Habit or Addiction?

During the summer we might have some more free time, we can often fall into some old habits or addictions. There is a subtle difference between the two, but basically a habit is something that we automatically do, whether good or bad, because we are used to doing it. An addiction on the other hand, is something that we do because we must do it and we often have little power on our own to stop it. We all know that addictions can cause major issues, we know that smoking can cause health issues, addictive use of alcohol and drugs can seriously affect our lives. Those are the addictions that most people think of when we mention addictions, but out there that are not often talked about; addictive hoarding, shopping and one that I am going to focus on in this article, pornography. It is one of the most addictive things out there and while many people in our society do not see it as a problem, it is something that can ruin lives. It can drive a wedge in a marriage, change the way we see others, and can lead to other destructive behaviors. There are some scary statistics about it, the average age for the first viewing of hard-core pornography is now under 10 and 65% of the people between the ages of 13-24 actively seek it out at least weekly! It is commonly thought to be just a problem with males, but more and more, females are increasingly becoming addicts as well, with teens being the highest bracket affected. These statistics are kind of scary, and should be for parents of young children. We normally do not think that we should discuss this with young children, but we should do it in an appropriate way. For teens it should be at a higher level, and with the younger ones, we should do it in a way that is appropriate for them, a good resource is a book called “good pictures, bad pictures” they also make a junior version of it. For electronic devices, there are a number of decent filters out there that can help to block access, most are not perfect, but they can help.

For those who may be currently struggling with an addiction, there is support available as well. There are a number of good websites available fightthenewdrug.org is a pretty decent one, as well as some good filtering programs Covenanteyes is a pretty good one. In a priest study day a few years ago, we had a priest from another diocese talk about his own struggle and overcoming of his addiction. www.assessingpornaddiction.com is a good self-check for ourselves but we need to be honest with ourselves. He recommended a good process to get us through an addiction. Having a good and open Confession is a great start to it, second is to close off our access to porn, third is having accountability to someone, whether it be a spouse or close friend, fourth is counseling, Catholic Charities counseling services is a good starting place, and fifth is to stay vigilant! I know that this is not a fun topic, but it is one that is important and with God’s help, we can overcome anything.

God bless,
Fr. Ken