Episode 350 - Nate Larkin, "From Hidden Shame to Healing"

Welcome back to Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick. In this episode, Michael sits down with Nate Larkin, founder of the Samson Society and author of Samson and the Pirate Monks. Together, they take a deep and honest dive into Nate's journey—growing up in a Pentecostal preacher’s home, wrestling with hidden addictions, hitting rock bottom, and experiencing the turning point that would ultimately lead to a worldwide ministry of hope and restoration for men.

Nate opens up about the impact of secrecy and shame, the role his wife Allie played in his healing, and how hitting “bottom” opened the door to real recovery. He shares a moving excerpt from his forthcoming book, co-written with Allie, exploring the realities of betrayal, trauma, and the difficult yet transformative process of rebuilding trust and intimacy in marriage. Michael and Nate discuss the shifting landscape of addiction and recovery, the importance of connection and community, and why relapse can be part of the journey toward true healing.

Transcript

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Restoring the Soul. I'm Michael. And today, a returning guest to the podcast, Reverend Mr. Nate Larkin. Hi, Nate. Hi. Man, I dropped. I guess. I guess technically speaking, I could still carry around the reverend badge. I just found that I'm more useful in the general population as a civilian than I was when I was Reverend Larkin. So you have a Master of Divinity from Princeton and you were a pastor for many years of churches and on staff. And that's part of your story, which I want to jump into. I'm so delighted that we have a chance to talk again. We spoke just a few weeks ago after, I think, a two year hiatus. You're in Nashville, I'm in Denver. And our paths don't cross as often as I'd like. But I'm so looking forward to where this will go. Yeah, me too. It's so good to see you again. So you are what? I. I think you fit into the category of a spiritual entrepreneur because you had a day job at least when we very first met. And then you created the Samson Society. You wrote a book called Samson and the Pirate Monks, which has had a profound impact on men around. Around the world now. So share your story of how you came to be sitting here today and why you and I are friends. Well, you know, I come from a clerical background. My dad was a preacher. Although we were not the mainline Christians. My dad was a Pentecostal preacher in storefront churches and country churches. As I was growing up, I raised in that tradition. Destined for the ministry from an early age, a good kid, and got applause for being good. And when I was bad, the penalties were severe. So I learned early on to hide. It wasn't a home where we ever talked about sex. Didn't talk about it at church, except by illusion and in the most shameful terms. Nobody even warned me that porn existed until I ran into it myself around the age of 10, shortly after my mother had died. And I was in a very vulnerable emotional place. I had no idea already how vulnerable I was to this powerful drug. All I know is I wrestled with it all through adolescence. Tons of guilt, tons of shame. I quit a thousand times. The binge and purge cycle. That's familiar to a lot of sincere young Christian believers. When I got to college, I decided to stop feeling guilty. Was time to join the modern world. I needed sex education desperately. And I thought that porn was a good place to get it. Actually rationalized my porn use during those years as preparation for marriage, unaware that I was already poisoning my Marriage. But I was sure that when I met the right girl and got married, my interest in porn would disappear. What I didn't understand was that by this time porn and masturbation had become my. My default distress management strategy. So whenever I was in emotional distress, that's what I went for. Soothing. For emotional regulation. Well, I did meet the perfect and fell deeply in love. I got married the day I graduated from college. But as it turns out, marriage is stressful. So it wasn't too long after the honeymoon that the problem reappeared. That was very discouraging. But what I eventually reconciled myself, the way I handled it was I told myself, you know, Nate, porn may not be the best thing in the world, but it's probably your best defense against infidelity. There's no way you're ever going to cheat on your wife. And you're probably being pretty considerate, not burdening her with all your sexual needs. She just doesn't need to know how considerate you're being. But now porn was grooming me, programming me, setting me up for the next step. And that process really accelerated during our Princeton years. It was actually ironically, on a seminary sponsored trip into New York City that I got my first look at hardcore porn in a peep show booth in Times Square. I didn't realize at that point how much more powerful those moving images are than the still images I'd been using up until that point. Because film is immersive. Reaches a part of the brain that can't distinguish between real experience and virtual experience. So now, and I was hooked right away. Now it's like I'm sitting in a simulator and it takes a few years. So fast forward half a dozen years. We're now living in South Florida. I'm a pastor. I'm on my way on a Christmas Eve, on my way to lead a candlelight service in Fort Lauderdale. I pull over to offer a woman a ride out of the rain, not knowing what she's up to till she's in the car and propositioning me. And that's when the programming kicked in. Because I had seen some version of that scenario countless times. And I went full automatic. Now coming to afterwards, just the self disgust, the despair, the self hatred. I couldn't believe I'd done it. I thought, well, this is finally it. This is bottom. I'm done, I'm out. But I found that once I'd crossed that line, I couldn't get back. And so I started repeating the behavior, very careful, never caught. But the stress was enormous. I couldn't live with myself. About a year and a half later, I quit the ministry, went into business, where I had the great misfortune to succeed. So now I got money to fuel the addiction. I have less account. And what followed was a very, very dark dozen years. But in 1998, we made a move from south Florida to middle Tennessee. It was shortly after that move that Allie caught me first with porn. And then not long afterwards, she found a condom on the floor in the bathroom. I couldn't quite explain. And that's when she sat me down on the edge of our bed and said the words that saved me. She said, done. She said, I still love you, but I don't like you, I don't trust you, I don't respect you, and I don't think you can ever change. Those words gave me the gift of desperation. That was enough, finally to propel me out of my endless search for a private solution to my private problem. And I found myself in the basement of a church in the middle of the week while all the good people were gone, sitting in a circle with a bunch of other acts and 12 step. And that's where, ironically, even though it wasn't a Christian group, that's where I met God. And a whole. That's where he got a whole lot bigger, he got a whole lot closer, he got a whole lot kinder. And that started the journey. Took me a while, really, to find my feet because I was really determined. I had no intention of joining a group when I went. I went there for research purposes. I wanted to do recovery by independent study. My goal was to set the land speed record for recovery. So it took a few years for me really finally to surrender and then to begin to taste just this wonderful healing that you, by the way, have been a part of. My time at restoring for the Restoring the soul was very helpful to me. I went there to help other people and got a lot of help myself. And I'm indebted to you and your encouragement along the way, Michael. Thank you, Nate. First of all, I want to say thank you for sharing that for those that aren't watching the video, there's some emotion that rises up even after you've shared that hundreds and hundreds of times and you wrote it in a book. That's one of the things I love about you, is your authenticity is actually authentic. Those of us that speak about vulnerable things, we can almost go on autopilot. I know I can. And I'm not necessarily being deceitful, but it becomes part of the story. I Tell. And as you share it, I see that some big emotion comes up. But will you say more about the line that Ali saved your life by saying that she was done? Yeah. Yeah. It was at that point that I realized that I, you know, I had a choice to make. She was my only real friendship, my only connection. She could have. She could have ignored it. She could have blamed herself. And to some degree, I think she took some blame that was not hers. And I can be enough of a dominant personality or I can become pitiful enough. I can play upon her emotions. I could have. If she hadn't been strong, I probably could have played her for a while. I'm a very good liar. I could have found some way around it that would have delayed things even longer. But she found the strength at that point to draw a line. And until. Here's what I find. The Samson Society, you know, is kind of a haven for guys like me, regardless of what their addiction is. But nobody wanders into a Samson meeting out of idle curiosity. We don't come because, you know, we just think this might be a good thing to do. And my life isn't quite. We all come at the point of desperation. It's a window of opportunity when we finally get a glimpse, a clear look at how desperate our situation truly is. It's a truth we've been able to suppress through denial for a long time. We've been minimizing our behavior, blame shifting. We've been doing all kinds of distraction as a way to continue this self destructive behavior. But when something happens, whether it's an arrest, whether it's a wife saying no, whether it's getting fired from a job, that thing happens for a moment, the denial's broken and we have a moment of clarity. Now that window, my experience is that window only stays open for a short period of time. No sooner is open, it starts to close. Guys who want to come to a virtual Samson meeting have to first sign up for a Newcomer meeting. And here's what we noticed when we run a Newcomer meeting every day. If a guy signs up for a Newcomer meeting that's going to happen that day, almost certain he's going to make it. If he signs up for one, that's going to happen the next day. Pretty good shot he's going to make. But if he signs one up for one that's four or five days away, the odds that he's going to make it to that meeting are very slick. Interesting. And what. So what do you make of that? That the desperation dissolves. Yeah. Well, denial reasserts itself. We don't want to go to. We really, really don't want to go for help. We want to figure it out by ourselves. Very often that might be driven by shame, it might be driven by fear. And for me, I think it was a combination of both, along with a lot of intellectual arrogance and spiritual bypass. I'm going to apply a religious solution which has never worked before, which is not to say that recovery isn't a spiritual process, it very much is. But there's a difference between spirituality and religiosity, as I. I have experienced religiosity in my day. So going for help and actually telling the truth to other people, it's the least appealing option. And give me enough time, I'm going to find another way to delay. What if, by the grace of God, if I can finally take that option, actually make it through the door and find out that this is actually a wonderful place, this is a safe place. This is far better. I've been avoiding this thing like the plague because I somehow think that, I don't know, I have ideas in my mind of what it's going to be like to be in recovery. It is the most wonderful thing in the world, but I've got to make it through. And so many people say, myself included, that this is what church is supposed to be like when you're. Oh, I hear all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whether it's an actual 12 step group or whether it's the Samson Society. And I want to come back to talking about the Samson Society, but since we were talking about Allie in those words that saved your life when she said, I'm done. You're working on a new book project. Samson and the Pirate Monks has gone around the world, but tell me about the new one and would you read a section from it? Oh, I'd love to. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Allie and I have a lot of empathy for couples who find themselves in the position we found ourselves in now. Fortunately, there are a lot more resources available now for couples than were available to us back then. There was nobody to guide us through disclosure. Ali felt very, very much alone today. There's the Sarah Society, by the way, the wives of Samson guys. So there's support available now that wasn't available then, but still, it's a terrifying thing for couples and we would like to be able to offer some guidance, some coaching, some hope, some encouragement to other couples by sharing our store. So, yeah. So the book proposal is out. We'll see whether a publisher finds it appealing. One way or another, we're going to finish this project. Working title is Surviving the Waterfall. Yeah, let me read the intro. Is that okay, Michael? Absolutely. I'd love it. Okay. All right, here it is. Let me start by saying that I'm not the kind of man you would expect to cheat on his wife. People who know me will probably tell you that Nate Larkin is an honest guy, a nice guy, a Christian guy, and that he also really loves Allie. There's no way that a man like me would ever cheat on his wife. And yet I did. Not just once or twice, but more times than I can remember. First with porn and then with people. It's a mystery, really, or at least it was before I finally went for help. Why a man like me would repeatedly violate his own moral convictions and betray his closest friend. If cheating on my wife was something I didn't want to do, then why did I do it? If I truly loved my wife, then why did I so casually and frequently commit adultery? I'm not the first to face this mystery, by the way. Two thousand years ago, the early Christian movement's leading theologian was puzzling over a similar question. I do not understand what I do, wrote the Apostle Paul. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do. This I keep on doing. I am not saying that the Apostle Paul struggled with sexual sin, but I am also not saying he didn't. Paul never told us what behavior he was battling, and the parade of scandals involving Christian leaders in our own day is pretty persuasive proof that anyone is capable of anything, Certainly me. Maybe even you. It would be nice to think that infidelity doesn't really hurt anyone as long as it remains secret. That's what I told myself for years. In public and at home. I played the part of the attentive husband and engaged dad, compensating for my weekday absences with over the top performances on weekends. I was never abusive in the conventional sense, but I can now see that my deception gradually undermined Allie's confidence in her own ability to perceive reality. Allie and I floated along amicably enough for years, avoiding difficult conversations while keeping safely to the middle of the stream. We told each other we were happy even when we weren't. Allie raised the children. I raised the revenue. We went to church, worked hard, took occasional vacations. When life got difficult, as it often did, we recalibrated our expectations and soldiered on. Neither of us recognized the depth of our intimacy disorder during those years. You Might say that we were strangers and best friends at the same time, Simultaneously lonely and enmeshed. I was deeply ashamed of my sexual secrets, disgusted by my own depravity, and astonished by my ability to conceal what I was doing. I was terrified by the prospect of getting caught, certain that the world would end if I were discovered. But fear alone could never extinguish the shameful obsession. All my private efforts to control my compulsive behavior ended in despair. And then one day, after 20 years of marriage, it happened. She caught me. The experience was heart stopping for both of us, like being dropped over a waterfall that neither of us saw coming. Suddenly, we were overboard and underwater, panicking and fighting for air. I couldn't reach her, and when I finally broke the surface, she was swimming away. I often tell men that what feels like the worst day of their life might actually turn out to be the best. That certainly has been true for Allie and me. The weeks and months that followed Discovery Day were agonizing for both of us, to be sure. But the pain had a purpose. Without it, I never would have gone for help. Now, more than 25 years after we went plunging over that waterfall, Allie and I are closer and happier than ever. There's a lot more to our story, of course. Our short term memories are not as sharp as they used to be, But Allie and I can still vividly recall things we did 30, 40, even 50 years ago. Now, years after they happen, some of the key moments in our marriage are finally starting to make sense. There was always a certain logic to our craziness. We can see that now. There were wounds that drew us together and wounds that pushed us apart. We're still healing today. Our marriage is healthy only because we're both taking our personal recoveries seriously. I am reading the chapters of this book to Allie as I write them, and she's making suggestions and corrections as we go. She's also pulled out an unpublished autobiography that she wrote more than 30 years ago, back when I was still an active addict. And she's considering rewriting. We both have the same goal. To record the lessons we've learned and pass them on to others. If an honest account of our failures can help another couple avoid the same mistakes, then our failure will have found a purpose. If our story of healing can inspire just one other couple to seek recovery together, then the time we've devoted to writing it will have been well spent. Wow. My goodness. What an honor to have you read that directly. Especially when it's being shopped around. That is so so moving, so beautiful, so hopeful, so painful, so heartbreaking. And yet here you are. You're a story of. It's a miracle. Right. Every one of us that's been in that situation and come through and we're happier and more whole than ever. It's a miracle. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I wish you. And I pray that that book not only finds the publisher that can send that around the world, but that that book and that story and those words find themselves in the hands and the hearts of millions of people. Because, you know, what you just wrote there is basically saying, we've experienced the cure for cancer, so to speak. And wow, thank you. It's hard to segue after that because I know enough of you and your story of that has come by sweat and blood. Yeah. You know what? And it doesn't necessarily have a Hollywood ending. We're going to get really, really honest. There's relapse in my story and we're going to talk about that. We're going to. And I ask my friends to pray that we'll have the courage to actually tell the truth. Here's what I'm finally starting to catch on to. After all these years, you really can't improve on the truth. Oh, am I going to quote you on that? So I have to resist my urge to take. To round off the rough edges or to embellish or to somehow make it appear shinier and brighter than it really is. That really does the reader a disservice. It sets them up. Yes, it does. Absolutely. Yeah. I try to talk with every couple that I work with, and I work with couples and individuals in our intensives, but to talk about how relapse is actually part of the process of recovery, which doesn't mean that every man will relapse. But when the 12 step model changed and other addiction research started to come in, and when the stages of change model and motivational interviewing came around, they. They came up with these stages of pre contemplative, contemplative preparation, action maintenance, and then either relapse or termination. And the research said that rather than just going to meetings and staying sober and never drinking again or never acting out, that many people will need relapse to experience the deeper work of the recovery. And interestingly, that data is true for people that try to stop smoking, people that try to lose weight, people that are sex addicts, alcoholics, et cetera. And there's almost a sense where telling people that gives them a freedom to not have to be pressured to quote, never do it again. Yeah, yeah. And it's important to say that sobriety and then the recovery, freedom is the goal. But if we get focused on if I ever do this again, then my life is over and then definitely my marriage is over. And so thank you for saying that. And I'm glad that you're going to write that into the book as well. And I'll pray for that as well, that you'll have courage. Yeah. You know, my old thinking came into play. I relapse and I hid my relapse for a while for a couple of reasons. First of all, I had this thought in my mind that as the founder of the Samson Society, now I'm carrying the. The world. And you know that the, The. The stability of thousands of men depends on my sobriety. So I owe it to them to cover it up total. But that was a rationalization that I partially believed. It was also old thinking. I somehow thought that Ali wouldn't be able to handle it. And man, did we go deeper. When I finally got honest and she didn't move away, she moved in. She understood it wasn't about her. She has. She met me with such compassion and empathy and such kindness and such concern. Wow. It was the best thing. It was the best thing that happened to us since I initially got sober. Wow. Wow. So, Nate, when you guys started this recovery process, because we're the same generation, a couple of years apart, you know, there's some parallels in our recovery, but there wasn't this topic or understanding of betrayal, trauma then. No, no. So how did. How. How did that affect Ali? Because a lot of. A lot of times there was the codependency model or. And therefore how are you enabling this? So talk about how, especially as it relates to what you might be writing, how the process in her eyes. And I know you can't speak for her. Exactly. But like what the process you see today when women start with, wow, this is trauma. This betrayal versus what she had to learn then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That Allie never bought in hard to the codependency model. And she was not going to accept blame. So she really didn't fit in the coatic. The women's groups that were available to wives in 12 step recovery when I got started. Fortunately, she did find a good therapist and she found herself in a healthy women's Bible study, one in which there was an awful lot of sharing, but she was not allowed to talk about me. And then she got lots of therapeutic help around trauma. And I think what has helped both of us, I think is increasing Clarity around the fact that we both brought trauma into the relationship. We came here with a trauma history. And I think that's what happens for some couples where the man has done the work, he actually does have stable recovery and it's proven. And the wife is still having. She really, really wants to get past it and she wants to reconnect, but she keeps getting triggered and she just can't go there. Yeah. Now as more and more we come to understand, it's that old trauma that's getting triggered. It's really probably for her just, you know, as. From. As it is for him. You know, it's childhood stuff. I'm so grateful that we're talking about Trump. I still remember when, when the, when it changed because I ran into a sponsor. I was maybe five years into recovery and I ran into a sponsor of a former sponsor that I hadn't seen in a little while. I knew he'd been studying to become a therapist. I. So I saw, I bumped him to on the street, said, how's it going? And he said, it's great. I said, what are you doing? He says, I'm doing a lot of work around trauma and attachment. And I said, really? Oh, I guess that has something to do with addiction, but it was a brand new concept to me. He looked at me straight in the eye and he said, no, it has everything to do with addiction. And up until that point, I only thought in terms of character defect. I saw now repentance is a big part of recovery, but it's a first stage, at least in my case, and really helped to begin to move from repentance to healing. Right? Yeah. And now Even back then, 20 years ago, it was still a somewhat novel idea that it had to do right. And now it's just a given. Thanks to many, many different writers. I wish we could have a whole conversation on how, whether it's recovery or mental health in general, how we've seen shifts because those of us that have gray hair and we've been around and we're either retired or ready to retire, there has been a revolution in how people think about change and to get to the actual underpinnings. And in the 12 step group that I've been a part of for two years around overeating, which I've talked about on this podcast, there's almost always discussion in the meetings as people share about the therapy, the work that they're doing and the trauma work and their attachment styles. And that never happened. Back in the old days when I was going to AA with my dad and in part of my own recovery there. So thank you for talking about the relationship and the recovery of your marriage. Not to get too pragmatic, but I know there's people that are listening, that they're saying, so what do we do? So can you give, whether it's a bullet list or just wax eloquent on what are the ingredients that a couple that's experienced their D day, there's been a discovery or a disclosure, and they may be kind of flailing. They're in therapy. They're not getting the progress or the breakthrough that they need. What would you say to them as a couple and what would you say to the spouse? Because you work mostly with men. Yeah, I work with men, Yeah. I think support for relationship, the opposite of addiction is connection. We do know that recovery only happens in relationship. The temptation is to retreat into our private world until we can figure it out. To isolate and study and try to think our way through is so absolutely essential. To be regularly in a safe and healing environment with other people who are in the process, and then to put yourself in the path of some people who have some skill and experience, a good trained therapist. And yeah, I. You're so much better at laying out bullet points than I am, Michael. I don't know how to describe the process anymore. It's very organic. It's a healing process. Yes, it's a healing process. And I no longer think that it can ever be accomplished strictly by therapeutic, by independent study. So it could be helpful, but that's only as an adjunct. I tell people all the time that it's impossible to heal without relational support. So not just a best friend and even a therapist, but without some kind of group, which requires an initial level of humility that we don't want to exercise. But we discover in that humility that, as you know, the New Testament tells us there's always a gift there, there's grace for those that humble themselves. Well, so to be fair, also, you know, as. As you made a couple points and then say I'm better at bullet points. The whole introduction that you read to the book is also really the path, not the specific. But to say this is the path. And you know, we. I use the phrase like healing process or restoration process, and we think about the first word, healing or restoration, and not about the second word. It's almost like that's the add on. But we don't want to accept that a process. Yeah. Takes a long, long time, longer than we want. And yet, you know, it it's not that life will happen when we get to the end, but we discover all along the way the gifts and the moments of connection and the, the deeper knowledge of self and the deeper knowledge of other. You know, it's so fascinating that you talked about how the relapse became a kind of gift for your relationship. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very much so, yeah. Another question I have kind of with this historical arc of us versus guys that are in their 20s, 30s and even 40s. You know, we grew up and there was no Internet. Al Gore had not invented it yet. And so what's the difference that you're seeing as you're overseeing the Samson society and the retreats that you do and the training that you do between the struggle that men have today that have grown up as digital natives and you know, at age 3, age 10, started using iPads for homework and things like that, versus us that we had to dive into dumpsters to find old playboys in the back of a 7 11. Yeah. Oh man, I don't know if I would have survived in today's world. It's so much more intense. I do notice that the demographic in Samson, we still have guys of all ages, but year by year it seems to be we're skewing younger and younger. And I think that has to do with the fact that the age of first exposure is going younger and younger and also the intensity of that exposure. I'm also seeing that, you know, pornography, Internet pornography or. Yeah, pornography with its, you know, super normal stimulation and the wide range now of pornographic, of options in the pornographic universe, makes it possible for, for young men who get exposed and girls who get exposed early to have their arousal template set or changed so early. I'm meeting young men who, although they will admit to being lonely, they're desperately lonely. They don't think that they're ever going to be able to have a relationship, a stable relationship with another person, with a woman because they're hooked on anime porn. And also the fact that this deluge of pornography that's available now that within an hour I can have virtual sex with more partners than my grandfather ever would have seen in his entire life, I can now become. My brain gets conditioned to novelty. And so now this dilemma. I do meet the perfect girl. She's still only one girl. It's putting men in a desperate situation and women as well. And I think it's showing up in declining rates of marriage, declining birth rates and growing loneliness. It's a terrible situation. Robert Jensen, who is not a Christian he is a retired professor of journalism at the University of Texas, Austin. Wrote a book years ago, and I'm failing to remember the name right now, showing my age, but I quoted him in Surfing for God. He wrote an article in Cosmopolitan and he's a provocateur. And again, he's not a Christian, but he said that pornography is what the end of the world looks like. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not saying that we're in the apocalyptic moment, so to speak, but it. But it sure looks like the end of the world when, you know, at the most extreme, if. If everybody indulged in pornography, we would not proliferate the species. Right. We would die out because we would just look at the digital. But. But then this inability, the utter inability to connect with a real woman, to have a real relationship, for how abuse and harm is now being normalized in the sexual relationship and then deception, which is being normalized, and how it just brings out the very worst in us. So my question is, is it harder for the younger generations that have grown up with the Internet, is it harder for them to experience recovery than what you and I experienced? I think if they. If we, if we can. I think we're wired for healing. God gave us an amazing self healing. I think that if we can detach and detox the brain. My experience is that young men are able to develop emotionally and make deep connection, but it's a healing process. It takes time, I think. I don't know, Michael. It seems it's a challenge for everybody. It's certainly. I'll tell you what frightens me even more right now is now the addition of AI to video and AI with memory. So now I can create the woman of my dreams who will remember all the conversations we have. That's happening already. Yeah. And that seems to tap into so much more than just the sexual part, because we know that these addictions are not about sex per se, but it taps into the longings and then simulates a sense of being known, which is so much part of what's below the waterline. That's the terrifying thing. Yeah. Yeah. I never developed an emotional connection with a prostitute. Right. And. And I'm grateful that for whatever reason, my addiction didn't go the way of. Of having emotional affairs. My brothers who have found that path, they have a different set of challenges than I have. Right. Yeah. It's a difficult deal. Now those guys can heal and recover and have deeply satisfying, wonderful marriage relationships, but it's a healing process. Yeah. Now that same dynamic is being Introduced into pornography. Yeah, well, just to comment on my own question, because people listening might be horrified thinking, well, you know, know if I'm married to a 30 year old, then they're not going to recover. And neither one of us are saying that. But it's. The question is really like the difference of recovery between someone with a substance issue that's trying to stop a nicotine addiction, a marijuana addiction, and yes, marijuana is addicted versus fentanyl opioids, heroin, etc. Right. There's just a greater, greater intensity and rush to it where it may require a more focused kind of treatment. Right, right. So Nate, as we wrap up, and this doesn't necessarily mean by me saying wrap up, that we only have minutes because I want to take as long as we need and as long as you have. The Samson Society, which you founded, is online, especially during the pandemic, it exploded and it's around the world and it is the first resource that I direct Christian men to. Because a lot of Christian men, if you say we'll go to a 12 step group like Sexaholics Anonymous or Sex Addicts Anonymous, that's terrifying to them. It's not Christian enough. So give the big picture about Samson Society and then like what happens there for men. Yeah, well, we call it a mutual aid society for Christian men. It's not a group for porn and sex addicts exclusively. So we do have guys who come for other reasons. Right? Yes. One of my, one of my very closest friends in the Samson Society, while he certainly gets the porn thing, food is his white whale. Right. So. And it might be gambling, it might be gaming. We're seeing gaming and gambling really on the rise in Samson and interesting to see how those, I, I don't yet have my head around how the triggers might be related. So anyway, yeah, it's a mutual aid society for Christian men. We have regular meetings, local meetings and online meetings. The typical meeting is an hour long, although some are 90 minutes and there are a few that are a couple hours long. It's peer led, peer driven. We have no dues or fees. We do have expenses and are self supporting through our own contributions is what we say. But the heart of the Samson Society is the Silas relationship. So we believe that Christianity properly understood is a team sport, not an individual event. We're all colossal failures as solo disciples for a simple reason. Jesus doesn't have any solo disciples. Never did. That was never the program. He first said follow me to two guys, not just one, and quickly added 10 more to them. So he came to Reconcile us to God. Yes. And to reconstitute the family of God, to reconcile us to each other so that we can experience the fullness and the wholeness of connection, relationship. We are relational beings and in Samson, we say, you know, you're going to start going to meetings, you're going to meet some of the greatest guys in the world. Before you know it, you're going to have a team. But there always needs to be a lead guy on your team. We call that guy a Silas, and he's a guy you are in regular contact with in a relationship that will prove to be mutually beneficial. I like to say that on any given day, every Christian needs help. Every Christian has some help to get. So Samson Society has meetings, but it's really not about the meetings. Meetings are a portal into the brotherhood. Samson lives between the meetings in friendships. And that's what we do. We facilitate friendship. Now, we're not therapists, so we partner and recommend as freely and frequently as we possibly can connections with good therapists. We don't have a curriculum. There are good curricula out there and we recommend them. The one thing Samson does is connection, relationship. That's our job and that's what we focus on. And it's not 12 steps. Talk about the principles that you have. And I'm blanking on what you call them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so we'd call it the Path. It's not a 12 step group, but we borrowed some practices and principles of 12 step recovery. Samson, I think, carries the spirit of 12 step recovery and a lot of the wisdom of 12 step recovery. But it's explicitly Christian. So we have a seven stage path. But one of the things that we did was we included in our path that you've got to have a Silas. Interestingly, 12 step recovery, getting a sponsor is not one of the 12 steps. Right, right. And yet what they told me early on, if you want to get sober, you have to get a sponsor. You can't do the steps without one. So we included that relationship in the past. And in Samson and the Pirate Monks, you list those, but you also have the fact, which is before those. Talk about the fact. Yeah. So we begin with a statement of faith. We're explicitly Christian. So the fact is that God exists and that he created us. He's in relationship. He created us for relationship. That relationship has been lost, but it can be recovered. And it's recovered at his initiative. And he's done all the work that's necessary to restore us perfectly to himself. And that Even though we have wandered away, we still are redeemed sons of the sovereign Lord whose spirit is at work in us. And so, yeah, so it's very much a Christian base, but it carries that. You said it earlier that you get into a meeting like this and starts to feel this is what church should be like. Yes. For a lot of guys, their worship experience, their Christian experience is strongest in Samson. Although here's what we find. It really can help guys re engage with the church in a new way. An awful lot of guys who've been sitting in the back or they've been off on the edge of the pew, they've disqualified themselves from involvement because they know that they're hypocritical, they know they're hiding. They know there's once they're in relationship and not hiding anymore, and once they re establish a relationship with their higher power, I find a lot of guys now can re engage with their local congregation in a way they were never able to do before. I've seen that happen with Samson men. I've been to a few face to face Samson groups because I was invited by men that I worked with. And just because of my own 12 step recovery, I've not done that. But I, I just want to say again, as people are listening, that the Samson Society is my first recommendation for men because of that brotherhood and the connection and just how I see men struggling alone. Obvious question, but some people may be wondering is this confidential or you know, if I show up in there and. Yeah, we have a phrase that gets repeated twice in the meeting and we say it all together. Whatever said here is held in strictest confidence. I love it. And you have face to face meetings and online meetings, is that correct? Yeah. And now an increasing number of hybrid meetings. So guys will set up in a Zoom equipped conference room with their local group and then other guys joined through Zoom. So I just talking yesterday to fellas from a nice meeting outside of Dallas and they were excited. They had 18 guys at their last meeting. It's a new group and half of them were in the room and half of them were joining virtually. Oh, that's really cool. So when we talked last time, you shared how many groups there are around the world and how many countries? Yeah, we have members in over 100 countries. Meetings in eight languages. Right now. 20,000 guys have joined SAMHSA. Not all of them, certainly not all of them active right now, but at least I would say half of them that have joined at some point in the past are active and engaged. We Have a couple of big retreats coming up this year. By the time this airs, I think the Canadian treat will be over. But we'll. We have a retreat in Austria in September and then the US national retreat first weekend in November this year will be in New Mexico. Wow, wonderful. I know you've held it in Colorado in the past. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's it like to think about that D day 25 years ago where you thought your life would be over, and as a result of that, 100 different countries are now accessing this ministry and finding hope. Eight different languages and 20,000 men and still going. Yeah, it's humbling. It's encouraging to see we can never screw up so bad that God can't redeem it. He can do something with us if we will, if we'll surrender. So. You know, when I was a kid, I used to dream of having a significant ministry. In my mind, that meant being the next Billy Graham, you know, arena events. And I wish. And one of the reasons that I hid my failure for so long was I didn't want to forfeit my chance to be on stage. I was sure that if anybody found out how messed up I am, that any hope of ministry would be over. So beautiful now to see that, you know, the day my story came out is not the day my. My ministry ended. It's the day it started. Yeah. Well, brother, you could fill an arena with those 20,000 men speaking in different languages. And James Houston at Regent when he. When James. James Houston, Peterson, Jiu Packer were all up there. And I heard Houston give a talk once, saying that our. Our deepest calling comes at the intersection of our woundedness, our weakness, and our wickedness. And you know, for you and I, that exact idea has come true in the place where we've most deeply failed. So as we end, how can people access Samson Society and the Sarah Society, which. For wives. Yeah, yeah, just go to samsonsociety.com where. One of our projects this year, by the way, is to totally redo the website and to make it even easier for guys to connect with one another. But, yeah, go to samsonsociety.com if you want to attend virtual meetings, you have to first go to a newcomer meeting so that we can first of all make certain that you're a real person. We want to find out a little bit about you, we want to give you a full orientation, and then you can make an informed decision of whether or not you want to join. The same goes for if you want to join the Sara society. Go to sarasociety.com you'll first have to attend a newcomer meeting. But then once you've gotten the orientation, you can now begin to make friends in Sarah society. Right now, Michael is growing even faster than Samson. So. So we're excited, right? Wow. Well, there are two people today that I'm going to recommend that join that. You may have heard me say this before. We hear sermons about being good stewards. We steward our finances. For some, that's you tithe 10%. And Nate, you have been a steward of your brokenness and the investment of how you've stewarded that has reaped, you know, unknown impact and fruit. And I just want to thank you for that. Thank you for all that you're doing. Thank you for continuing to be a vision. Thank you for writing the book that you and Ali are doing. Well, thank you. Michael and I so appreciate your work and your help and I so respect your intellect. I. I'm going to when this comes out. The I've got some follow up conversations with you. You're always digging ahead of me. I feel like I'm following you around. You bring such great insight to the process. Well, thank you to our listeners as we close. Remember that on your darkest day or your longest night, that love has you. Love has you. Till next time.