Email from a 423 Men Member

I just wanted to write and say thank you for letting me be a part of 423 and the (previously untameable) freedom I've found from it.

Last year March I joined 423 Men after years and years of sexual addiction, specifically to porn and masturbation.

It was my drug, my way of "coping" with bad finances, insecurities, stress; Life. I was introduced to porn at the age of 11, and it hooked deeply into me.

At first it wasn't anything more than "curiosity". I would peek at it every now and then, but it wasn't an addiction.

By high school I was beginning to be more brazen and calloused towards it. I would view whatever I could online, and would rarely get caught. So it was just easy access, and became a past time for me.

In late high school, and into college, it became a full-fledged addiction that ravaged my relationship with God, twisted my mind into a constant preoccupation with the female body, and made me act like any other drug addict. If I got the craving for some kind of image or to act out sexually, it was all I could think of or do until I looked at porn. I would leave hanging out with friends or skip class or be late for work sometimes just because I was so caught up with it. That's the nature of an addiction. John Mark mentioned how there were staggering statistics of people looking at porn every week. For me, it was every single day.

Now, at 28, I've finally come free from it's grasp. I haven't looked at porn or had the strong desire to for months on end, and there is a sense of purity and freedom I've never before felt, based solely on God's work through 423 to help me face what drove me to find comfort in porn, and instead to fill my time and thoughts with healthy, Godly past times and thoughts.

Without 423 Men today, right now, I would be single, viewing porn daily, and on a very dark, very bleak, very shameful road. God has saved me from my past, and I am experiencing the future, afresh, every moment of freedom I'm free from sexual sin.

Thanks again, Dave! This program has, literally, saved and changed lives.

~Rob S.