Running from Barnaby
Porn, cigarettes, fast food, alcohol, and weed are not the real problems that kept me addicted.
They’re not even the deepest reason I kept returning to them.
Earlier this week, I ran a five-year audit on my spending and discovered that I had spent thousands of dollars on pornography, nicotine, and fast food. At first, I thought the problem was the money.
Then I thought the problem was the system.
It certainly feels like we live inside one giant casino. Porn apps, cigarettes, alcohol, fast food, gambling, social media, and endless subscriptions all function like slot machines. They offer temporary relief in exchange for time, attention, and money.
I call this the Casino Effect.
The slot machines are different, but the loop is the same:
Cue → Craving → Purchase → Relief → Repeat
The casino profits every time the wheel spins. But after thinking about it more, I realized something unsettling.
The casino wasn’t the deepest problem. The products weren’t the deepest problem.
The question I kept coming back to was: What was I trying to get relief from?
For years, I assumed my addictions were attempts to pursue pleasure.
Now I wonder if they were attempts to escape discomfort.
Not just stress. Not just boredom. Not even pornography itself.
The deeper pattern was relief.
Every cigarette offered relief.
Every drink offered relief.
Every porn session offered relief.
The question was never, “Why do I keep seeking pleasure?”
The question was, “What am I trying to get relief from?”
As I sat with that question, I remembered something from my childhood. For a long time, I didn’t want to be me.
I wanted my father’s love and approval, but he was emotionally absent.
He taught me how to be respectable, how to be a self-learner, and how to be a hard worker. I yearned for his approval.
I feared him, admired him, and desperately wanted him to see me. But somewhere along the way, I began to believe there was something fundamentally wrong with me.
When I was a pre-teen, I hit a crossroads. I had to make a choice to either continue with the Boy Scouts or start a program called POSSE (Path of Success Students for Excellence). My Dad wanted me to be an Eagle Scout. But I didn’t want to let the leader of POSSE down, a man named Pastor Watts.
I chose POSSE.
Pastor Watts became like a second father to me. He offered me something completely different from my dad. He always believed in me, seeing the leader inside of me when I couldn’t see it myself.
But that program created a brutal internal paradox. POSSE was designed to help student leaders become the leaders of tomorrow. I was an alumnus, a designated leader, but I was secretly struggling with pornography.
Because of that hidden struggle, I felt like a total fraud.
By my own measure, I was completely unacceptable. For years, I ran away from being a man of God. I tried to escape the life of leadership that Pastor Watts believed I was built for, because the shame of the gap was too much to carry.
Suddenly, the addictions made perfect sense.
Porn wasn’t just pleasure. Nicotine wasn’t just a pleasure. Alcohol wasn’t just a pleasure.
They were temporary escape hatches from the exhausting experience of being Barnaby. I drank because I wanted relief from myself. Alcohol allowed me to temporarily delete my own self-awareness.
The casino simply monetized a craving that started much deeper.
Maybe the real question isn’t, “Why was I addicted?”
Maybe the real question is, “What made Barnaby feel unacceptable in the first place?”
It took years for me to realize how deeply Pastor Watts believed in me.
I’m incredibly grateful for him, and I wouldn’t be the man I am today if it weren’t for his leadership in my life.
I am finally stopping the escape loops. I am finally learning how to stay.