The Song that Broke the Cycle: Addicted! (And Other Helpful Tunes)

In 9th Grade Junior High, after a six-year hiatus, Rush, the Canadian trio titans of the progressive rock world, went on tour promoting their newest album, Vapor Trails. My entire family, extended and all, rushed off to see the live show in Salt Lake City, Utah. All except for me. I claimed I didn’t care much for Rush and stayed home to watch the younglings. What did I actually do? Turned on the electronic babysitter, slunk away to the computer, took to the internet, and watched porn, played video games, then watched some more porn. And more. When my family returned in band t-shirts with smiles and memories I realized I had missed out on something great. In truth, I loved Rush, especially their newest album.

So why didn’t I go to such a fantastic show?

Through the walks of life, like many, music has been essential in my life. It sparks my imagination, moves me, and passes the time on long drives or tedious chores. I love powerful, loud, adventurous music. I love music that walks away from typical pop-mainstream structures and explores different mediums and crosses genre boundaries. Most importantly, during life’s stresses, I love music that guides me through thought-provoking decompressions. One genre that accomplishes those requirements is progressive rock. Led by inspiring artists such as Rush, King Crimson, Dream Theater, Tool, Yes, Genesis, and Pink Floyd, this niche genre doesn’t appeal to many and that is why I love it. To pass up such a fundamental concert is absurd. The regret that took me, staying home and indulging in sexual stimuli rather than venturing out with family and friends, awakened me to a startling realization. I was addicted to pornography and something had to change.

My Journey through the Cycle

When I was 12 years old I belonged to a circle of nerdy friends. One day, an acquaintance approached and showed us a printed-off promo pic of the busty female protagonist, Faye Valentine, from the iconic Japanese anime Cowboy Bebop. He demanded more. And we obliged. What started as seemingly harmless searches for anime girl pics easily spiraled into the snare of internet porn.

Many have different thoughts on pornography, but in my mind, it is a plague many have indulged and few are comfortable acknowledging. It's an exploitative, objectifying media that dangerously toes the line--often crossing it--between entertainment income and human sex trafficking. The industry rakes in billions of dollars of profits, but as an epidemic of underage viewership crawls across America, pornography insinuates unrealistic expectations of love, partnership, and permissible behavior within intimate, and sometimes public, relationships. Researchers estimate most boys are exposed to internet pornography as early as 10 years old on average. Some states in the US have attempted stronger barriers to access. Pornhub removed their services from Utah in defiance of the state legislature's new push to require age verification beyond the typical, “Are you 18 or older? Click yes to enter.” I was one of those kids, in 6th grade, who delved deep, too deep, and felt those ramifications on my life.

Addiction is a tricky game. As explained in Dr. Gabor Mate’s novel, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, many factors can lead to addiction. Many are predisposed to addiction through trauma and genetic factors–which is often the case for drug and alcohol addiction. Pornography is a subtle one that plays with the natural chemicals and survival instincts of our genetic heritage. As we partake, porn ever so slightly shifts the functionality of rational sexuality within us and the expectations of our partners. Research has found the neuroplasticity of your brain, the electrical signal network, changes from overconsumption. Every time we engage with another person of attraction, be it flirting or intimacy, we receive dopamine, our brain's happy chemical, which reinforces our actions to build meaningful relationships. Pornography is about short, immediate bursts with high-density effortless stimuli. Easy dopamine. Easy access to on-demand stimuli. Such exposure can become a major crutch in healthy relationships among many individuals.

Pornography became an obstacle in my healthy relationships. From my sixth-grade slide, as a reclusive geek who rarely interacted with the attractive gender, my sexual interactions became nightly, covert escapades steeped in ignorance and curiosity. Growing up in a religious home, I kept it buried as a shameful, guilt-ridden secret thinking it more of a sin than a barrier to a happy, healthy life.

Three years later after tossing away the Rush concert, coupled with suicide-grade depression, I knew I had a problem. I could no longer deny it.

So, I began my journey of healing and I had good years and bad years. In high school I cleaned up, desperate to be good enough for my high school sweetheart, and I did well until we attended different colleges and our relationship became long-distance. I relapsed and we puttered out. In the end, she left me for another man, never knowing one of the reasons was because I was chained to internet filth. Over and over the cycle continued. As I dated through high school and college, I was always distanced due to guilt and struggled to connect from some odd emotional detachment. Despite having feelings for the girls I dated, at night I'd awaken with physical tremors, as though shivering from cold, and pull up my computer and dive into the muck.

Towards the end of college, I attended a 12-step group specific to sex addiction and pornography recovery. One of the steps is to document in detail all of my mistakes, my missed opportunities, and my fumbled relationships. Once finished, I burned the journal as a symbol of leaving behind my weaknesses. But it still wasn't enough, and in 2015, graduated from college, jobless, and single, I was alone and depressed... and I relapsed.

The Final Break

That year I decided I was going to give quitting one more good try and on August, 30 of 2015 I had my father install blocks on my phone so I couldn't work around them myself. I also charged my technology in the upstairs main room at night, furthest away from my bed. One time, beyond self-control, lost in the shivers, I walked up to my phone from my basement room ready to relapse after only a month. My mother happened to be pulling a late night doing city budgets. Unaware of my current battle she asked if I was alright, and I simply said I was still hungry. I grabbed a snack and ate, but in the end, she saved me from a relapse–which I’d later confessed to her in truth.

One day, I drove to work feeling hopeless. My commute was around forty minutes and I passed the time with music. Searching for something new or different I revisited Devin Townsend. I've listened to Townsend a little through the years, but I've overall disliked screaming, growling, and thrash metal. Until Townsend, I'd dabbled in nu metal and progressive metal, enjoying select songs from System of a Down, Godsmack, Linkin Park, and Disturbed but stayed away from the real heavies like Slipknot, Otep, and Mudvayne. Even on the progressive side, I loved Dream Theater, Ayreon, and Riverside, but Opeth, Meshuggah, and Gojira eluded me.

Perhaps it was the album title Addicted that grabbed my attention, but I tried it out, wary. The opening song, "Addicted!", started. Vamping guitar, screaming, and wall-of-sound intensity washed through the car and me. All prerequisites for skipping and choosing different music. Until the chorus came. And that chorus, especially at the end, reverberated in my soul. Here’s the final chorus/outro of the song:

Oh!

We're addicted!

Which makes it seem so hard to be your friend

We're addicted to our pain.

Benedictus!

Stay away from the pornography, I'm saying,

"You're addicted to our pain..."

Been a dick to us!

Stay away from the pornography, I'm saying,

"Let's be like the mountain!"

This is just a test

After that, the album does not let up. This aggressive romp is akin to pop-metal sprinkled with Townsend’s extreme-experimental flair (think Rob Zombie on techno-pop steroids). Each song title ends with an exclamation mark (!) and blasts from one track to the next hardly slowing down. Even the suggestively gentle track "Ih-Ah!" still packs a punch. It’s a wild 47 minutes of fast-paced metal. The album has fight and intensity, but by the end of the album, it left me feeling oddly excited and eager to hit life running. From then on, whenever urges, near caving in, crashed over me, I went for a run and pumped that song, this album, through my headphones. “Addicted!” will forever be held as an intimate part of my life.

Since then, I have been pornography free for nearly eight years. Many factors went into my eventual victory, but as I sit back and reflect on my journey of pornography addiction, I want to pay tribute to the one artist who played a fundamental role in finally breaking a fourteen-year cycle. And this artist, too, has had his fair share of addiction recovery challenges.

Townsend and the Bipolar Road

Curious about the song’s origins, I researched the Canadian experimental metalhead Devin Townsend. He's known for his works with Steve Vai and Strapping Young Lands. But his solo works are my focus. Goofy, tongue-in-cheek, ambient/experimental, extreme metal, he goes all over the spectrum. His most notable works are 2001 Terria, 2006 Synchestra, and 2007 Ziltoid the Omniscient. All his wall-of-sound productions range from audacious, thrash metal to thought-provoking, naturesque audioscapes.

Like many musicians in the industry, Townsend had his fair share of drug-assisted composition. And after finishing his 2007 bizarre, comedic tale of an alien, Ziltoid, destroying Earth in search of the universe's ultimate cup of coffee, Townsend spiraled out of control due to a mixture of bipolar disorder and substance abuse. Upon recovery, he began a new series of albums under the name The Devin Townsend Project. These would be the first albums he'd create free of drug influence.

As part of his clean compositions, he released a four-album concept of his recovery and life insights and struggles with bipolar disorder. He started with his 2009 release, Ki, which sounded mostly ambient and repetitious but had a unique start. In the same year, he pushed out 2009 Addicted followed by the last two albums released simultaneously in 2011. Polar opposites, bipolar one could say, he released Deconstruction (thrash, irreverent, loud, boisterous) and Ghost (ambient, soft, thoughtful, mostly acoustic).

Since then, Townsend has successfully created, performed, and produced music substance free for 13 years. His most recent record released last year November 2022, Lightwork, is an impressive display of his range as a musician. Although it has received mediocre reviews, I have found the majority of the album to hold excellent content. It's more accessible and softer than his normal stuff, so maybe that's why fans weren't pleased. "Moonpeople'', "Lightworker", and "Dimensions" are my top tracks. But Lightwork did bring me this moment of contemplation to recall 2015 and "Addicted!". Sure he's reported rough times. His production of Z2 - Dark Matters brought him close, but through-and-through despite massive mental health hurdles, he's continued to make the music he loves free of drugs.

Conclusions and Tunes

The journey to throwing away addiction was not easy. Pornography is a synthesis of pleasure and happiness, and when those susceptible to such dependencies cut themselves off, those artificial means of dopamine production stop. One will crash. After 2015, my life improved by gradual degrees. I finally found a pitiful part-time job, but it was something. I moved into a cheap basement apartment with a mini fridge and microwave for food. For roughly six months I had episodes of sleeplessness where I'd wake up in full withdrawals. Some nights, removed from friends and family, I sat atop my bed in that cheap basement room crushed by waves of depression. Yet, over the months the bouts, the impulses, and the lows diminished until they, to this day, almost eight years later, are almost non-existent. I contribute many factors, but music, Addicted by Devin Townsend, is one of those. Townsend's sonic metal power, as well as his own story, became a major motivation to push through the withdrawals. Relationships, social skills, and self-confidence returned. Guilt and shame disappeared. I am liberated. I can say, now, though the urges never truly disappear, the ability to recognize and shun them became easy. And if they ever return, I strive to "be like the mountain!" and become unmoving in my resolve to be a better brother, friend, uncle, husband, and father for my family.

In closing, I’ve listed some of my all-time favorite Townsend songs along with other artists of similar genre and content. I created a playlist to share through both Apple Music and Spotify. Note that due to the genre and its style, many of these songs are 10+ minutes. So, slip on some sound-canceling headphones and sit back, or go on a long walk or ride and immerse yourself.

Devin Townsend

Besides the essay focus of “Addicted!”, I've included other songs which helped me get through tough days or are simply awesome songs. Here’s my favorite Townsend list. “Higher” inspired me when I wanted to marry my wife despite her ex suing for custody of the stepkids. “Spirits Will Collide” gave me the energy to climb that final, steep hill on my bike after an exhausting, overwhelming day of teaching middle school. “Triumph” is one of my favorite songs after a day of climbing, hiking, or canyoneering. Too heavy Devy? Check out 2014 Casualties of Cool (co-created with Che Aimee Dorval) or 2011 Ghost for his more ambient side.

Addicted! (The Devin Townsend Project, Addicted 2009)

Supercrush! (The Devin Townsend Project, Addicted 2009)

Higher (The Devin Townsend Project, Transcendence 2016)

Spirits Will Collide (Devin Townsend, Empath 2019)

Moonpeople (Devin Townsend, Lightwork 2022)

Hyperdrive (Devin Townsend, Ziltoid the Omniscient 2007 OR the remixed version on Addicted sung by Anneke van Giersbergen)

Triumph (Devin Townsend Band, Synchestra 2006)

Dream Theater

Dream Theater, considered the pioneers of progressive metal, wrote a series about drummer Mike Portnoy’s journey through the 12 steps alcohol addiction recovery program. Of these, my favorite (both of this series and Dream Theater’s entire collection) is “The Glass Prison.”

The Glass Prison (Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence 2002)

This Dying Soul (Train of Thought 2003)

The Root of All Evil (Octavarium 2006)

Repentance (Systematic Chaos 2007)

The Shattered Fortress (Black Clouds and Silver Linings 2010)

Rush

Considered one of the best rock groups of all time, Rush is a Canadian trio with amazing compositions. I’ve included the highlights of one of their underrated gems, the 2002 album Vapor Trails. The album was produced after a six-year hiatus during which Neil Peart lost his wife and only daughter in a month. To cope and heal, he packed up his things and rode his motorcycle over thousands of miles through Canada, America, and even down to Mexico. Upon his return, he honed his drumming skills and Rush reunited to create this beauty, the one concert I regret missing above all others. The original version was heavily criticized due to poor mastering. Later, Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee remixed the album and it got its due attention. During the process, Peart--may he rest in peace with his family--took little to no part as the album brought back too many difficult memories. I love the original version (which you can no longer find) because it feels raw and noisy and emotional.

One Little Victory

Ghost Rider

Vapor Trails

Earthshine

Sweet Miracle

Porcupine Tree

Contemporaries of Progressive Rock/Metal, Porcupine Tree has always been a default of mine, and I can’t go without mentioning what many consider their 2007 magnum opus Fear of a Blank Planet, next to In Absentia and Deadwing. This conceptual album explores adolescent abuse of drugs (particularly prescriptions) and the overstimulation from screens, entertainment, and pornography nullifying our next generation. “Anesthetize” is an especially poignant 18-minute epic that immerses you in shifting complex layers of sound and drives home the point.

Fear of a Blank Planet

Anesthetize

Way Out of Here

Sleep Together

Thank you, Devin Townsend, for giving me something to head-bang to when my nerves couldn't hang on much more. And thank you, reader, for taking the time to read this story of recovery and tribute.

Playlist links:

Apple Music

Spotify

Other Helpful Resources

**Content Warning, these do go into the details of sexual addiction and brain chemistry. These may have triggering content."

yourbrainonporn.com

YouTube Playlist