In August of 1988, I started listening to Dennis Prager on the radio and quickly became fascinated. I’ve long sought out father figures and Prager was the ultimate daddy (next to God). I quickly bought into his view of the world — ethical monotheism — that there was one God whose primary requirement was moral behavior.
In December of 1989, I decided to convert to Judaism. I was all about God and Torah now.
Then in June of 1993, after my conversion, I met this nice Jewish girl with a big rack and I went to town. I wasn’t so moral.
After struggling for years to make a living, I found a solid one in 1997 writing a blog about the adult film industry. That would be my primary income for the next decade.
I saw how much I was deviating from my ideals and so to understand what I was doing, I entered therapy, and in 2011, that led me into 12-step work. Now I primarily see the world in terms of connection. When people such as myself feel connected to others, we tend to act decently, and when we disconnect, we’re likely to act badly.
I used to think of self-centered people such as myself as bad. Now I see us as unwanted kids who never got shown the means to care for ourselves in a productive way.
I used to think of alcoholics and drug addicts and gambling addicts as bad. Now I primarily see them as disconnected and trying to fill their emptiness through substances and processes.
When I think about child molesters, I think about people who never learned to care for themselves and to connect with others in a productive way.
If such addicts kill and maim and wreak havoc, then I see them as bad people. Like Dennis Prager, I still want people who do bad things to be punished. I think I still primarily see the world in moral terms.
I now understand my obsession with Dennis Prager as a symptom of my brokenness. In the book Unhooked: How to Quit Anything, the authors have a chapter on addictive habits. Number 18 is: “Celebrity worship, including being a groupie, writing fan letters, stalking, fantasies, and obsessions.” Ouch.
