#023 Escaping the Cave: Sexual Addiction, Recovery & Life Beyond - Logan Hufford

Sexual addiction is often discussed in whispers—or not at all. In this episode, Logan Hufford shares what it’s actually like to live inside it, and what it takes to begin climbing out.

Logan grew up in Anchorage and spent years living a double life marked by secrecy, escalating behaviors, and the slow erosion of trust at home. Rather than focusing on shock value, this conversation explores the mechanics of addiction: how it hijacks the brain, isolates people in shame, and convinces them they’re beyond help.

We talk about why willpower alone rarely works, how repeated “confessions” can still leave someone stuck, and what finally made real recovery possible. Logan explains why his story is descriptive, not prescriptive—and why lasting change required community, accountability, and learning from people who had already walked the path ahead.

Listeners will also hear about the recovery group that played a critical role in Logan’s healing and how people in Alaska—and beyond—can take a first step toward getting connected. This is the first Alaska-based podcast where Logan has shared his story, and it opens the door to resources that many don’t know exist.

This episode is for anyone who feels alone in addiction, anyone already in recovery wondering if change can last, and anyone who wants a clearer, more honest understanding of what recovery actually looks like.

Follow Logan on Instagram: @no.longer.in.bondage

Logan Recommends

www.prodigalsofalaska.com 

Conquer Series-Quit Porn Forever

Transcript

Manny (00:25)
Hello and welcome to the state i am in where every conversation points north. Here we discuss the topics that Alaskans and perhaps everyone may care about. I'm your host, Manny Coelho a fellow Alaskan and your guide to the conversations that Alaskans want to hear from the individuals who are leading the way.

My guest today is Logan Hufford. Logan is a lifelong Alaskan who grew up in Anchorage. His story and the topic of today's conversation is unlike anything I've had the opportunity to discuss on the show so far. Sexual addiction, recovery, and life on the other side of it.

This is a sensitive topic, but I believe it's an important one. For Logan, what started off as a private struggle with pornography escalated into a full-blown double life, full of affairs, encounters with prostitutes, and repeated attempts to hold together a marriage and family while everything underneath was falling apart.

We talk about addiction beyond shame or morality, how it rewires the brain, damages relationships, and why willpower alone often isn't enough.

Logan makes clear that his story is descriptive and not prescriptive. This is how his journey unfolded, but not necessarily a blueprint for everyone.

We also discuss what finally forced a turning point, when real change began, and a powerful metaphor that is weaved throughout this conversation, which Logan uses to describe addiction, which is being trapped inside a cave and what it takes to find a way

Manny (01:56)
Logan has shared his story on podcasts all around the country, offering hope to those who feel alone or trapped in their addiction. And it's a privilege to be the first Alaska based podcast where he shared it.

I'm especially excited to connect listeners to the recovery resources like Prodigals located right here in the state.

This conversation is for anyone who feels too far gone and for those who are already on the road to recovery, wondering if lasting change is possible. And now my conversation with Logan Hufford.

Manny (02:25)
I mean, you grew up here, you grew up in Alaska. Have you been in like Wasilla area your whole life or did you move around? Okay.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (02:27)
Mm-mm.

No, I grew up in Anchorage. My

wife and I both grew up in Anchorage and ironically, we lived like 35 minutes away from each other if you drove. And then we lived about 35 minutes away from each other if you walked because we lived on two opposite sides of a couple of mountains. So we both grew up in Anchorage, she on the south side, me on the east side. And then we got married in 2011.

And then I was 20, she was 21. We moved out to the valley pretty quickly, about a year later. And so we've been out here since 2012, ⁓ Settlers Bay for eight years. And then we've been, we live over right between Palmer and Wasilla now for the last five years.

Manny (03:08)
Okay.

Okay,

cool. We've got, yeah, my wife and I, got married in 2010. So it's been about the same, same timeframe. I think we were pretty close in age, maybe just flipped. I think I was 22, 21 or something like that. We got married kind of young too, but. ⁓

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (03:25)
Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, and our kids

are similar to it. We've got obviously four, but yeah, our oldest is 13. Our youngest is nine. So 13, 12, 11, nine.

Manny (03:40)
Hmm.

Okay, cool.

Fun ages, man. A little bit, it's getting a little bit more challenging with the older, with my oldest daughter. Seeing more, more... ⁓ True. Yeah, she's, I'm in her good graces though. I think I, you know, I'm, she, I'm sure she's embarrassed by me, but ⁓ she's, ⁓ she, she still keeps me in the loop, talks to me about boys and school drama and...

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (03:52)
Well, you got a girl. I've got only boys. So you've got a preteen girl, yeah.

Manny (04:13)
Stuff like that. it's, those are fun ages though, cause they start to come in there, come into their own for sure. But it's cool that you, ⁓ grew up here talking about, ⁓ you know, this, this show, this podcast, it's all Alaska based. It's people that have either grown up here or were transplanted here. Everyone has their own, own story and, ⁓ kind of tell me about like what your experience was growing up in Alaska.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (04:13)
Yeah.

Right.

Manny (04:42)
You know, I didn't grow up here. a lot of things that people experience, things that are like, guess norms, I'm still learning those. So if you just kind of talk about, you know, what was the norm for you growing up ⁓ where you did?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (04:44)
Okay.

Right.

Yeah. So I grew up, ⁓ about 12 minutes away from, from town. So I'm up on a mountain and, ⁓ so pretty rural, even though we were, you know, we were 15 minutes away from cars or Safeway. ⁓ but

You know, we couldn't walk anywhere. We couldn't ride our bikes to a grocery store or anything like that. And so it was a lot of time playing outside. ⁓ winter time, shoot, it sure seemed like as a kid, ⁓ every year, you know, we had dumps and dumps of snow and we're sledding all the time and we're making trails out in the forest and stuff. We never had like toys as far as, you know, snow machines and things like that.

Manny (05:43)
⁓

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (05:45)
But we had neighbors that had snow machines and so maybe once a year or so I'd go ride with them and that was always really cool. ⁓ We didn't do a lot of the Alaskan type things. We didn't grow up hunting. I went fishing one time with my dad and one of my brothers. ⁓ Some of my family has gone hunting a couple times, but like I didn't have a lot of those Alaskan experiences. We did go camping quite a bit. We'd always pretty much have at least one camping trip every summer, maybe a couple.

But yeah, when I think about growing up in Alaska and what made it an Alaskan upbringing for me was playing out in the snow constantly. And again, like not necessarily in any big ticket ways. We weren't doing snow machines. I guess I did ski as a little kid and then kind of stopped once I was like maybe 11 or 12, big enough to get hurt, I guess.

Manny (06:24)
Yeah.

You

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (06:42)
⁓ But

like tons of sledding tons of playing out in the snow just all day long and of course tons of shoveling, right?

Manny (06:49)
Yeah, I know comes with it, right? That's funny. as a kid even or moving into the teenage young adult years where you like get me out of here, you know, I always wondered when people grow up here, you have those that are like, I'm leaving and then they'll either will and then come back or you have those that are like good riddance and they're gone. Where are you?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (07:00)
yeah.

Right.

It's funny because what you're describing, I see that with military folks, it's a microcosm of what it is to be an Alaskan where if you meet somebody that was stationed up here, they either love Alaska and they cannot wait to get back and they're going to retire and move back or they freaking hate it and they will never visit ever again. And there's no in between. guess with Alaskans, you get ⁓

those extremes and then you do get some in between ⁓ people that may just never move just because they never want to, you know, put themselves out there to do it. But I was in the camp where I hated it. I could not wait to get out of Alaska. ⁓ I wanted to, you know, live in a real city, right? I I lived in Anchorage, which is, you know, the the the closest thing we have to like a city city, right? But, you know, I wanted to live in a place where it's just

stuff was happening. was like, I don't even know what exactly I was looking for, but just I wanted to, I want to live in a real city. Definitely, you know, we all, we make jokes about, you know, it takes longer for movies to get up here to the theaters. Back when people used to go to theaters, it takes longer for us to get music. It takes longer for us to get, you know, different fads in fashion and stuff. It like takes longer for us to get anything sent up here in the mail. All of that stuff. I just couldn't wait to get out of Alaska, go lives.

Manny (08:20)
Yeah.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (08:33)
Cause I had no appreciation for Alaska. Like seriously, none. ⁓ The beauty of, I commute to Anchorage four days a week and like the drive on the flats of looking out at pioneer peak, ⁓ know, coming, coming north back to the valley, you know, at the end of the day and depending on what day I'm, or what time of day, know, maybe there's a sunset over here or, you know, the sun's right over the top of Matanuska peak or whatever.

Manny (08:36)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (09:03)
gorgeous like ⁓ I didn't appreciate any of that as a kid because it was all I knew.

Manny (09:11)
Yeah, exactly. You have nothing to compare it to. Did you ever travel to the lower 48 or see other places and experience what life could be like somewhere else?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (09:13)
Yep.

Well, okay, so it's funny you say that because I did and I'm always quick to say like we were blessed to travel actually a lot, even though it wasn't very sexy. Like we weren't going to Disneyland and going on cruises and going to Hawaii. I went to Hawaii for the first time in my life. three, four years ago. ⁓ it was to South Dakota and it was to Iowa. That's basically where we travel. Cause that's where my parents are from. ⁓

And so you would think that I, that actually would have given me an appreciation for Alaska because I have appreciation and love for those two states. love my family, but those are not the most gorgeous states, especially Iowa. and yet, yeah, logically, I guess that should have helped me appreciate Alaska more, but I really didn't. but yeah, we, did, we, did a lot of, ⁓ extended family, ⁓ visits to extended family and then.

Manny (10:01)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (10:14)
We did like a Washington DC slash New England trip one year. ⁓ that was pretty awesome. we did eventually go to Disneyland. I was happy with that. ⁓ I think I was like a young teenager when we did that. ⁓ it's funny. We went to Florida one year. This was 2009. I think it was, we went, ⁓ my dad's a giant college football fans. went down there for a bowl game and we go down to Florida. And if anybody has lived in Florida or you're definitely familiar with like.

And it was all over Facebook and stuff. They had these crazy record freezes where ⁓ the invasive pythons and stuff were dying. know, gators. It was colder in Florida than it was in Alaska. It was a warm Alaskan winter, at least that period of time. And it was like 20-something degrees at night down in Florida. So I was like, come on, man. I finally get down to Florida, and this is what I get.

Manny (10:52)
What? Okay.

That's crazy.

Hmm. Frigid. Yeah,

that's funny, ⁓ Well, Logan, I'm thankful we can make this happen ⁓ today. If the listeners are wondering, Logan Hufford, that last name sounds familiar. It's because I started following you on Instagram after my conversation with your brother, Chad, and just watching your Instagram and seeing some of these reels and

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (11:31)
Yeah.

Manny (11:36)
learning more about your story, I was like, dang, was like, this is some pretty deep, heavy stuff. This guy's got like quite a story. And what's cool about what you're doing is you've, had this, this experience, this, I don't know, previous life you could call it of struggling with addiction and sex addiction specifically. And it's a topic that's pretty heavy, pretty sensitive, might be uncomfortable for some.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (11:55)
Yeah.

Manny (12:05)
And those are the kind of things that really grab my attention because those things need to be talked about. Because I think when you have these little pockets of, ⁓ I don't know, call them what you want, whether it's addiction or people that have mental health struggles or depression or anxiety, they kind of feel alone. I think that's the tendency is to feel like they are alone in what they're going through.

And there it is becoming more commonplace, less of a stigma surrounding like things like specifically like mental health disorders or conditions, I'll call it conditions. And there's less of a stigma around that. But other things, they still they still do get swept under the rug. And I think talking about things like pornography, talking about sex addiction or

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (12:40)
Yeah.

Manny (12:52)
even like some of the things that I I talked on this show with a police officer from Homer about, you know, all the crazy things that are going online with predators and targeting children and like, that's the kind of stuff that I'm like, if anything, we need to just confront this elephant in the room of this stuff is happening. It's real in people's lives. People's lives are being destroyed by this kind of stuff. And rather than just pretending like it's not there, we should be talking about it. And so that's why I thought it was

really cool what you were doing, just sharing your story, sharing your own experiences, how you navigated through all that and where you're at. And I just got that from strolling through your Instagram, you know, for a couple of days. And I was like, yeah, let's see if we can make this happen. And so I'm super happy you were willing. It sounds like this is not your first go around with sharing on a podcast, which is even cooler for me because I'm still learning the podcast game.

kind of comfortable in least being on that side of the mic and telling your story. so I'm looking forward to this talk ⁓ for sure, man. Thanks for being willing to make it happen.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (14:00)
Yeah. I'll just say it was been about maybe two years now. ⁓ I can't remember the first time I went on a podcast, but, honestly, I was inspired by my brother. like, cause I saw it like, you know, he, was really intentional about it. And so I'm like, yeah, like I'm not going to do it for the rest of my life. I don't think, I mean, I'm open to sharing my story anytime, any place, but I really intentionally wanted to let go on this blitzkrieg of like,

let me just put my story out there ⁓ really to try to accomplish two things. Number one, I want anybody who is struggling to know, as you said, that they're not alone. It is not just you. And then number two, it's not just that you're not alone, but that there is help available. I use the metaphor of if I'm trapped in a cave and it feels like there's no way out, if I find that there's other people trapped in the cave, that

Manny (14:45)
Mm-hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (14:55)
can help because it makes me feel that I'm not alone, right? I'm not the only one that's trapped, but that's a really limited ceiling if we're all still trapped in the cave. But if I can meet other guys that live outside of the cave and they're like, dude, I used to live in that same cave you're in and I know what it takes to get out. That's what I want to do with, you know, sharing my story and share what God has done and a venue like this. So thank you for having me on.

Manny (15:20)
totally, man. And that's a great metaphor. I love that picture. With something like this, it starts somewhere. I think I'm sure when you look back at your life, ⁓ what did you see early on? Were there any signs that like, I might have a problem or am I normal? Or other people dealing with the same thing?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (15:44)
Yeah, within that question, I basically have two different answers, which on one hand is like, I can tell you what the signs were looking back. And yet I don't think I really saw myself as, I mean, I suppose I've always seen myself as abnormal in a way. and I can circle back to that, but like, I didn't see myself as having a problem. I definitely didn't. ⁓ I would have

I probably didn't spend too much time thinking about it at all. But if I did think about, know, I mean, whether I'm like age 10, 11, 12, 13, which is kind of that that rate, is, I mean, obviously that is a range, but during those years of what is pornography, you know, what is me lusting, you know, looking at a body of a woman and sexually objectifying that image, you know, learning about masturbation, like all these different things that I

learned during those years. I don't think I saw myself as like, ⁓ I do this way more than I should, or, you I have a real issue. I, what I'm about to say is not healthy, but it's probably where my mindset was, which is, well, I think probably everybody else does this and I probably do it less than them. So yeah, I wouldn't have seen myself as having a problem, even though looking back, man, I can point out things that to the external eye,

would have seemed like no big deal and yet I can see myself becoming a predator, becoming somebody. you talked about ⁓ predator in the sense of like kind of almost like the legal term, right? The framework of we read an article, again, like back when we used to read newspapers, ⁓ we read an article or we see something on Facebook or whatever of some sting right? Law enforcement officials, catch this predator or whatever ⁓ to catch a predator at the TV show.

Manny (17:16)
Hmm.

No.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (17:40)
Okay, so like I didn't, I wasn't targeting minors. I wasn't arrested for crimes and yet I was a predator. I learned from an early age to chase after the attention of a girl, ⁓ to crave, you know, whatever I could get. ⁓ Even as a 14, 15 year old kid, you know, ⁓ can I get a girl to give me attention? Can I get a girl to kiss me? Can I get a girl to spend time with me? All these different things.

Manny (17:48)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (18:10)
And you know somebody could look at it and like well, yeah, you're just a normal kid. You're just a normal boy, you know, and there is something normal inside of wanting attention Wanting attention of the opposite sex there is something normal in there But I took it to a level where I just craved it and I would do anything I could to get it and that's that's what Became abnormal right? That's what became very problematic

Manny (18:22)
Mm-hmm.

I see. With a lot of things in the addiction realm, you have escalating behaviors, right? So I think of an example of someone, you know, doing a drug for the first time and then they, maybe they don't do it again. Maybe for whatever reason they want and done, they experienced it and it's not a problem. And then you have someone that maybe does a drug and then they do it again. And then they're like,

and again, and now it's not necessarily giving them the same high anymore. So the behavior escalates, maybe they start looking for other things. How, did you experience that the same, in the same kind of way?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (19:22)
Yeah. Short answer is yes.

It was a very gradual escalation for many years, but it was also like a consistent upwards, you know, upwards motion. ⁓ mean, I'll put it this way. like number one, once I started doing a behavior, that was in my arsenal. That behavior was part of my MO. ⁓

I didn't start with pornography and then get to the point where I'm, spoiler alert, cheating on my wife with another woman and then, okay, now I'm gonna stop looking at porn. I'm gonna do both. ⁓ Once I was with a prostitute for the first time, I didn't stop having affairs with other women that I knew. I added that. mean, it was, you said Logan having lived.

Manny (20:03)
Mm-hmm.

Mm. Mm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (20:21)
this other life. And that's absolutely what it was. I lived a double life and that double life escalated and escalated. And I, and I just consistently over the course of years, crossed over barriers that I thought I would never cross over. ⁓ I, I never ever thought about, or I should say, I, I did think about, ⁓ adultery and like how that shredded apart families. Cause I experienced some of that.

Manny (20:37)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (20:49)
with various relatives, grandparents, like I saw what it did to family reunions, know, people that would never talk to their siblings because of other people's affairs and how they responded to it and stuff. I remember thinking as a kid, like probably as a young teenage boy, like I would never do that. That's like the worst thing you can do to another person. And I don't think that's necessarily wrong. I think it is about maybe the worst thing you can do to a person. And yet I did it and I did it many times. I never ever thought that I would, you know,

be with a prostitute and yet I did that. ⁓ Just a series of things. ⁓ And yet, I know I'm jumping around a little bit, but one of the blessings of being in recovery is getting to meet people who we both have a sexual addiction. We both actively working on that and we both have experienced a lot of victory in that. And yet there's other guys that have been huge pillars in my recovery who have never gone beyond pornography.

Manny (21:46)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (21:46)
in terms

of their version of infidelity. And they can tell you what kind of pain that caused their wife consistently looking at pornography. They can tell you the destruction that it caused in themselves. And that's the beautiful and dark truth of addiction is, infidelity is infidelity. And I can cause even more collateral damage the further I take it. ⁓ But anything where I'm setting aside my wife to choose something else,

causes damage. The beautiful part about it is though, that guy who maybe never did a lot of the things I did can still speak into my life because at the core of it we have the same addiction even though it manifested differently.

Manny (22:30)
Hmm. Yeah, that's a good point to make because I think, I mean, the pornography thing is I don't want to speak for every man, but I mean, like growing up in the, I call it the elder. being the elder millennial. Like you kind of grew up at kind of the top end of the internet and, as it kind of evolved with it. And that was one of those things it was like, yeah.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (22:48)
Right.

Manny (22:51)
the whole pornography thing wasn't just a magazine and dad's closet anymore. It was accessible everywhere. And so I got exposed to it. I remember in middle school for the first time and it was something that was seeming seemed to be commonplace around around my circle of friends and even moving into adulthood. Like it was something that you knew that was going on. And now you may bring up an interesting point about

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (22:57)
Yeah.

Manny (23:19)
There's some people that deal with that area and it never, never leaves there. And then like you're saying in your experience, you kind of not only dealt with that struggle, but then it kind of spiraled into this, this larger, this larger thing.

the tendency is to minimize it, that it's normal, that it's not a big deal. And it's interesting that you bring up in light of your relationships.

how that takes away from those. I think some people would point out the moral, like it's just a moral thing, like, well, it's just because you believe in God or it crosses some moral value that you have. But I think if you looked at it just from a bare bones of, okay, if I'm in a relationship with someone I love or let's say, ⁓ I don't know, if it's affecting my relationships with people, I mean,

Does the higher power really matter if it's still affecting the relationships on the ground level? I mean, I feel like there's an argument there for sure.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (24:18)
Yeah, I mean, this is like, quite honestly, we could spend an hour just talking about this topic. And I think, I think it'd be well worth it of like, you know, is it wrong? Is it a bad idea? Is it destructive? You know, you could insert whatever words, right? But like, is it destructive to view pornography?

if you're not a Christian or if you're not married or if you're not in a committed relationship and all these different things. And there are things that I would say, like I'm a Christian and I believe that I'm saved because Jesus Christ died for my sins and I trust in Jesus for my salvation. And so yes, if I'm talking to a group at church and we have the same core beliefs, I am going to address certain things based on what we all believe in scripture, in the Bible. But if I'm talking to a group of atheists,

Manny (25:07)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (25:11)
I am not going to hold back from my very strong belief that is rooted in science that pornography is incredibly destructive. It's not destructive because God says it's a sin. It's not destructive because it's cheating. It's not destructive because, you know, it hurts my wife. All of those things are true. It's destructive because I am training my brain. I am training my limbic system.

Manny (25:20)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (25:41)
I'm training my body to chase after what I want when I want it. And when I want something new, I will take something new. And when I want something different, I will take something different. And I'm not going to stop until I want to stop. So it teaches me these awful power and control ideals. It creates this like X-rated version of Pavlov's dog and I'm the dog. ⁓

Manny (25:48)
Hmm.

⁓ yeah.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (26:10)
It's terrible. And yes, if I am in a committed relationship, it causes horrible destruction to my partner. But that's only that's icing on the cake in a really bad way. Like that's not what makes it wrong. It's wrong because it's destructive to me and my body and yeah, like my mind and my soul. ⁓ But yeah, it doesn't matter if you and I, you know, the audience has different spiritual beliefs. mean, it does matter, but it doesn't make it

Manny (26:21)
Hmm.

Sir.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (26:41)
like, it's only wrong because of I believe in the Bible or because I'm a Christian.

Manny (26:44)
Yeah, I that is a great way to put it, Logan. Because from what I was just saying, I was just looking at the relationships that it affects and you bring it to a much, much deeper and more relevant ⁓ point is that it's destructive to the individual, to you as the person. And then, yes, the fruit of that is, you know, ruining relationships and all the other fallout that that could potentially lead to. That's a really great point. Did you in the beginning

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (26:52)
Yeah.

Manny (27:14)
Like you mentioned feeling like you were living a double life and people that are living a double life, their worst fear is getting found out. ⁓ How long were you successfully able to kind of hide these things or did you hide them or did people know that you had some struggles? You what was that experience like for you?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (27:36)
Yeah, this is going to be a kind of a complex answer because there were times where things were found out. There were lots of times where I would confess to my wife, ⁓ where I shared with other people because I would feel so bad that I would like vomit it out. ⁓ So yeah, there is, there wasn't like a, there are people where it's kind of the, it's the cinematic version of like,

There's this whole double life. There's a second family and a second house and all these different things. And then like one day it all comes crashing down. It wasn't like that for me. It was, it was much more ⁓ piecemeal. You know, there were certain elements that I tried to keep hidden. There were certain elements that I did keep hidden. There are certain elements that were, that were known. So when I was dating my wife, I mean, I told her, we, like, we talked about ⁓ pornography.

And I told her that I struggled, that I don't remember the exact words, but I mean, told her that I struggle with it. Sometimes I've looked at it and I don't want to, but I do struggle with that. And to that point in my head, I thought that was the truth. Cause like I had not ⁓ physically cheated with somebody else, but mostly it was because fear on my end,

And then also, like I hadn't, I didn't have a long history of committed relationships. did a lot of playing around. And so I didn't really have a lot of opportunities, honestly, to cheat on somebody. Um, but yeah, so I told her like, yeah, I struggle with pornography and that's all I said. And I thought that I was giving her a true answer. But then as we're dating,

Manny (29:08)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (29:26)
And I actually had some victory from pornography looking back on it. That's because I was focusing my lust, focusing my objectification onto her. So now I'm like obsessed with Carrie and obsessed with, you know, I'm so attracted to her and I want her. And so that's a whole other thing. ⁓ Before we got married, I physically cheated on her multiple times though. And once I broke that barrier, I mean, it was, it was like, you know,

Manny (29:34)
Mm.

Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (29:56)
that old fable of like the boy plugging his hole in the dam, know, in the water. Once that was out, once the water started coming through, I mean, it just broke everything apart in terms of my behavior. Once I justified doing that, I just kept doing it. And then, you know, then it was with prostitutes as well, and it was the whole thing. Six months after we got married was the first time that I confessed to Carrie.

Manny (30:06)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (30:26)
physical sexual infidelity. I wrote her a letter and if you're listening like please I am telling you my story. None of this is meant to be ⁓ directions on what you should do including parts that might kind of seem like they were good ideas. What I did was was not a healthy thing because I just wrote from my gut and I didn't seek healthy feedback from healthy people.

Manny (30:28)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (30:53)
I just felt really bad and I wanted to feel better. And in my head, I was like, I'm never going to do this again. I'm done with this. Well, that's, I mean, that's literally like somebody who's been, you know, a hopeless alcoholic for years and just going, I'm not going to change anything in my life. I'm just going to decide to not be an alcoholic anymore. And that does not usually work. It can, I mean, some people can stop drinking, just drop of a hat. You almost never can.

You usually need to wildly change your infrastructure and that same for me. So I wrote her a letter and I don't remember how detailed I got, but my purpose was to truly put it out there and say, hey, I've had affairs. I've cheated on you. I've done these things. ⁓ But so like she wasn't prepared for that. I mean, not that anybody can be prepared for that, but ⁓

I was only thinking about myself, I wanted to feel better. It was like somebody going to confession. I just wanted to get this off my chest. so that in and of itself was really hard for her. Looking back on it, that became a part of a different abuse cycle though, because then I would confess. Every time I'd have another physical affair, I'd confess to her again. So I'm not changing my behavior, I'm not changing my infrastructure. I'm just, I keep on doing the same thing.

Manny (31:53)
Mm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (32:17)
except I'm vomiting to her every time I do it. I'm so sorry I had another affair. I'm so sorry I had another affair. And I'm just beating her up every time emotionally, you know, and she's just like taking blow after blow. It was absolutely awful. ⁓ And so, you know, to your questions, like, yeah, it was, there was a lot that wasn't hidden.

because I had this terribly unhealthy cycle of how I was living where I would, one of the things we do in recovery is we go through this, about once or twice a year we do a refresher course as a group of the relapse cycle, which is literally all the way from I get triggered, I get stressed, get, know, something interferes with my life. And then I get to the point where I act out in my addiction and this could be anger, this could be alcohol, this could be drugs, this could be sexual addiction. I act out.

And then I feel really, really awful. I'm like, I'm never going to do that again. But then I get stressed again. And then I go back to it. And there's a lot more stages than what I just shared, but that's like the 30,000 foot view. And I, and that's what, that's what my life was. It was a giant relapse cycle. And sometimes I would go through that entire relapse cycle within a day. And then sometimes I would, maybe I would take five months to go through it, you know, before the next time I'd have another physical affair. But.

Manny (33:24)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (33:38)
At no point was I living in a healthy, holistic, authentic way. just sometimes I was able to white-knuckle it for a little bit longer.

Manny (33:43)
Hmm.

Yeah, wow, man. So within the first six months of marriage, you had had multiple, I mean, guess, started before you got married.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (33:58)
I started before we got married. I started having affairs

before and then that carried through.

Manny (34:04)
And then, so how long did this cycle go? Like one of my thoughts is for your wife to be like still like in it with you at six months in after, you know, six months of being newlyweds, here's everything that's happened. You know, the kind of the confession comes out. I'm sure it felt like she was like hit by a truck, you know, and then.

How long of these repetitive affairs, you know, even after that and her response to that, like how long did that go on?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (34:41)
mean, her response was a little bit different depending on the time. I mean, I remember, you know, I can picture like I can picture her sitting on our bed and she's crying. I can picture one specific moment where she's laying on the bathroom floor, like screaming, like literally crying out to God, screaming, going, why? And I can also picture her

Manny (35:06)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (35:10)
I don't know that she didn't cry, but I remember I can at least have a memory of a visual of her hearing this.

and not showing a lot of emotion because this was years in, this was several years in and she had, and this, what I'm saying is she would tell you that when she shares her testimony, this comes out of her mouth. So I'm not speculating by this point, not to say that didn't hurt terribly, but she had started to become a little bit frozen, a little bit numb, which is an awful thing. And that's not something that you want, right? But it's, it's absolutely, I mean,

Manny (35:21)
No.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (35:49)
this might ruffle some feathers, but it's very similar. It's not dissimilar from somebody who, know, if you're a child growing up in an abusive home, at some point, hearing mom and dad scream at each other and throw pots and pans and hit each other is not gonna carry the same effect, right? And that's what it was with Carrie, where it still hurt terribly, but...

she started to build up some scar tissue. And I mean, it is, I know I'm jumping ahead, but like, mean, it's truly a miracle that, you know, that we are able to have the life that we have today. And I say that, I do believe it is a miracle. is by God's grace. She has also put in tremendous work in her own recovery. I've put in tremendous work in my recovery. So it's not as if we just decided,

Manny (36:20)
Mm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (36:46)
Hey, I'm gonna stop cheating on you and you need to start trusting me and we're gonna be happy. It's like not by a long shot. It was a grueling process on my end to get sober and to build trust. It was a whole other process on her end. But yeah, I should not be able to go home after this podcast and give Carrie a kiss hello and give her a hug and see my boys. Every day I'm.

Manny (36:52)
Mm-hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (37:15)
reminded and every day when I'm at bedtime with my boys, I thank God for salvation. thank God for recovery because on my worst day on the hardest day when there's hurricane force winds and I'm sick and my kids are sick and all this stuff. I'm like, man, I got it really, really freaking good.

Manny (37:31)
Yeah, that's crazy, man. And the story, this kind of story, I feel like I have heard variations of before, but it usually results with the woman or the other, the cheating party walking out the door, you know, and doing so in a justified kind of way. What do you... I mean, you probably know just from Carrie sharing this, but I'm sure she had a lot of people...

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (37:50)
Yeah.

Manny (38:00)
saying, what were you thinking? What was the point of staying with Logan? What does she say to that? What is her response to those type of questions during that time?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (38:14)
Yeah, so

again, like little disclaimer, this story is true and it is descriptive. It is not prescriptive of what you should do. ⁓ When we talk about recovery, you know, here in a bit we can, talk about recovery. We'll talk about what that looked like. And absolutely there's going to be stuff in that that is prescriptive that, you know, if you're struggling, if you need like, yeah, you should start applying these things. But this part of the story is just descriptive. So yeah, she,

Manny (38:22)
Got you.

Gotcha.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (38:43)
And again, this is all stuff that she will gladly share in her own testimony. So I'm not speculating on any of this because that's one thing I'm not going to do is guess, you know, what she was thinking or guess why she did something. Carrie felt ⁓ very much trapped in this feeling of like she wants to be the best wife. She wants to be a good supportive wife. ⁓ So she, she didn't want to

She felt obligation to stay with me. ⁓ She felt obligation to try to keep the family together. ⁓ Codependency is usually a huge thing where there's an addict in the house, right? And so if there's a partner, it doesn't have to be a partner, could be a ⁓ kid or a friend, but somebody that is trying to hold it all together, but they go to such great lengths that they actually shouldn't. And that's the codependency piece. And so she definitely struggled with that for sure. ⁓

Manny (39:38)
Yeah.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (39:42)
She also, she, and she had, she's been an incredible wife, coming up on 15 years now. And.

But part of that was she didn't want to bring shame on the family name. She didn't want to bring shame on me, which is like, I've heard her say that and even me hearing her, sometimes I'm like, but that's crazy. Like I was awful. Like I screw me. I don't deserve for you to think about that. That goes to show where her heart was. Right. And that's truly where her heart was though. She wanted to honor her husband as she wanted to honor her family. She didn't know what to do.

Manny (40:07)
Mm.

Totally.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (40:21)
She didn't know how to respond. ⁓ To your point, she didn't have a bunch of people in her ear telling her she should leave. So there's a couple things there. Number one, ⁓ she

She didn't feel free to...

I'm starting to the point where I'm guess I'm starting to speculate a little bit. I know what happened and I know generally what her motivations were. But if I can't like directly quote from something she shared, I tried to be really careful, you know, saying like, here's why she did something. But you know, she wasn't talking to a bunch of different people about all this stuff. Again, because of where her heart was, like she didn't want to just spread a bunch of stuff. Even if, even though would have been true stuff, she wasn't.

Manny (40:57)
Yeah, sure.

Mm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (41:13)
gonna tell a bunch of her friends, like, here's what I'm going through. Here's what Logan's doing. Eventually, I think it was like two or three years into marriage, I could be off on that, but I think that's what it was. She did tell me, she was like, you need to tell your family and you need to tell the pastors at church. Like, cause we're still attending church. We're being the good couple on Sunday morning and holding hands and all this and...

So she made that clear. She's like, you've got to tell some other people. It can't just be me. Who knows? ⁓ but she didn't know what it looked like for her to ask for help. and it wasn't until a couple of years after that in 2015, ⁓ I had had another affair and she told me, all right, I, I can't do this either. You get serious help.

Manny (41:49)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (42:09)
you make serious changes or I'm gone and the kids are gone. And I knew Carrie well enough that she does not, she doesn't speak generally speaking. She doesn't just talk from a place of emotion. If she says something, she really means it. And so I didn't know what that would look like, but I believed her and I didn't want to lose my wife and I didn't want to lose my kids. ⁓ And so that, that ultimatum was gigantic because that was not something that like she was.

She was not engaging in recovery coaching at that time. She hadn't gone to therapy. She hadn't gone to a recovery group. Nothing. ⁓ So that was on its own. think that was a miracle for her to know to give me an ultimatum. Cause like that is one of the very first things, not that everybody should do. Everyone's in a different spot, but that's one of the very first things that she'll talk to a woman about. If need be, here's what it looks like to give an ultimatum. If you were in a spot.

you know, where you have a husband who is abusing you, who is not making changes, who is, you know, making you there's unrepentantly living this life. You know, here's what you may have to do. And it was, it was huge though, because it was her pain. My, my pain, like the pain of being an addict and hurting my family, I had just like accepted it. ⁓ It wasn't until I was faced with the reality of like, dude, you're about to lose your wife. You're about to lose your kids.

Manny (43:31)
Yeah.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (43:37)
⁓ that got me to start putting on my big boy pants and actually seek help.

Manny (43:43)
Hmm.

Did your family or anyone else get brought into the loop at that point after they ultimatum? did you guys, is that when you started like, okay, maybe I do need to go to recovery. Maybe I do need to let my family or my church know what's been going on and that I need help. Is that when that door started to open?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (44:08)
So the door of family and church, that actually did happen whenever she told, again, I don't remember the year, but you know, so two or three years after we got married, that would have been, so like, let's say it was 2013 maybe. Whenever she said that, I did follow through with that. I told my pastors and I told all of my immediate family. So my siblings, and then only one sibling was married at that time. So my siblings, sister-in-law, and my parents. And I shared that with them.

I shared it with two of the pastors at my church. I started meeting with one of my pastors regularly specifically for this. like I shouldn't paint the picture. Sometimes I fall into this trap of like very black and white thinking where it's like, you know, until 2016 I was bad Logan and all I did was evil. And then after I got into recovery, now I'm healthy Logan. It's like, that's not true. That's not what it was. Number one, in 2016, I didn't hit a toggle switch and start becoming healthy all the time.

I still can struggle with the best of them and I can be selfish with the best of them and all this. But yeah, there's been a lot of progressive victory over the last nine and a half years. And then in that first several years of our relationship, yeah, there was a lot of evil, there was a lot of darkness. I desired deeply to love my wife and I desired deeply to love my family. I did not have a freaking clue how to stop acting out.

Manny (45:07)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (45:36)
I did not, I felt like once I would get triggered, I would, if I wasn't basically lucky, that's how I would have thought about it. If I wasn't lucky, I just got myself on this super highway of limbic system. Not that I knew with it. I didn't know that term, but you know, this, this limbic system and I'm just like on autopilot and I'm giving into temptations. And the next thing I know I'm with somebody or I'm texting somebody or I'm on some website or whatever.

And all, like all of that is BS. It wasn't autopilot. Logan was making decisions, right? I was making choices. It felt as if it was just automatic. And so I know I'm on a tangent there, but like to circle back, ⁓ you know, I did do some things. I did, you know, reach out to certain folks and share. ⁓ And meeting with my pastor, like, yeah, that was better than nothing.

But to his credit, and I've told him this, like, I'm so grateful for this. He made it clear after, I don't remember if it was like, it was several months, I think. I don't think it was a year that we had been meeting every couple of weeks for like an hour or two. And he, but he told me, said, Logan, I do not.

know how to help you with this. He's like, I can support you and love you and I can walk you through scripture. I can be helpful to you, but I don't know this area. I don't understand this level of sexual sin, sexual depravity, which I give him props for because there's a lot of pastors that would be like, all right, like this is one of my flock. got to, I have to be the one to help him. And, and I got to be the only one.

Manny (47:16)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (47:19)
And he didn't do that. He recognized he was not equipped to deal with this issue. And so as soon as I found somebody that was qualified to be a mentor and you know, we can get to that, but that's, was Rick. He was my, my mentor in sexual addiction program. My pastor was like very, not that he was hands off, but he was very supportive of, Hey, this dude, he knows what he's talking about. Work with this dude. ⁓ yeah.

Manny (47:45)
Yeah, that's big. Because I

think you're right. could have maybe the pastor over-spiritualize it and just be like, look, dude, like you're the problem. Like, you got to, I think I told you in the lead up to this, like you just got to give it to God or some other blanket, you know, kind of Christian-ese saying to where you're like, well, I know that, but it's not working. Like, what do I do?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (48:14)
Yeah.

Manny (48:15)
and could have passed the blame on you or just being like, well, dude, obviously you got sin in your life. You got to deal with pretty wise ⁓ of him to want stick with you and then realize at what point, you know, maybe there was a different route that you needed to take. that, yeah, that is really cool.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (48:34)
Yeah. And, and I mentioned this earlier, but you know, I, I'm a Christian and I, ⁓ I love, I'm sitting inside Creekside church, which has been my home church now for almost a decade. Like I love pastors that shepherd their flock and, and, you know, that are biblically counseling their, their, their people. I think that that absolutely is something that all of us, if I'm a Christian, I need to be in the scripture. need to be doing that. But yeah, it is a common thing that if somebody is.

going to a pastor or maybe it's a Christian friend or even a Christian therapist, ⁓ there can be, I want to be really careful. The word that I want to say is an overreliance, or the term that kind of comes to mind is like an overreliance on scripture. And I don't know, I'm like, maybe that's not the right way to put it. Cause I do, I hold the Bible very high up in terms of like, if I'm not sure what to do, I need to go there. But there are things

that I need to I need to loop in as well. Like, yes, I need to spend time in the Word and I need to spend time in prayer, but I also need to invite other human beings, you know, into my life. And I've said this to pastors, to Christian men, like, if you don't think that somebody in addiction might need something beyond a Bible study, beyond, you know, meeting with their pastor, like,

Manny (49:44)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (50:00)
We can seriously look in the Bible and see examples of times where like God called men or people to seek out other people to help them, to support them. ⁓ We need that. We need to be able to go to people who have been down a similar path who can help us. It doesn't throw out the Bible, but it's like I need to work with people who have experienced something like what I struggle with.

Manny (50:19)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (50:28)
and who know the pathway out of that cave.

Manny (50:30)
That's a great point. ⁓ Yeah, I'm trying to think just through stories. Are you thinking like New Testament stories, Old Testament? I think, one, the guidance was for believers to be in the practice of coming together anyways. That's kind of been a theme throughout biblical history is that we have these beliefs, but then we're supposed to...

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (50:52)
Right.

Manny (50:59)
hanging out with one another and you know the common phrase is doing life together is the common phrase but and that i think that's why is that's the other i think that's a big piece that's a big piece of it ⁓ as far as recovery goes so you know you're you're in this you're in this kind of chaos this coming this whole situation is kind of coming to a head with

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (51:03)
Right.

Manny (51:26)
with everything and now more people are getting brought into the loop. That first step towards recovery, I think, is probably a big one for people that know. They know they have a problem. They know they're not where they want to be. What does that first step look like? Is it the same for everyone? Is you know, does it depend on the person or the situation or whatever the vice is? Like, what is your advice to that person?

to be like, I have a problem, I need to take that first step to getting out, what is that?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (52:02)
Yeah, it's largely going to be different for different people, ⁓ especially based on like things like geography. You know, if somebody is listening to this and they're up in Fairbanks, I don't know what's available to them. Like I would, I'm sure there are groups that would be helpful, but I don't know what those groups are in Fairbanks. And I doubt there's a sexual addiction specific group. There might be, I don't know of one. A lot of the times, you know,

In fact, you're the first podcast I've been on that's Alaska based, right? So like most of the time when this question gets brought up, it's like, well, I don't know if you're listening in Tampa, if you're listening in Mexico, if you're listening in England, like I don't know what's available to you, but it's about teaching people how to fish, right? And those principles are going to be, you know, pretty much the same for anyone, which is I need to be real with what my issues are.

⁓ and so that looks like there's honestly, so there's a, there's a, like a little questionnaire, a little quiz on the prodigals of Alaska website that you can go to. ⁓ I'm not joking. This sounds like it's a, this sounds like it's a joke. If you Google like test for, am I a sex addict? You, there's literally like dozens of tests that you can take and some of them are more in depth than others.

Maybe I should have just one picked out, I guess, if I'm going to say, you know, then go to the Prodigals of Alaska website. But there is one on there. But if you take that test, that's going to be a pretty revealing thing to look at of, is this something that I struggle with? And yeah, I need to not put it on the back burner. Or is this something like, no, no, no, I'm a sex addict. I have raging issues.

And I need to do whatever I have to do to get this under control. Um, so, so, you know, to paraphrase that, I need to be very real with like what my struggles are, um, what my issues are. And I think that titles and labels can be overemphasized. I think they can be maybe even misleading sometimes, but I also think that there's a lot of power in a label.

Manny (54:28)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (54:29)
And one thing that I didn't realize for a lot of my life is labels don't have to be forever. So, you know, and again, like I get pushback sometimes from Christians, they're like, oh, you know, don't say that you're an alcoholic because then you're saying that you're always going to be that for the rest of your life. Or don't say that you're a sex addict because then that says that you're a sex addict instead of you're a Christian. It's like, no, it says this is something that has me in bondage.

Manny (54:36)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (54:58)
And yeah, if I don't make changes, then I will stay in bondage for the rest of my life and I will probably hurt more and more people as I go. So in that sense, a label is a very good thing because it identifies where I'm at and what I need to work on. But that label doesn't have to be with me forever. That's why my Instagram handle is no longer in bondage. It doesn't say I will never struggle with sexual temptation or I couldn't act out. No, not at all. I absolutely could.

And I do, I do get tempted. I do feel triggers, but I'm not in bondage to it anymore. ⁓ So, sorry, I'm like, I'm going off on these tangents, but you know, number one, identify where you're at. And that's, there's a really good chance that yeah, a quiz, a test could be just a small piece of that puzzle. ⁓ That leads to what your second step, and really it's like a one A, one B thing, which is.

Manny (55:40)
Thank you.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (55:57)
It needs to be with a healthy person who's ready to hear it, but share your story. If you grapple with this, if you feel like you might be in bondage to this or you are in bondage to this, ⁓ which by the way, if somebody's wondering, and this applies to any addiction, any struggle, but you know, for the purposes of right now, we'll just talk about sexual addiction. If I'm not quite sure whether or not this is an addiction versus just like an annoyance,

Manny (56:05)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (56:26)
I I'll just ask this of any guy I talk to, like, okay, do I keep hurting people because I keep doing the wrong thing even though I know I shouldn't be doing that wrong thing? Like, I don't need to make it more complicated. If I keep doing the wrong thing, even though I know it's wrong, and by doing the wrong thing I keep hurting people, there's a really good chance I'm an addict.

Manny (56:37)
Hmm.

Yeah,

that's a good way to put it.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (56:49)
And so, know, but that one, so one A identify what your issue is one B talk about it. ⁓ Now the one B that's where it depends totally on like where you're at, right? Geographically, you know, what's, what's your infrastructure? Who's in your life already? You know, you might have a really healthy person that you can go to and sit down over a cup of coffee and that might be a good person for you to open up to it.

is not a good idea to just find anybody that will listen and be like, I have all these problems. ⁓ So funny enough, I mean, maybe it's, it's funny, not funny. ⁓ Yesterday, as we're having technical difficulties and we're, able to have this interview, I was talking with one of the church staff is a lady and she was sharing how, because they've had issues with like people.

coming on off hours trying to get in the building. And I was like, man, does that stuff happen a lot? And she was sharing how she's like, well, sometimes what happens is people will call and they'll share like their sin struggles and like really inappropriate ways. like, yes, don't be that person. Don't just call up a random church or just ask a random person at a coffee shop, you know, ⁓ or if you've got a buddy who you guys have been frequently doing the same wrong things together, that's probably not the person that you open up to. But if you have a healthy person that you can open up to.

And if you don't, which a lot of people are not going to have a healthy enough person that should be like their, you know, their person to share that vulnerability. That's where a recovery group comes in. ⁓ And, you know, prodigals, we've got a couple groups here in Alaska. So we're not super widespread. ⁓ This is definitely the best recovery group I know about, but it's not the only one.

Celebrate Recovery is a ⁓ Christ-centered recovery group. It's fairly general. There's no specific addiction. ⁓ It doesn't go to the level of depth that a prodigal's does, but that's an option. I've even told people, if all you have in your city is an AA group, Alcoholics Anonymous, go, go to that group. Maybe you don't ever go back there. Maybe you do, but...

Manny (59:08)
No.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (59:09)
That's a group that is in a pre-existing infrastructure for someone to come and share their story. So, you know, if that's all you have, I would take advantage of that. ⁓ And then of course, you know, a really, really good option is ⁓ a qualified sexual addiction therapist, which like 10, 11 years ago, I didn't know that was a thing. I didn't know that there were therapists trained in sexual addiction. ⁓

And then conversely, there are therapists trained in betrayal trauma, you know, so that somebody like my wife, which like most people don't even know that term. ⁓ My wife, you know, for her to be able to go to somebody who has been trained in this, who understands what it is to be battered and lied to and deceived and trampled over and all these things, not to mention, you know, their bed has been shared with countless other people.

Manny (59:42)
Interesting.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:00:07)
a betrayed spouse needs resources and they need more than just books. know, they need more than just a video series. Although that stuff might be really good. And so I know that was a long list, but that's, to kind of give just a little slice of like, I don't know exactly what's going to be best for you, but some, someone who is willing to let you be vulnerable and then sit in that and hear that. ⁓

is going to be really, really key. But then you need to stick with, and I'll pause here, but you need to stick with something and you need accountability. And that's something that gets really misunderstood, I think.

Manny (1:00:49)
Yeah, I think you did a good job of kind of laying out a couple different layers and options that someone could take if they realize that they might have these destructive behaviors and where to begin those first steps to take it at a variety of different levels and options. Now, I think that's

So someone decides to take the first step towards recovery, whatever that is, whether it's personal relationship or actually going to like a 12-step meeting AA or something like that. I think that there's probably some expectations built in their minds for what it's going to be like. Who's going to be there? What kind of information is going to be shared? Is it

you know, is it going to be scary or uncomfortable? What's it like when you actually just get beyond what it could be and then you show up to your first meeting? What's the reality of that look like or what it was for you?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:01:46)
Yeah. So like so many of my answers, I cannot help but answer in multiple parts because once again, this is something where I experienced different versions of this. ⁓ I distinctly remember the very first time I ever went to a recovery group, which was a year before, almost a full year before I went to my first prodigal's group. and those were very different experiences. like the first group I ever went to,

was sex addicts anonymous, which is if you're familiar at all with AA, you know, even if somebody's only familiar from like movies and stuff, right? But you're familiar with AA. Hi, I'm Bob and I'm an alcoholic. It's the same thing. Hi, I'm Bob, I'm Logan. I'm a sex addict. But like, so my wife, drove me, we were in the Valley. She drove me into Anchorage where this group was and in the minivan, my wife, four kids.

She was gonna go take the kids and go play at a park for a little bit and I was gonna go to the meeting So like I'm walking across the parking lot and it felt like I was walking for like 15 minutes You know because it was just like this look it's probably 30 seconds, right? But it just it was like my gosh. I don't know like what am I gonna find and I remember walking up to the church And it was very much a stereotypical kind of like into the church this old wooden church

and you know go down in the basement where it's like you know that old wood that you can smell if you've ever been in a church basement right you can smell it ⁓ that kind of musty smell but i'm like as i'm walking just to give you a little glimpse of like how i mean obviously i was unhealthy because i was you know was still struggling with addiction ⁓ very much so struggling but how selfish and how how how much i lacked awareness one of the things i was thinking about was like man am i gonna

Is there going to be like a bunch of like greasy old weird dudes down there? Even even trapped in my addiction, I still was focused on like other people and their problems, right? Because here's the thing, if that was the case, well, I probably belonged with those guys, right? And the reality was it wasn't quite so extreme. It was actually it was I think it was all guys that were quite a bit older than me. I don't know.

Manny (1:03:52)
No.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:04:10)
I don't know, I mean the youngest guy was probably in his 50s. But it was only a handful of guys. ⁓ And yeah, kind of older middle-aged and then like one guy that was quite a bit older. And they were at a variety of stages ⁓ in sobriety and in recovery. And I went to that group for four months. ⁓ And there was some traction that I gained for a bit, but really it was...

It was a very low ceiling and there was not really any recovery that I did. ⁓ It was mostly I didn't act out for four months. It was a lack of ⁓ action, unhealthy action in that way, but I wasn't working on stuff. I wasn't processing through stuff. And a lot of that's on me. Most of that is on me. ⁓ I will say it was tough because there wasn't a lot of...

Manny (1:04:55)
Yeah.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:05:08)
When I was in that room, I didn't look around and go, man, there's a bunch of dudes here where they have the type of life I want. And that is, that's, that's kind of a sad thing. ⁓ you know, going back to what I said earlier about finding a group, finding a resource, and this isn't necessarily for like, if you're opening up for the first time, but when you're looking to attach yourself, embed yourself into an infrastructure, like a recovery group, I think very strongly you need to.

Manny (1:05:14)
Mm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:05:35)
You need to be able to look around that room and go, yeah, there's some people here who have the type of life that I want to have one day. cause you need to be able to have hope that I keep using that metaphor that there's life outside the cave and there's thriving life, right? If it's just a bunch of guys that are all kind of still in that, maybe they're, they're kind of getting out of the cave a little bit, but they don't really know how to live life outside of the cave. We're all just kind of peers. We're all kind of still in the same spot.

Manny (1:05:41)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:06:04)
That can be tricky. ⁓ And ⁓ I try to have grace. Every group has to have a start. And so if that's just where they're at in their life cycle, OK, give it some time. Still try to work with those people. But that's what that group was. It ⁓ was limited. But it gave me my first taste of I can sit in a room and share how much I struggle and nothing happened.

You know, nobody looked at me and made fun of me. Nobody kicked me out. Nobody was like, dude, you're a weirdo. Um, they listened, you know, and they appreciated that I was willing to be honest. And that was, that was good for me to, to recognize like, can just share this now to be fair. I'd already started to do a little bit of that with family, with pastors. So it wasn't the first time that I got to experience the grace of somebody listening, right. And going.

Hey, thank you for sharing that. ⁓ I went to another group that was similar. I went to a Celebrate Recovery group a few months later, but neither of those groups were the thing that I needed. ⁓ was in fact at a Celebrate Recovery group, which is kind of like a Christian version of AA, I met a guy named Rick. And so like the guys and the gals split off.

Manny (1:07:20)
Mm-hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:07:26)
and I was with the guys group and so maybe there was like 20 of us and everybody had a substance addiction except for me and Rick and he and I both said you know I'm so and so and I'm here for sexual addiction. I didn't know it he had like 10-15 years of sobriety at that time ⁓ and so that caught my ear like okay this dude you know this dude has a sexual addiction interest now that's that's cool that he's here and he pulled me aside and it wasn't the

first time I don't think, but I think it was pretty early on, he was like, hey, I appreciate you being here. You need more than this group. He's like, I needed more than this group. And then he introduced a little bit more about his story and he talked about a group called Prodigals, which was in Anchorage. And at that time, you know, there was only one meeting. It was in Anchorage and he's like, Prodigals was the hardest thing I ever did. It was like bootcamp, but it's what I needed to change my life.

Manny (1:08:04)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:08:22)
And based on your story, Logan, you probably need something like that. And so he invited me to come with him and I pushed him off for a while after I think it was several months. finally went just to like make him happy. I went one time with him and that was the first time that I got to experience. There's many men that are living outside of the cave and there's many men that are thriving. There's many men who have restored and transformed marriages.

There are spouses who are living transformed lives, know, spouses who have been hurt just as bad as I've hurt my wife. And yet they're not frozen in time, numb, ⁓ you know, just hateful, vengeful, not to say that Carrie was those things, like ⁓ most spouses that have been hurt in this way become frozen in time and at best numb at worst. ⁓

pretty negative, understandably. And yet there were spouses that had totally transformed lives, but these guys who were healthy guys, they weren't perfect, but they were real, they were authentic. ⁓ That was a total game changer. And even then it wasn't immediate. That was March, the first time I went to a prodigal's meeting and I got sober May 19th. So it still took several weeks of trying to do things, just half-heartedly, trying to do things my way.

Manny (1:09:22)
Yeah, yeah.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:09:49)
trying to give minimal effort and then falling on my face. ⁓ But Prodigals was totally, totally different. I can explain a little bit of what made it different, but it was a completely different experience than any other recovery group.

Manny (1:10:04)
Yeah, I mean, that's my next question. What was the secret sauce at Prodigals? I mean, you'd experienced a couple other groups beforehand. You'd already talked to pastors, family was in the loop, and you were still kind of struggling to gain traction in this. What was it about Prodigals that did it for you?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:10:23)
Yeah, pretty simply, mean, yes, Prodigals is Christ-centered, but that wasn't the thing because Celebrate Recovery is Christ-centered. What Prodigals has is the infrastructure allows for and actually encourages guys to get feedback from other guys. ⁓ If somebody, if you've ever been to...

a 12-step group that's AA or modeled after AA, when you're sharing, number one, if I'm sharing in an AA group, I can share whatever I want. I can share how my day has been, I can share how my week has been, I can share my life story, I can share something that was encouraging in my Bible reading today or, you know, something I read out of the AA book, I can share whatever I want. That's not bad, but I would argue

especially if I'm struggling, if I'm trying to find out which way is up, I need some parameters. ⁓ But then the second thing is when I'm done sharing at almost any other recovery group and Manny's sitting across the table from me and Manny is hearing Logan maybe straight up lie, maybe say things that are wildly unhealthy, maybe say things that are

Manny (1:11:24)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:11:44)
I'm not taking any ownership over my crap. I'm blaming everything on my wife, everything on the outside world or my boss or whatever. And you're not allowed to call me out on any of that. You're not allowed to ask me questions. You're not allowed to be like, Logan, just curious, have you tried doing things this way instead of that way? Or Logan, what's it looked like in the past when you've done things this way? What's that looked like for you?

Manny (1:11:47)
Mm.

Mm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:12:12)
It's one thing to like, hey, you know, in this group, we're not going to let people give advice. I can kind of understand that, but to not allow questions, to not allow follow up questions and, ⁓ you know, for, for people to just call out BS, call out red flags. It's very, very hard for true transformation to take place. ⁓

Because I'm an addict! I'm gonna lie with the best of them. I'm really good at tricking people. I'm really good at deceiving people. I'm really good at manipulating the crowd. You know, and finding out what makes you tick versus what makes you tick, and then feeding you what you need and feeding you what you need and... That's exactly what would do every day as an addict. I did not need a safe space. I needed... Well, let me back up. I needed a safe space but...

what a lot of groups become is they become a comfortable space and that's very different. And so, Prodigals, it is safe in the sense that there's anonymity, right? What's said here stays here, you know, ⁓ guys are all here because they have a shared struggle and all that stuff, but it is not a comfortable space, man. It's not comfortable. I've had guys...

Manny (1:13:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:13:25)
you know, get in my face and be like, not in a mean way, not in an unhealthy way, but I've had guys that have hurt my feelings, you know, that have been like, man, you better cut that out. You better stop doing that. But most of the time though, it's not even that. Most of the time it's when it does hurt, it's because they're asking hard questions in the right areas. And I don't like that. It's uncomfortable for me, you know.

Manny (1:13:42)
Hmm. ⁓

Yeah, that's awesome, man. It's cool to hear that that exists, that there, you know, because it seems like a lot of recovery, at least for, you know, I've never been to a recovery program before. My dad growing up, I remember he had an alcohol problem. He would go to AA groups, so I'm familiar with that. ⁓ I've heard of 12-step ⁓ programs before. But they do all kind of seem to have the same

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:14:06)
Yeah.

Manny (1:14:15)
rules, I guess, or really similar like ⁓ format. And it's interesting. I didn't know that, that you couldn't offer, know, someone can just say whatever they want to and no one's allowed to like say anything or clarify anything or ask any questions. I can see the value of why you found some more help at this other one, at Prodigals, because

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:14:40)
Yeah.

Manny (1:14:42)
people are able to kind of give you feedback. And then it sounds like, and I don't know if you said this, but it sounds like at this group, you saw people down the road that you said, I want to be there where they're at. Like, obviously I want to find whatever they found. Yeah, that's,

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:14:53)
Yes.

Yeah, Rick

was, Rick was, you know, definitely like front and center. And he was the guy that I met at Celebrate Recovery. But even then, I don't remember if I necessarily thought this to myself, but it certainly could have been easy for me to be like, okay, well Rick's one guy, but maybe he's just an anomaly, right? Like maybe, maybe he just had some miracle. But so then to be like, okay, it's not just Rick. It's this guy and it's that guy and it's these other six guys, you know? ⁓ I mean, over the course of time,

Manny (1:15:14)
Mm, yeah.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:15:26)
I mean, I've met...

I mean, it's 15, 20 guys that have graduated from the program, which is like a two-year voluntary house arrest program. ⁓ They've graduated from the program that are totally, they're not perfect, right? These are not guys that just became perfect guys, but they live life in a healthy, authentic way. They're no longer in bondage, you know, to sexual addiction. And ⁓ yeah, I didn't think that was possible.

Manny (1:15:38)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Wow. When you say like two year house arrest program, do you literally mean like you are ankle monitor, someone's going to know where you're at all the time or like, what do you mean? What do you mean by that? Like the actual length of time you said, you mentioned bootcamp and I was thinking like maybe a couple of weeks, but you're saying this is like a two year commitment to this thing. Okay.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:16:09)
Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

so, and these are metaphors. And of course, I'm kind of mixing metaphors, house arrest, boot camp, but it's, so it wasn't literal house arrest in this, and it was not part of the legal system. ⁓ But like literally my mentor, when I would go to work, I had to take a selfie and send it to him. When I would go to lunch, I would take a selfie in front of the, wherever I'm grabbing lunch and I would send it to him. ⁓

Manny (1:16:28)
Okay.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:16:45)
if I wanted to go on a camping trip. So we live in Alaska, right? What do we want to do? We want to go camping. And so if we want to go on a camping trip, ⁓ I needed to get permission, number one. And then number two, if I have permission, I have to write up a safety plan, which is a multiple page document detailing where are we going, who are we going with, what are we looking to do on this camping trip, what am I going to be doing?

to be safe. ⁓ When I'm in the program, I have to make a phone call every single day. No exceptions. So everyone listening knows there's a lot of places where I'm camping where I can't make a phone call. So am I willing to drive 30 minutes, an hour, 90 minutes to go make a phone call? Because if I'm not, I don't get to go on a camping trip. got to make, you know, and so, you know, in the sense of boot camp, it's like, and I never served in the military, but it,

Manny (1:17:21)
No.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:17:37)
We use that term because it's for the time that I'm in the program, I lose my autonomy. I no longer call the shots. I don't get to do things based on me thinking that they seem like a good idea. I do things based on whether or not I'm allowed to. there's absolutely, ⁓ there's a huge amount of weaning off of that.

Manny (1:17:44)
Mm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:18:06)
I gain autonomy as time goes and also as I earn it, right? But in, I say two years, like some, some guys, might be three years depending on like if a guy's just not getting it. ⁓ if, know, if I need to go back and redo some, some of the work, you know, some of the homework, things like that. ⁓ but yeah, it is, it's not literal bootcamp. It's a literal house arrest, but it's something like that because I don't get to do things just based on how I want to do them.

Manny (1:18:11)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Cut.

At what point in that did you start to see hope that, I might be on the right path here. I might, I see a version of myself in the near future that is no longer in bondage. When did those wins start to pile up and you start to believe in that path, in the path that you were on?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:18:58)
Yeah, I saw hope when I started meeting these guys. I experienced hope like almost two years later. ⁓ In the sense that like hope came home with me. I mean, it sounds cheesy, but like I didn't because I would feel hope when I'd be at recovery. But then sometimes I'd leave that room and I don't know if I'm ever going to be like those guys, though.

Manny (1:19:18)
Mm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:19:25)
Because I still struggle and I still, I still feel so triggered and like, yeah, I didn't act out the other day, but I wanted to so bad and it was so freaking hard not to. Like, I don't think I'm going to last. it was almost two years into my program that I felt like, okay, it's been, you know, a year and a half or whatever it's been, you know, since I've looked at pornography, you know, since, since I've been with another woman, like all these things, I don't think I ever need to.

Manny (1:19:38)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:19:55)
Like I really think I can keep doing this. I can keep living life. ⁓ And I could go back, but it would absolutely be a voluntary choice, which as I said earlier, you know, it's always a voluntary choice. But what that year and a half did for me, and I mean, you know, maybe it was a year and nine months, but what that time did for me, it helped my limbic system to reset and to recognize like, yeah, if I'm watching, you know,

video on YouTube and then an ad comes up that you know in my past I would just click that ad and I'd start watching this other thing and you know what before I know it I'm watching stuff that's wildly inappropriate right in the past it felt like it was just boom boom boom I can't help it I'm just doing the wrong thing immediately now it's like I could do that but every single time that I push past a barrier I would know it's me doing it it's not my addiction

It's not sin, it's not the devil, it's Logan choosing to do the wrong thing. I am in control of whether or not I go back to my addiction. ⁓ So it was, yeah, it was a ways in that I really truly felt hope. Like I can live life differently. I do not have to live with sexually acting out.

Manny (1:21:03)
Hmm.

Hmm. Do you, how long have you been sober now?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:21:21)
May 19th, 2016. yeah, coming up on 10 years here in a bit.

Manny (1:21:28)
Do you feel free with an asterisk by it? Or you know what I mean? I'm free from this, but I am always on guard. I always wonder with any sex addiction, with alcoholics, with drugs, that they're like, I've talked to people that have kind of walked through the recovery process and they feel like they got years and years under their belt of sobriety, but they're not like,

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:21:34)
Yeah.

I think...

Manny (1:21:58)
They don't, they don't, I don't feel like they let their guard, maybe their guards down a little bit, but I feel like they're always on watch because they've learned through this process of recovery, how fast it could, how fast it can change. So that's why I say like free, you know, am I free with an asterisk? Like I am, but I'm not messing around with that.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:22:10)
Right.

Yeah. No, I, I,

I, I love how you put it. And honestly, that probably is, that's probably is how I describe it. ⁓ yeah, free, free with an asterisk. It sounds funny, but it's like, no, it's kind of true because man, I, I know I, and I've seen examples, ⁓ there, I, I've seen a couple of guys that have had years of recovery that have gone back to their addiction. Now,

at least in these couple examples, it's a very small sample size, in these couple examples, they did not go back and then just fall on. Now they're just back living in this total dark depraved double life. They acted out, went back to their addiction. ⁓ And then after a matter of several weeks, they're opening up to guys, hey, here's what my life has been like. And so I don't want to minimize that.

But number one, you know, they still were able to tap back into that healthy infrastructure. But it's a reminder to me of like, those were guys that, or those are guys that they have a lot of tools. They have a lot of healthy living and they were still able to let their guard down. You know, they were still able to get complacent and I've gotten complacent. I've put myself in scenarios where I'm like, dude, that was stupid. What was I doing?

Manny (1:23:31)
Mm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:23:39)
And like, thankfully, yeah, I didn't then do something else, but I, you know, I still put myself in a, in a scenario. just, just was not a good idea. ⁓ like I didn't have social media for a lot of years. it was about five years ago, four years ago that I finally got Facebook for, you know, for the first time in a while. I only got Instagram so that I can do recovery content on Instagram. and I have a lot of boundaries in place, have a lot of accountability in place around, especially Instagram.

⁓ But yeah, like, you know, I'll watch a reel and I'm like, no, I don't need to be watching this. know, it's like maybe it's a cooking video, but it's like, you know, the woman is dressed in a way that for me is like, ⁓ I don't need to be looking at. I'll find a different cooking video to watch. ⁓ But yeah, it's like I'm not proud of the fact that, you know, for those eight seconds or whatever it was that I didn't make that choice sooner. ⁓ But it's still it's a

Manny (1:24:26)
Hmm. Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:24:39)
It's a reminder of like, yes, I can always struggle, but I can catch things now. Whereas before, you know, 10 years ago, there was no, I don't know if I should quite be watching. I'm just, I'm going to keep watching and then I'm going to watch another one. And then I'm going to watch something way worse and you know, go on down the, down the path.

Manny (1:24:58)
Yeah, down the rabbit hole.

So one of the things I wanted to find out too is the process of just rebuilding that trust with your wife, with your family. You know, I've been on the other side of addiction. My dad had issues, my brother had issues and a lot of hurt happens in that and time kind of helps. But

How did the trust begin to build back up for you and your wife once you found that traction? I assume it wasn't immediate. I assume that for her that there probably was a kind of guard built up. Like you said, she was already kind of at this numbness. It sounded like she was maybe working through recovery programs as well to help. But at what point, I asked you what you felt when you started to feel hope.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:25:49)
Yeah. ⁓

Manny (1:25:55)
for yourself in the recovery process, when did you see the hope kind of rekindle with you and your wife and your relationship coming back together again?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:26:02)
Yeah. Well, and just to make it very, clear. So yeah, she, she jumped into recovery just shortly after I did for her. was the, the betrayal trauma healing. Part of the blessing of prodigals is both the Anchorage group. And then we have a Valley group now that I lead the men's side and she leads the women's side. ⁓ There is a spouse's side. ⁓ And I shouldn't say spouses because a lot of the women that go to her group don't have a man who goes to my group.

you they might be divorced or they might have a guy that is still living in addiction. But it's, it's a, it's in a group for women who have been harmed by sexual betrayal trauma. And that could be anything from pornography alone to everything I did, you know, whatever. ⁓ So Carrie jumped into that, you know, about nine, nine years ago, nine and a half years ago. ⁓ Hope in our

Manny (1:26:30)
Ow.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:26:59)
I probably felt hope way sooner than I should have to be totally honest for our marriage because so and one of the things we talk about in recovery is you know super oh super optimism where I can be I can have an unhealthy super optimistic mindset of like it'll all work out no problems I don't have to do any work it'll be all good I don't know that I struggled with that too much with my own addiction recovery but I did struggle with that

Manny (1:27:02)
Hmm. Hmm.

Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:27:28)
with our marriage, we're like, like, yeah, I'm in recovery now and I haven't acted out. So yeah, like we're good, right? I think I was, I was way too callous and of like how, just how much work would need to be poured in. ⁓ Not just getting sober, but truly, you know, me pouring into our relationship. ⁓ Obviously, know, her continuing, continuing to pour into her own recovery time.

Manny (1:27:45)
Yeah.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:27:58)
And then one of the hardest things for me man, which has been ⁓ one of the best ways for Carrie to heal is for me to do the right thing, put my head down, do the right thing and just not worry about what the results are today. ⁓ I want to try to fix and, you know, I want to correct it and fix it and do all these things and talk about it and whatever so that we can try to

get to an improved spot today. And that might sound really honorable, but realistically that's so that I can have a more convenient, you know, spot in the relationship or so that I can feel like I fixed something or whatever. So that's a hard thing too, just giving her space to heal. but yeah, I mean, it, it has been, it's been a tremendous journey, you know, over this almost decade now. but it's,

Manny (1:28:36)
I

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:28:57)
It's been incredible. I mean, one example I often share because it's kind of a weird one in a way, but it, man, I think it gives a great glimpse into what it can look like for us now. We, and this was actually several years ago, but we were going to, we were about to share our testimony. can't remember if this was for a recovery group or this might've been for our church. But we were going to share our testimony on stage in front of a lot of people. And it was something that we had done before.

But it had been a while and so we were reading over our notes and I had already revised my testimony and she had revised her testimony and we were doing it together and so we're kind of looking over our notes together. And there's this one spot and I actually referenced it earlier in our conversation where I was like, I had confessed another affair, she's laying on the bathroom floor crying. And that was in her testimony, she was mentioning that.

And we're sitting on our couch looking over notes. And she looks at me and she's like, she's pointing to that section. And she's like, okay, so do you think I should put a period there and then a new paragraph or should I just do a semicolon and then like just kind of continue on? I don't remember exactly what grammar she was asking about, but like that's the idea, right? And in that moment.

It felt like, like God gave me this like kind of out of body experience where he's like, dude, you're able to have a conversation about grammar with your wife, about one of the darkest things a wife can ever go through. And you guys can just sit and debate like the grammar or the sentence structure or whatever. ⁓ like that is an amazing.

blessing and I said it's kind of weird because I don't want anybody to hear that and think that we're numb to this stuff. We're not numb to it. But what I've been able to experience is to see my wife.

fully cognizant, fully cognizant of the destruction and the pain and the evil that I brought into her house, she does not minimize it, but it no longer wrenches her back into the past if she does think about something or something pops in or somebody makes a comment in a movie, you know, like a stand-up comedian could, ⁓

you know, make a joke or, you there's, you know, somebody makes a reference or something. Stuff like that could devastate her, right? You know, somebody makes a joke about, you know, a hooker and like that could ruin her day, right? Understandably. Somebody makes a comment about their, you know, their cousin who had an affair that could ruin her day. And, and she still again is, is very sensitive, but it's

Manny (1:31:33)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:31:53)
It doesn't, you know, pull her hair back and wrench her into this dark past automatically the way that it used to. So it's really, it's kind of a mirror image of both of our limbic systems, resetting and healing in very different ways. We both can be triggered. Her in terms of past, right? And me in terms of, you know, sexual temptation, but neither of us are slaves to those triggers.

Manny (1:32:09)
Hmm.

Yeah, man.

You both were going to church in the beginning of this, like in the very early stages. How's your, and still struggling, like going to church, but not doing, still caught up in addiction and in that turmoil, that chaotic time of your life. How has your relationship with God changed from those years, you know, till now? What have you learned more about your, or what have you learned about your faith through this whole process?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:32:55)
Yeah, you know, we talked a little bit of my childhood and like one of the things that I often share in my testimony is like I grew up going to church. I grew up knowing all the right things. You know, I say that kind of as a joke, but like, I mean that, like I grew up believing many of the things that I believe to this day, which is like God created the universe and Jesus died for my sins and

You know, I can go to heaven or I can go to hell and you know, if I don't trust in Jesus for my salvation, if I don't follow him, if I'm not a believer, I believed those things in my head, but I also knew my Bible and I also knew like, well, the demons believe that too. So, ⁓ I, I very much felt this, like, I was aware of my double life and I'm like, I don't know what any of this means because I'm so screwed up.

Manny (1:33:46)
Mm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:33:46)
So

I don't know how to be a Christian. I don't think I'm cut out for this. I believed that all of those things would be true for other people. I did not know that I was going to make it. I didn't know if I could ever... I had this very warped and very incomplete view of God and my own ⁓ spiritual life. ⁓ It was about two years into my program.

So similar, as I mentioned before, in terms of like feeling freedom, it was maybe even a little bit after that. had almost, I would, I'd almost graduated from the program. So was like almost two years in where I felt like I can pray to God. I don't feel fixed. I don't feel healed past tense. You know, I don't feel like I'm perfect, but I can pray. I can put my, my struggles out there to God. I can just talk to God before prayer equaled me confessing to my sins.

Manny (1:34:28)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:34:43)
to an angry dad. Now that's not a healthy view, right? That was my view of it. And so now it's like, okay, I can just talk to God. I can just put things out there. I can share how I'm feeling. ⁓ you know, when, when I do sin, you know, I get angry, I, whatever, like I can confess those things and I can, I can clean my slate, you know, with God and I don't have to live a double life. I don't have to.

Manny (1:34:45)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:35:13)
you know, live in self hatred and all these different things. but it's been, it's been a journey for the last like seven years, ⁓ six years of. ⁓

just trying to understand God more and I'm like super not arrived in that way. ⁓ But I mean, you know, consistently getting into the word and daily prayer, I mean, throughout the day ⁓ of just seeking what God has for me, ⁓ which some days I feel like I have more clarity than others, but yeah.

Manny (1:35:51)
That's cool, man.

I find myself having those like similar reflections on knowing in my head versus my heart how I view sin in my life in view of God as an angry dad or not. You know, I think that's a common ⁓ struggle or thing to wrestle with. What is your advice to people that are listening that find themselves living the double life now?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:36:04)
Good night.

Manny (1:36:24)
or minimizing what they're going through, or maybe they're convinced they're too far gone. What do you say to those type of people?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:36:36)
Well, I'm mostly going to answer that second part. I mean, the first part, know, somebody that ⁓ might be living a double life, they might be grappling with this. I mean, it's kind of like what I talked about earlier with like, well, you got to identify where you're at. And part of that is going to include bringing in an outside person. And what that outside person can do, I guess, because I really didn't clarify it earlier. You know, they...

Manny (1:36:51)
Mm-hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:37:05)
There can be lots of things. They can be a support structure. They can be somebody that can maybe point you to resources or be an ongoing resource. But what that outside person is not is they're not you. And so they can be a mirror. And that's a huge benefit. So, you know, to somebody that is, yeah, that is maybe living in double life, ⁓ there's not much I can say to you unless you want to change, right? ⁓

I'm not in the business of trying to convince anybody to come to Prodigals or to go to a therapist or to get clean. If you don't want it, then you don't want it. But to the second part of your question, if somebody feels like they're too far gone...

I don't say this from hubris. I say this from gratitude. I think that's why God put me on this earth is to talk to other guys that feel that way because that's the life that I lived. I spent years. I'm going to list some things out and I'm going to say them, you know, a little bit fast, but like understand these are coming from the bottom of my heart. I hated that Carrie had me for a husband. I loved Carrie.

I wanted desperately to be a good husband to her, but I couldn't figure out how to freaking stop this, and so I hated that she got stuck with me. I hated that my kids had me for a dad. I loved my kids. I didn't know how to do anything other than just screw up constantly, or so it seemed. I hated the fact that they had such a crappy role model for a father. ⁓ I knew that I was just bringing so much pain on everyone around me, and I hated that.

I wanted desperately for God to just take me off of this earth. If I could have never been created, if I could have signed up for that, I would have done that in a snap. Just take with my existence. ⁓ I absolutely felt like I was too far gone. ⁓ So to somebody like that,

Manny (1:39:01)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:39:14)
That's where, you know, we're going full circle here. But like we said at the start of this, there are other people that share your struggle. There are other people who have done similar things that have gone down just as dark of paths that you've gone down. And I promise you some of those people, not all of them, some of those people.

are experiencing life outside of that cave and they are thriving and they have transformed lives and they're no longer in bondage to that. And, you know, I say this constantly about myself, man, I am not perfect, but I'm authentic. My life is not perfect, but it's authentic, you know, and I can love my wife and I can love my boys absolutely not perfectly, but I can do it as a real person. And what it took for me

was not making some tweaks or introducing, you know, the top three habits that can help your life. I needed for my life to be totally stripped down, like an old decrepit house that like you strip it down to the studs or maybe in my case, man, you took that thing all the way down to the foundation and you just built a new house brick by brick. Like that's what my life was is, you know, that program, that house arrest for two years, that

autonomy getting taken away, it wasn't for no reason. It was so that I could learn to live life starting from scratch almost. New routines, new habits, new ways of enjoying hobbies, new ways of ⁓ experiencing life with friends, know, new relationship with people around me, far outside of just myself and Carrie and things like that. Just a new way of experiencing life.

Manny (1:40:47)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:41:03)
but it took so much time and it took so much ⁓ me giving away freedoms, you know, and being willing to do that. But I would say this, and I don't say this lightly, I believe, mean, scripture makes this clear, and I believe in this, and I'm a testament to this, my life is. If I seek healing, if I seek healthy resources,

If I seek wisdom, if I seek true accountability, I will find it. Now it might take a while and I might have to do more searching than I'm comfortable with. It probably will take more. But if you are struggling and you like truly, truly go on a mission to seek those things, I promise you those doors will become opened and you will find true accountability. You will find healing.

It might be with protocols or a group like protocols, right? There's a very likely chance that it's going to be something different. but some of these principles that we've talked about, you know, people speaking into your life, getting feedback, having people that care about you and know you, but they also care about you enough to call you out on your crap. That all of that applies, whether you're struggling with sexual addiction or you have an eating disorder or you want to be a better dad.

Manny (1:42:20)
Mm-hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:42:27)
or you want to be a better wife, or you want to be a better employee, right? Like all of those principles apply. They, they, I think it's fair to say like they carried ⁓ maybe more weight. The stakes were higher with sexual addiction, but the principles are there.

Manny (1:42:43)
Yeah, that's cool that you use yourself as the example to speak to being too far gone, that you were that person that thought that you were. And the fact that you have found what you have through just this grueling process of recovery and pain and heartache and all the family ⁓ turmoil that you've come to.

the other side of that. I think it's so cool for the person that may feel that way to see an example in you that there is life outside the cave. And that's a super cool, I do love that metaphor because it gives so much hope, man. And it paints such a good picture of people do feel like they're all just kind of trapped inside. then there are people living on the outside that have found a way to actually live. And that's so.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:43:40)
Yeah.

Manny (1:43:41)
That's so powerful.

As far as what you're doing now, you have your Instagram no longer in bondage. That's where people can follow you to kind of keep up with your journey and this topic specifically. You mentioned a couple of resources already, Prodigals, which sounds like is in Anchorage and in the Valley. We talked about AA as maybe a starting, I know there's other, there's like NA, AA, there's other.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:44:12)
Yeah.

Manny (1:44:12)
program, celebrate recovery. If you're Alaskans listening, kind of give me your top three resources that you tell people to go to.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:44:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, because I do. I mean, like I said earlier, like I've been blessed to be on many, podcasts. I've never done it with somebody on Alaskan podcast. So I want to lean into that because anybody listening right now, you have an opportunity to you. You have an opportunity that nobody else, you know, in the audience that I've been blessed to talk to has, and that's no small thing.

Manny (1:44:31)
Yeah.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:44:47)
I mean, I've been able to have conversations with people on Instagram from literally all over the world, from multiple continents, multiple countries. And, you if you're listening to this right now, man, you can reach out and find a group, find somebody, whether it's me or somebody else, potentially in a group, either in your city or within a couple hours. So that's huge. So yeah, Prodigals is a group for men who struggle with sexual addiction. We're looking for healing in sexual addiction.

Manny (1:45:06)
Yeah.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:45:17)
You don't have to be a Christian. You're going to hear about God. You're going to hear about Christ, but you don't have to be a Christian to attend. You don't have to be a member of a church. So there's actually three groups now. There's a group that meets on two different days of the week in Anchorage ⁓ on Tuesday and on Thursday. And then my group, which Rick started, ⁓ and then I took over when he moved away a few years ago, we meet on Monday nights out here in the Valley, that Creekside Church. The Tuesday night...

Prodigals group has a sister group, which is partners in process. And that's the group that is for a woman who has been harmed ⁓ with betrayal trauma. And then ⁓ the Monday night group also, you my wife leads that one. So the Thursday night is, is guys only. So that's gigantic. So if you're in Anchorage, if you're in the Valley, if you're close at all, you know, absolutely go to, go to one of those groups. You can also reach out to me. I'm just going to say,

You know, Instagram is going to be best. If you do not have Instagram, get ahold of Manny. And if you're looking for resources, I mean, I don't mind if it's a, you know, a case by case basis, you can give out my number, you know, if somebody wants to, wants to get resources. So yeah, if you're in Fairbanks, if you're down in Seward, if you're on the peninsula, something like that, ⁓ you know, reach out to me that way, either Instagram or, or, you know, get ahold of Manny. But I would, I would

Yeah, circle back to what I said in terms of a group that is already an infrastructure for recovery is better than no group. It just it might be something where you you're just there temporarily and maybe you find a permanent home somewhere else. ⁓ The only non-group resource I want to make sure to put out there because man it is the number one resource that I know of in terms of

educating yourself on sexual addiction and betrayal trauma and what it does. ⁓ I'm not super big into recommending books and YouTube videos and series and stuff just because I think the tendency is it's really easy to absorb that stuff and not do anything about it. ⁓ But if you know there is value in education right and so if you want to absorb some knowledge

Manny (1:47:28)
Mm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:47:36)
The conquer series literally if you google the conquer series, it'll come right up Ted Roberts puts that on It's several hours. It's like seven hours, maybe total

But in terms of just one way education, as opposed to a group, right? It's the best resource I know of to learn about sexual addiction, what it does to your brain, what it does to your body. It is a Christ-centered resource. And so it's gonna talk about the spiritual aspect. But again, if you're an atheist, I promise you, watch this video series and you will learn a ton because it looks at the spiritual, looks at the scientific, and it looks at the practical, which those are the three pillars that Prodigals is founded on too.

I can learn all kinds of science stuff, that's awesome, but that by itself doesn't change the heart, And I can learn all about the spiritual, that's great, but that doesn't matter if I don't change what I'm doing tonight or tomorrow. And so the practical needs to be in there too, so it's all three of those things. The Conquer series is an incredible resource for education.

Manny (1:48:40)
Okay, cool. Yeah, I'll link that in the show notes as well. So some of these other resources we've talked about. ⁓ Man, thank you so much for sharing this story. It's such a, I think about going into the new year and people are, it's probably in the back of their head, like maybe this will be the year that ⁓ I change, that I find hope if this is something that they're struggling with. And especially if they're here where we live in Alaska, knowing that there's a resource.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:48:45)
.

Manny (1:49:10)
like that you found in our state that has worked tremendously for you. And you found this community, people outside the cave, you know, live in life. I mean, there's a lot of hope in that. And I hope people find that in this conversation. Man, thank you for just laying it all out. I know you're used to talking about this, but again, to have a vulnerable topic, something that is not often talked about, shared like this is I think really powerful.

I'm so glad we got to do this, man. Thank you so much. Is there anything we missed? Anything you want to cover before we head out?

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:49:42)
Yeah, I appreciate very much having on.

I always feel a little bit obligated to say something when I get asked that question, because there's always stuff, Yeah, there is one thing that kind of jumps out at me. ⁓ You've talked about, you know, what if somebody feels like they're too far gone, right? You know, or as you said, this is the year where I'm going to finally reach out for help. I'm going to say this. If you are feeling brokenness, if you are feeling desperation, that is one of the biggest blessings that you can have.

And that might sound like, well, what the heck does that mean? Or that's easy for Logan to say. Well, number one, I've been there. So I'm not speaking from a place that I didn't live, right? The scariest place for me to be at, if I'm an addict, is for me to feel comfortable. It is for me to feel complacent, is for me to feel like, you know, I don't think it's that bad. I don't think my wife's ever gonna leave me.

I don't think anyone's gonna find out. I don't think I'm ever gonna go beyond porn. Like whatever lie I might tell myself. So if I'm feeling pain and desperation, that's good because that can be the biggest motivation that drives me. That's incredible fuel. It sucks to feel it. It absolutely sucks. But I can tell you, I felt desperation. I felt brokenness and there was no resources in sight and that was awful. But once those resources were in sight, it didn't make it

Manny (1:51:09)
Hmm.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:51:12)
easy but it did make it easier because it was like okay now there's fuel that I can I can you know put in this combustible engine and I can actually go places because I I don't want to feel this brokenness any more than I have to so lean into that know that that is a gift

Manny (1:51:29)
Awesome. Let it be the catalyst. Connect that pain ⁓ to change with those resources.

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:51:36)
Yeah.

Manny (1:51:37)
Well, Logan, thank you so much again. I appreciate your time. ⁓ Nothing but the best to you and Carrie and your family going into this new year. And thanks for spending your evening with me,

Logan - @nolongerinbondage (1:51:49)
Manny, thank you. Appreciate it.

Manny (1:51:55)
If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider supporting the show by joining me on social Each week I share the most thought provoking, jaw dropping, or just interesting moments from conversations just like you heard today.

I'm currently on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok at the State I Am In podcast.

Engaging with me on social media by liking, sharing, reposting, and commenting what you think is a simple and cost-free way to help other Alaskans and people everywhere find these conversations.

You can also subscribe on YouTube and wherever you're listening to podcasts, whether that's Spotify, Apple, or iHeartRadio, wherever, be sure to leave a review.

These small actions really do make a huge difference.

Manny (1:52:38)
committed to growing the state I'm in by sharing thoughtful, honest conversations and voices from all across Alaska. And if you or someone you know has a story that reflects Alaska beyond the postcards, gift shops, and tourist traps, I'd love to hear from you.

This show exists because of the incredible Alaskans with a story to share. And I would love to take the opportunity to sit down and discuss what real life here looks like.

Now, more than ever, I believe sharing the voices of our fellow Alaskans truly matters, and I will continue to do this work for as long as there are people willing to sit down and share meaningful conversations. Keep North Alaska, and thank you for joining me on the state I am in.