What causes addiction? I’m no psychologist or psychotherapist by any means, but I can tell you my personal experience and opinion. I believe my addiction was caused by my early exposure to pornography. I talked to my mother recently and she thinks I was more like nine or ten, than eleven, when I was exposed to pornography. That experience at a young age changed me. It changed the way I thought about women, it changed my fantasy life, it even, I would say, changed my physiology. It changed how I reacted to women in a physiological way, with feelings of anxiety and fear. Everything from that point on was about sex. But there is more to it than this.

I was reading a book recently by Jean Kilbourne entitled “can’t by my love: How advertising changes the way we think and feel.” She makes this observation about addiction and advertising, “Advertising doesn’t cause addictions. But I will argue throughout this book that advertising, an enormously important part of our culture, contributes mightily to the climate of denial in which relationships flounder and addictions flourish.” I would add that not only does it add to our denial, but it perpetuates addiction. It feeds the fire of addiction. What I found was when I disconnected from this cultures influence was that the motivation, the compulsions subsided.

We have to realize that if anything in this world could be said to focus our attention on the flesh it would have to be advertising. Advertising is about nothing but the flesh, and a mind set on the flesh cannot please God. A mind set on the flesh has no self-control. I often get the response from people when I say we need to disconnect from this world’s media, that I don’t watch much TV. But it is not a matter of how much, it is a matter of do you understand what the media is doing to you those few hours a week you do watch. I’ve told you my testimony and it only took one news program and a basketball game to cause those feelings of lust to return. Now that I know what is going on, I know the issues of true beauty, the desire for power and how the matrix drives that desire I can be exposed to it without influence. But before that I couldn’t. And even now knowing what I know I do not take it lightly that the brightest minds in persuasion are behind those commercials you don’t think are affecting you. Billions of dollars of research, polling, production costs and psychology are behind those commercials you are watching.

The more I learn about the media the more I learn of its power. You may have thought TV was for airing programs. But it really is for collecting products, “you,” to be sold to advertisers. Did you ever wonder why the media is turning more and more to young hip programs and not to issues that affect the older generation? Because the young hip have the money and all that matters when it comes to producing programs for TV is to generate an audience that is beneficial to an advertiser. Just look at all the kids programs today that are product motivated. Advertisers found out how influential kids are on there parents buying habits and look at the results. It also makes the poor, the minorities and the rural folks invisible when it comes to TV programs. They don’t have as much buying power as the young successful city dwellers. Think about it. Corporate America is not dumb when it comes to were to spend its money. Advertising does work and the fact we think it doesn’t is to their advantage. It may not cause addiction, but it definitely perpetuates it.

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