The church hallway is lit quite clearly, wires hanging from the ceiling as the old architecture wasn’t meant to support electronic circuits. Your shoes resound through the hallway with a heavy gait, which could either be jovial or heavy, seeming to switch with every other step.

‘Figures I guess, but the beauty of such old buildings are not well preserved with these, are they?’

I keep walking, clearly aware that I’m simply pondering the architecture to distract myself from what is on the end of the hallway. Two grey door with those cubed glass little windows in them, framed with wood and the same windows on the side and above them, marking the end of the hallway and the room lying beyond it.

‘Well, there is it, isn’t it?’ You sigh ‘Might as well get this over with’

You continue on, and you’ve stopped bothering to refer to yourself in the first person. This is going to be a long day, so might as well use one of the less destructive coping mechanisms you have.

‘Yes, yes. I know that this could be akin to disassociating from reality, but could my own consciousness please get off my back?’ A small smile escapes your grim façade, before it returns to its usual state. You realize just as well as anyone else that that was simply another little stray thought to distract you from the doors, which are now in front of you, and your hand is already on the handle. You heave another sigh, and push it open, looking at the hexagonal room beyond.

Chairs are arranged in a circle, and a man in khaki pants, an Oxford shirt, and sneakers is sitting opposite of you in the circle, with several other people in varying style of clothing, body shape, skin colour, and shoe size sitting on the other chairs. You are the last to arrive, again, yet the man in the Oxford shirt perks up once again.

“Hello! Good to see you again. Come and sit, we were just about to start.”, he gestures over to the only empty chair, sitting at the edge of the group to the left of you. “Morning Pete, or afternoon rather.”, you nod to the man and take your seat.

Pete finishes writing the last few things on his note board, and then lays it on the ground besides him. You know he has been at the church for several years now, heading these types of groups since the beginning, yet this group was the first of its very own kind. It had started with a group of men, but you know there were talks of creating one for women too, but they hadn’t found a suitable candidate for the role yet. The combination of a shitty wage, and relatively high prerequisites for the job, which Pete absolutely owned, made the position less than desirable to the many people already quite busy with their own lives. To the ones that weren’t, there was the need to filter out with too much of an ideological message, as that usually only ended up in a bad way.

Pete turns towards you, “As the last to arrive, would you like to start today? I know from our previous times that you were a little quiet, but last time you ended with a real kicker!”, he smiled that inconspicuous smile. You don’t know how he can call that god awful rant a ‘kicker’, with it being more akin to a child’s tantrum than anything else.

You look around the group, see a few looking at you expectantly, one whose clearly wanted the privilege of spilling your emotional baggage first, and the rest mainly shrugging with the general message, ‘seem interesting’. So, you sit up in your chair, with a crooked back, and try to get in the rhythm of things.

“Is it okay if I think for a few moments? Last time was more of a culmination than anything.”, you smile at Pete. “No worries, there’s plenty of time.”, he smiles back like only a priest could, the non-pedo kind.

So, you start to dive a little bit in your thoughts, and as it all surfaces, you return to your leaned position, in what you feel is an indifferent yet vulnerable position.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“The more I think about it, the more it’s fucked. What we do, what we all do, and most of us are ashamed of,” you shoot a glance at one particular member, “does not need explaining. We all know why we’re here, but none of us can seem to find a way out. We all know the benefits that stopping carries, the long term health improvements in both mental and physical aspects, the social reinvigoration that happens when you can think clearly without some bodily urge periodically destroying your motivation, ambitions, and energy reserve.”

You start to sit upright in your chair.

“That might be the most annoying damned thing. The fact that this, all of this, numbs away at your mental faculties like nothing else. A slow and insidious degradation of everything that allows you to love, value, and enjoy life. It slowly destroys what you strive for, what your life is all about, and reduces it to a chase of artificial sweeteners. The most annoying and arguable horrible part of this is that it strikes when you are bored, lonely, depressed, or whatever you can describe it as. It follows you around in those times, gnawing away until you give in, after which the deed itself is quickly done, the only parts you can remember from that are the disgusting things you manage to make yourself watch. Then, the high comes, and fades away in minutes, leaving you sitting alone in a brightly lit bathroom with less energy and motivation than before, with the realisation that you have done exactly the same thing as before.”

Your voice starts to louden unintentionally.

“Then, on top of all of that, you feel you can hardly talk to anyone about it. You know that society can hardly stomach what you can see, and you can’t blame them, for the simple reason that even you can’t do that after the high has passed. On top of all of that, the damned thing is more insidious than a fucking snake. Adam and Eve may have been tempted by a fucking apple, but for us it was never clear when it was too much. There was no warning on shit like drugs when it was too much, nor could anyone but us control it, because who the fuck are you going to tell you’re masturbating to the most fucked up shit a human being can think of?”

That single word seems to take the wind out of your sails, but you sit upright, and continue.

“That may be the thing I hate the most, that I see it as a viable solution to my stress and anxiety related problems, even if I don’t have it that bad on these fronts, instead of looking for something more constructive. Simply because the damned thing draws me back for more of those quick highs. For more small moments where I feel at the sexual pinnacle, and then remember that my experience amounts to the saddest sand castle you have ever seen. I did not know when I started when, nor that it could, it would bleed over into something akin to an addiction, where your body demands it of you, and where you rationalize it away to escape the present time just for a moment. Now, looking back, I still don’t know when or how it bled over into this physical manifestation, which seems hardly controllable sometimes, especially combined with the instant access a smartphone can grant to everything porn related. An, for all intents and purposes, endless library of debauchery and plain nastiness, with little demons riding on your shoulders steering you in deeper and deeper, into the sections where the line between how intercourse between two loving human beings really is, and how one would pretend it is. Where the lust takes over from love, where you start to objectify almost anything in sight, where your imagination is highjacked by tales of anatomically impossible and mentally insensate fucking.”

You breath in and out deeply.

“That, couple all of that with a physical instead of mental urge towards this thing. A physical urge to trigger your dopamine receptors, which have been conditioned by the same fucked up shit you are watching. Combine all of this, and you get a nice little feedback loop where people go into darker and darker places because they are served darker and darker imagery, which elevate them with shorter and shorter temporary highs, before compelling oneself to continue onward.”

You fall back into your chair.

“The worst is, again, that it is insidious. It isn’t like a meth junky going for his next fix. It’s the urge to drive deeper over a long period of time, where you occasionally find a certain type of imagery that tickles your fancy just a bit more than the other types, and you continue with that. The process could take from weeks, to months, to years, but it always seems to lead to darker places than before, and leaves you stranded if you try to go back to where you once where. Sure, you can manage it for a time often, but not for an indefinite period. That is the reason we are all sitting here, isn’t it? Because none of us have managed to stay clean indefinitely.”

You slump back, your throat is a bit sore but there is a smile on your face. Pete mirrors this smiles, “Thank you for your contribution.” He looks around at the group, “Anyone else who wants to make a contribution?”