. What’s important to know is that I started my addiction when I was around 12. That was when I first discovered pornography on the internet and how easy it was to access.

I was extremely ashamed of my porn usage and I felt like I had no choice but to hide it. I felt like I was addicted to it, but couldn’t reach out to anyone for help. I couldn’t understand why I felt so good while using porn, but so terrible when I wasn’t, which just made me want to go to porn more and more to make me feel better.

Over the years, I tried everything I could to stop looking at porn on my own. Nothing worked. I continued to hide my porn addiction from everyone in my life. This went on for 28 years. I developed constant anxiety and then panic attacks, and eventually full-blown depression. I blamed it on my job, but looking back it was clear that the stress of the addiction was slowly killing me. I saw several therapists, hoping they could help me with my anxiety and depression but they didn’t even see my pornography usage as a problem.

In the summer of 2018, I hit rock bottom. I was depressed and had constant suicidal thoughts.

So I finally made the hardest decision of my life – to disclose everything to my wife. It was both the worst day of my life and the best day. I caused a lot of damage to her that day with my betrayal, but I also took the first step toward getting better. (Side note – therapists recommend doing a disclosure with a therapist present to help your wife process the information and hopefully reduce some of the trauma that can be caused by a disclosure, so don’t do what I did!)

After the disclosure I felt better because I was finally being honest for the first time ever, but I knew that my addiction wasn’t magically gone. I came to the realization that I needed professional help. 12-step meetings wouldn’t cut it and I didn’t think that weekly sessions with a therapist would cut it either. I needed something more intensive. I texted my wife and told her, “I need help. I don’t know if there is a rehab out there for porn addiction, but if there is, I will go to it.” At the time, I didn’t think that there was such a thing as porn addiction rehab. It turns out, one of them wasn’t even that far away from where I lived.

My wife texted me back and said, “If you’re serious, we can find you help.” So we started the process of looking into different treatment centers. I called numerous porn addiction rehabs around the country. Most of them made me feel like just another paycheck to them, like they didn’t care about my recovery at all. The discussion basically came down to how long the program was and how much it cost. The longest program we could find was 45 days and it cost around $65,000. 

Eventually, I found Desert Solace while doing Google searches for different porn addiction rehabs. I called my wife to tell her that there was a porn addiction rehab not far from where we lived at the time and she said that she had already been on the phone with the owner and his wife. This was the first time she’d spoken to someone who was open about their own experience with pornography addiction and betrayal trauma. They also gave her the very real feeling that they cared about us as people and not as a paycheck.  It was also the first time she felt real hope.

Not only did we feel a stronger personal connection to Desert Solace, but it was also much less expensive than any of the other porn addiction rehabs we called and the program was designed to be 90 days. From what I’d read about porn addiction recovery, the chances of achieving full recovery are much higher when staying in inpatient treatment for longer than 60 days.  

We discussed our options together and finally decided that the best way to get full recovery from my porn addiction was to go to Desert Solace for 90 days. Even though I was scared to leave my family and my work for 3 months, I felt like I was going to the right place and looking back, it was maybe the best decision I’ve ever made for myself and for my family.

Advantages to Porn Addiction Rehab vs. Outpatient Treatment for Sex and Porn Addiction

struggling with porn addiction in therapy

Like I said above, going to porn addiction rehab at Desert Solace wasn’t a decision we took lightly. I had the welfare of my wife and children to consider. I also had my own business at the time with employees and clients who depended on me. Considering leaving all that for 90 days was a difficult pill to swallow. There was also the cost to consider. Spending thousands of dollars on treatment for myself felt very selfish.

However, the alternatives just didn’t seem like they would be enough to help me overcome a porn addiction that had slowly destroyed my life over a 28 year period. The experiences I had working with therapists in the past told me that meeting with a therapist once a week just wouldn’t be enough. And most of the therapists I looked into didn’t even specialize in treating sex and pornography addictions.

The most important factor to me was that I needed to get away from my environment for a period of time. I now understand that our environments are full of triggers that constantly pull us back into addiction, whether we are aware of it or not. I needed to remove myself from daily life, with all the stresses and triggers so I could give my brain the time it needed to heal. That way, when I returned home I was better able to change my environment to fit my new life of recovery. 

If I had stayed home and met with a therapist once a week, I wouldn’t have had the strength or perspective to be able to overcome my addiction, because I’d be continually dealing with the stress of life on top of the stress of my addiction while trying to learn how to get out of it.  It would be like trying to teach someone to swim while they’re drowning in the middle of the ocean. For me, outpatient porn addiction treatment just wasn’t enough.

Porn Addiction Rehab vs. 12-Step Meetings for Sex and Porn Addiction

I hear a lot of people recommend going to 12-step meetings to overcome sex addiction or porn addiction. I believe very strongly that 12-step meetings are a major component to recovery from addiction and I attend meetings weekly. But 12-step meetings are for support, they aren’t actual therapy.

There are typically no therapists in the meetings and for the most part, 12-step meetings focus on behavioral change rather than getting to the actual root of the issue that is causing the addiction. This is why you will see so many men spinning their wheels in these meetings, achieving no more than a few months of sobriety before relapsing. 

These meetings are better than nothing and if someone can’t afford actual treatment with a therapist who specializes in sex addiction treatment (CSAT), then this might be the best option. But for lasting and real recovery, there’s nothing that can beat residential porn addiction rehab like that provided at Desert Solace.

Porn Addiction Rehab vs. Intensive Outpatient Programs for Sex and Porn Addiction

Even though I believe that Desert Solace is the best porn addiction rehab anywhere, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other options. I’ve spoken to many men who have chosen to go to 14-day intensive treatment programs for help with their porn addiction. I can tell you that 14 days isn’t anywhere near enough time to overcome an addiction.

Years of living in addiction creates neuropathways in the brain that are difficult to change. Research has shown that it takes at least 60 days for the brain to even start rewiring itself and to create new pathways. Most people haven’t even established a decent relationship with a therapist in 14 days, let alone 30.

I get that people want a quick and easy solution to overcoming addiction. When they are promised that they can overcome an addiction in just 14 days, or even 28 days, of course they are going to be drawn to that over doing 60 or 90 days in inpatient porn addiction rehab. But the truth is that there is no quick and easy way to overcome addiction. It takes a lot of therapy and time away from their environment. Anyone can get a lot of therapy in a short amount of time, but if you don’t add the ingredient of time to the equation, you’re not going to get the results you want.

Hopefully this answers your questions on why it’s important to choose porn addiction rehab at a place like Desert Solace over other options. If you have any other questions, please feel free to call us or submit a contact request.

Read More Articles About Porn Addiction Recovery