Anna Lembke

He was still able to function as a father, as husband, he was successful in his profession.

But with the advent of the internet, and especially in the early 2000s, the smartphone,

He found that this pursuit of his became unmanageable, which is to say that he was using more and more pornography for more hours every day, late into the night, not showing up at a conference that he was supposed to speak at, prepared to give that speech because he had been up the entire night before watching pornography, repeatedly masturbating.

And over time, he needed more and more potent forms to get the same effect.

So he escalated from sort of vanilla toast pornography to more deviant forms of pornography.

And then pornography itself wasn't adequate.

So then he was going to live shows.

and meeting up with prostitutes.

And eventually, you know, his addiction progressed to the point where he was going into chat rooms, doing dangerous things with other people in chat rooms, spending all of his available time engaged in this activity to the point that essentially his life completely fell apart.

His wife left him.

And he was thinking about ending his life and even found a spot near his office where he thought about hanging himself.

My life was good then.

You know, my marriage was fine.

My kids were healthy.

My work was rewarding and meaningful.

I was in relatively good health for a 40-ish year old woman.

So things were good.

Well, you know, I was turned on to the Twilight Saga when I dropped my kids off at elementary school and there was a group of moms clustered around.

Megan was one of the moms, my friend.

And