From Porn Addict to Founder of Road to Purity

Below is an article with the above title written by Elizabeth Racine and published in the Signs and Wonders magazine. 

Dann Aungst, President and Founder of Road to Purity, turns
to the audience and begins to tell his story:

“It was roughly eight years after my affair, and in some ways things with my wife had gotten back to normal. Yet there was very little intimacy, and she still seemed to resent everything I did. There was still anger and pain over what had happened. Time had moved on, but we never completely dealt with my actions. And now it was starting again. I had fallen back into looking at pornography and acting out. In the recent years and months, it had become more and more frequent. To this point I have been able to withstand going any further than this, but then one day I drove by a massage parlor and stopped. I went in and let’s just say I experienced more than a massage. Afterward I felt so disgusted with myself, which was unusual compared to the way I used to feel after acting out sexually.”

“This time, I somehow recognized that my behavior wasn’t actually about sex; rather I knew that I was seeking to fill a void that could never be filled by this behavior. I felt so horrible that I drove immediately to a church looking for a priest to hear my confession. I was in a panic and knew I had to do this right now. I went to our usual church, but no one was available, so I drove from church to church until I found a priest who could listen to my confession.”

“After I had finished, I told myself that it was over – I can’t do this again. Several months later, my wife learned that she had a sexually transmitted disease, evidence that I had strayed from our marriage yet again. She became completely unglued, and this time was talking divorce. My world was collapsing around me. I knew that Roxane was justified in every emotion she had and whatever action she took. What I couldn’t believe was that I had done this again. I finally started to realize that, maybe, I have a problem.”

The Problem Starts with Self-Image

How did this happen? And more importantly, how did His redemption happen for a porn/sex/love addict?

“The basic thing I’ve learned, the root of how I help others, is, like all addicts, I had a problem with self­ image, you know, feeling that you’re not good enough, that you’re unlovable,” says Dann. “It’s basically the shame and the personal identity of not being worthy.”

Dann acknowledges that while we all experience that to some level in our lives, “Mine was rooted in not feeling that my mother loved me. I thought she loved me because she was supposed to love me – not because I deserved it,” he says.

He likens it to a search for needing to be loved, wanted, and accepted – understood. “So often, when sex comes up, it represents that to us – we turn to that as being the thing that we were missing, thinking, “Oh, that’s what I really want,” he says.

The Course of Addiction

At the age of 10 he had his first exposure to porn. Like most kids, he stumbled into pornography in magazines, etc., and found it very intriguing. He went through his school years, watching porn videos in high school and college. He had his first girlfriend in college, but he said, “Porn was the perfect girlfriend – one who would never reject me.”

“It immediately created a craving of something I wanted. And I think it’s just from the innate sexuality that God created us with, but not having the education and the understanding and the foundation, you learn the perverted form that the world offers through pornography in the initial exposure to it. That was the interest, that was the desire, that was the want­ – to have someone want me and have the pleasure of, you know, through the experience of looking at pornography and masturbation – and then it’s “Off to the Races.” And that’s just where the typical story goes for most men, and sadly, for more women nowadays, too.”

For Dann, this desire just grew and grew till it reached the point where, as addiction naturally grows, visual stimulation wasn’t enough, leading him to seek out massage parlors and prostitution because he wanted the physical acceptance.

Marriage and the Porn Addict

He got married at 25, and he thought it would get better, but instead it got worse.

“One of the common misconceptions people have when they get married, is they think, “I’ll be able to have all the sex I want – then I won’t have to look at porn any more. But the opposite actually turns out to be true.”

“The reason we look at porn is to soothe or medicate our feelings of rejection and being unwanted and unloved. Well, after the honeymoon period, your wife knows all of your faults and you know hers, of course, but now suddenly you’re exposed and vulnerable in all your woundedness, and she’s able to point it out and tell you what you did wrong and all that kind of stuff. So now you’re living with a person who sees all this negative stuff that you have, so then your desire to escape and medicate returns, and many times is even worse than before. That’s very common,” says Dann.

“Both of us were broken, and we brought that into our marriage,” says Dann.

The Spiritual Component

“Well, if we know the Theology of the Body, we learn that God designed sex for a husband and wife to give to each other selflessly, completely, basically emptying of oneself to each other, and that’s where we experience that love in human form. And then we have the love of God – if we have that relationship with Him.”

But Dann admits he didn’t have a relationship with God growing up.

“I grew up Methodist, and I don’t even I think I remember what the inside of the church looked like. I don’t recall really going to church, so I didn’t have that relationship there and always had that emptiness and feeling unwanted.”

He sought out the physical connec­tion that he needed through massage parlors, prostitution, and affairs.

“I was out of control, and the train wreck was just starting. Porn was like a double-edged sword – it kept me safe from my pain, but it made it worse at the same time.”

Although Dann converted to Catholicism, he admits that he merely was going through the motions; meanwhile, although Dann couldn’t see the graces, God was working on him.

At the peak of his addiction, Dann began an affair with a co-worker and had moved out of his house, telling his wife, Roxane, that he didn’t love her anymore.

“Amazingly, she didn’t give up. She fought for me. She is one of the most faith-filled women. If it weren’t for her, I would not be here today,” says Dann. “I owe her my life.”

God Acts

Dann tells of a one-week window of time where God revealed Himself, and changed things rather quickly. Friends had invited him to a men’s retreat that was happening on Friday, which he declined, saying he was very happy with his life. Then on Thursday, he was told by a woman in his office that she had visions of bad things happening to his children and the children of his girlfriend.

It spooked him and his girlfriend, so they left the office to talk, and they ended up praying for God’s protec­tion, asking Him to do whatever He needed to do to protect their children. Dann marvels at the irony: “We’re having an illicit affair, and we’re praying for God’s protection!” But he had basically given God a blank check to act in his life with that prayer, and God acted.

“I had an image of a Stop sign in front of me as I walked back into my office. Then my office manager walked in, saying, ‘Over this past hour I’ve had the strongest feeling that you can’t do this anymore.’ And another employee walked in, shaking, scared that she would be fired, and said, ‘You have to stop what you’re doing.”‘

So, within the span of an hour on Thursday, he was told by three women in his office that they were having bad feelings about all that he was doing, and that bad things were going to happen to his children. The woman who had seen the vision then said,”Something is happening. Your decision that you make will affect the rest of your life.”

How did she know that something was happening?

Then his girlfriend came in and said, “It feels like everything is falling apart.”

Dann could see the Stop sign was getting bigger, and he knew what he had to do.

He called his wife and asked if they could talk. She agreed, and Dann came over to tell her that he was going to end the affair, and asked if he could move back home.

He ended up attending that men’s retreat the next day, and the strange events continued.

“As I was walking around at the retreat, a priest walked up to me, looked at my name badge, and said ‘Dann Aungst!’ with exclamations and surprise in his voice. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you.’ He continued, Jesus asked me to give this to you,’ and he handed me an envelope. I opened it to find this letter:”

Dann,

There is so much I would like to tell you if only there were enough time. You are entering a very difficult time, but it is also a time when you’re going to learn a lot about Roxane, about yourself, and about me and my love for you. Please be patient with yourself. This is not going to go away overnight. The wounds are deep but not fatal. There’s much healing that needs to take place for your wife, your friends, yourself, and for our relationship.

The important thing though is that our relationship has begun. Let’s go through this together; give me all of your hurt, your resentment, and your pain. I can take it! And I promise I will continue to love you. There are big plans for you. If only you knew everything that is still ahead. It is so important to begin this healing process. I will be here to help you. Please lean on me; use me. I will give you the strength and courage when you have nothing left. You will discover that true strength comes from humility and true power comes from grace. I will be here to help you, but the work is up to you.

Your friend, Jesus

“I just about fell on the floor. I turned around and looked for the priest; I wanted to know who gave him this letter and where it came from. But he was nowhere to be seen. My head was spinning. I had decided to come to the retreat at the last minute – no one even knew that I had ended the affair and moved back home except Paul, and he only found out about it on the ride up there for it. I started examining the letter to try to figure out where it could’ve come from. It was just too amazing to have actually come from Jesus, although considering the outrageous events that happened after my prayer and complete surrender just the day before, it almost seemed to make sense. I continued to look at the letter. What I found odd was that my name and Roxane’s name were spelled correctly. I have an extra N in my name, and Roxane’s name is short an N from the traditional spellings. So, whoever wrote this had to have known us. But nobody who knew us could have written this letter. Nobody knew I was coming. And nobody knew that I had ended the affair. I was simply blown away.”

The Healing Begins

It was a great retreat and Dann made a good confession.

“There was a lot of healing on this retreat, and men spoke openly about their emotional wounds and pain of the past, and for the first time in my life I began to see that I had some of the same wounds and that I was not alone. I even began to get a glimpse of the damage I was inflicting and the emotional pain I was causing

my family.”

Although it only scratched the surface for Dann, this retreat was the foundation for what was to come in the years ahead.

When he returned home after the retreat it was time to face Roxane, who had a barrage of questions – who had he been with, were there any other affairs, should she be tested for AIDS, what else had he done?

“I disclosed everything I had done – I just dumped it all out. I was not able to feel her pain – and this made for a long and difficult recovery.

They went on living, but not dealing with the underlying issues. Eight years after he returned home is when Dann’s opening story occurred.

He and Roxane met with a priest­ – coincidentally the same priest who gave Dann the mysterious letter on his retreat, and he said to them, ‘Give me two months with him.’

He got Dann into a Men’s Integrity Group, and the guys were listening to a CD set by Christopher West called “Winning the Battle for Sexual Purity.”

Dann ordered the CD set and began listening to it in his office. Little did he know his life was about to change forever when Christopher West quoted G.K. Chesterton:

“Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.”

“Wow – this hit me like a ton of bricks,” said Dann. “I began to weep uncontrollably. I had to pause the CD because I was crying so hard. All of a sudden I knew: God was exactly what I had been looking for – for the past 30 years – but I didn’t know it. That moment opened the door for healing.”

Through these talks by Christopher West, Dann was finally introduced to what sex was really about. “I would learn about the ‘Theology of the Body’ teachings of the Church and about God’s plan for sexuality, as well as Satan’s efforts to derail it.

“Christopher West said that the true desire for sex is the desire to be joined as one, as God designed us to be. God created us, male and female, to be joined as one as a form of life-giving love and communion. Any act performed outside of love and marriage is a perversion of God’s plan,” said Dann. “All of the pornog­raphy, prostitution, masturbation, and so on in today’s world are counterfeit forms of love.”

Surrender to God’s Plan

Since it had been so difficult to surrender completely to God, Dann wrote this prayer asking for Jesus to help him do so:

PRAYER

Dear Lord Jesus Christ, I desire the desire to surrender my heart and my entire being to you, but I cannot do it; I fear the abandonment of losing control of who I am. I ask that you take what little space I can open to you, use it, and invade my heart, take it captive, and protect it from all evil. I beg for your help in my complete surrender to you.

Amen

Later, Dann realized that sex is Satan’s number one weapon against men, and decided that God needed to run his life – it was too hard for him to do it himself. He was then able to pray this prayer of complete surrender:

Lord Jesus Christ, I cannot fight this battle anymore; I’m done. I hand you the dragon to slay; I hand you the lizard to slay. I walk away; it’s yours. I’m done. I can’t do this anymore. It’s not my battle anymore.

Amen

Healing

Over the next few years, through spiri­tual counseling and groups such as his Romans 6 group: “I could finally come clean and admit my addiction, my failures, and my pain. All without judgment, but with compassion. In the group I met with others who were in the same boat, and they all really ‘got it’ and they know how hard it is to battle and recover from.”

“So, you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” – Romans 6:11-14

As a result, Dann came to know Jesus Christ for real, bringing about much healing.

Giving Back, Helping Others

He began to sense with an almost overpowering feeling that God wanted him to do something, so he began searching to see what he could do.

He kept hearing from others that he should write a book. Men told him this in all his groups, and though the idea of a book kept coming up, he felt that couldn’t be what God wanted of him.

“After all, I have no education or expertise in that area, and besides, I don’t even like to read. How would I ever write a book?” 

“I finally mentioned the whole idea to my wife, and to my surprise, she said, ‘Maybe you should write a book, or at least a blog or something.” 

“This blew me away. Of all the people who have been hurt by what I have done, the one who was hurt the most was actually open to the idea of me somehow being more public about the whole experience. I was certain that writing about my addiction in anyway would bring up old wounds and be very painful for her and others. But she said, ‘If that’s what God wants you to do, then you need to do it.”‘

“I went to Eucharistic Adoration and finally asked Jesus, ‘What do you want me to do?”‘

I heard Him say, ‘I want you to write about your pain and the pain you caused others.“‘

I said, ‘God, I don’t know what to do or how to do this,’ and God repeated, ‘I need you to do this for me. You can lean on me, use me; I will be here to help you.'”

He started thinking of the repercus­sions of following through with this: his whole story, everything about him, would become public. Everybody would know.

“I began to think of ways around this, like, maybe I can write this under a pen name,” Dann said, but then he got an immediate response of, ‘No, I need you to own this.”‘

“This was not what I wanted to hear, but it further convinced me that it was God talking to me, because I knew it was absolutely the right answer.”

After more arguing, Dann said a scripture passage came to mind: “From him who has been given much, much will be expected.”

“I said a short prayer to God, telling him that if this really needs to be done, I need the Holy Spirit to write it for me, to just use me to put it down. This would truly be a book that He is writing through me, because I am not capable of doing this. I was still looking for a way out and thought up a lot of excuses – how busy I was with my business, how I wouldn’t even have time to write, and so on. I didn’t know what to do – I just kept feeling like I couldn’t do this.”

“Inside, clear as day, I heard a voice say, ‘I need you to do this for me.”‘

“I began telling a friend of mine that I didn’t know how to do that. I said the only thing I know how to do is

to share in a small group – from one addict to another. And that’s when I felt a feeling like hot liquid being poured over me – that’s how the Holy Spirit moved me, and I said. ‘That’s it! That’s the name of the book.”‘So, he went out and started writing, doing what he could, and finished the book nearly a year later.

Time to Get Started

“When I was finished, I went to Adoration. I said, ‘I finished the book – I’m done.’ But in reply, I heard that same voice: ‘Okay. Now it’s time to get started.”‘

“What?! I didn’t know what that meant!”

“What do you want me to do?” asked Dann.

Dann was starting to trust God and His vision for his life. “I was starting to have feelings that my business (which, oddly enough, was an Internet company that sold books – almost a punchline of a joke for somebody who doesn’t read) was actually something that needed to go away or drastically change.”

The answers came and, while it wasn’t specific all the time, Dann relates that he just moved forward with what he felt moved to do, and somehow, six years later, he has the Road to Purity nonprofit founded, has written five books, has become a certified addic­tion counselor, has written materials for Priests to help in the confessionals, and taught Seminarians how to address sexual sin in the confessional. “Because three Hail Marys and an Our Father is not going to keep them from coming back, I’ve talked to them about what will, from a penitent’s side,” says Dann, whose work has had three impri­maturs on various pieces, including a Catholic Men’s Sexual Integrity Program, which is being used by hundreds of students across the country, in churches and also online. He writes for Covenant Eyes, and has spoken to thousands of people at conferences across the country, saying: 

“This just kind of happened. I’ve been in this ministry full-time now for almost four years. I’ve basically committed myself to helping others. I know the pain they’re in, and I can help them get out.”

To underscore the need for people to be delivered from this addiction, Dann recalls a poignant vision of himself standing at the edge of a great canyon – larger than the Grand Canyon – filled with people crammed in like sardines, all trapped in some sort of sexual sin.

Recalls Dann, “Jesus came, and He put His hand on my shoulder and said to me, ‘You know, it doesn’t have to be like this. I Need you to tell them for me.’I got up and cried for an hour.

And, that is why he does what he does. He knows their pain.

Dann may be contacted through the website www.roadtopurity.com.

End reprint of article.

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