Boy has it been a busy summer. If only the world could look beyond the salacious and titillating headlines and see the pervasive sadness I see IN those who suffer from sex and love addiction then maybe help could be had. Unfortunately the culture gets caught up in the smut and misses the illness.
Poor, poor Jared Scott Fogle born August 23, 1977, [and yes he DOES needs to go to jail], did he ever really stand a chance? I’m talking about the Subway TV pitchman and self-made millionaire. Jared also known as the “Subway Guy” is a former spokesman for Subway restaurants. He gained fame for significant weight loss, attributed to eating Subway sandwiches, and was a spokesperson for the company’s advertising campaigns from 2000 to 2015. It is reported he is worth over 15 million dollars.
In 2015, Fogle was investigated for allegedly paying for sex with minors and receiving child pornography. On August 19, 2015, he agreed to plead guilty in federal court to possessing child pornography and traveling to pay for sex with minors. A hearing is scheduled for November, during which Fogle is expected to formally enter his plea and be sentenced. As the first blush of scandal started to ooze out, Subway quickly moved to distance themselves from Jared, even instructing all employee’s to not talk about him in their stores. Now the story is fodder from late night comics, but if you look deeper what would you see?
Now I’m not trying to say that every obese man has a penchant for child porn but I will say that the obesity was and is a symptom of other more powerful underlining issues. Over the years I have worked with several obese man and they all had odd arousal templates. From the reports, Fogle’s hedonism led him to have loose lips. He should have followed the old navy adage about how three on a match is bad luck. Now he’s off to the penitentiary. My guess is when he comes out he’ll be huge again. He did a cash settlement of 1.5 million dollars for his victims in exchange for a lighter sentence. I hope he gets the help he needs.
The next “do you believe what I just heard?!” is about Ashley Madison a Canada-based online dating service and social networking service marketed to people who are married or in a committed relationship. Its slogan is “Life is short. Have an affair.” The website was launched in 2001. The name of the site was created from two popular female names, “Ashley” and “Madison”.
The company received attention on July 15, 2015, after hackers stole all of its customer data—including emails, names, home addresses, sexual fantasies and credit card information—and threatened to post all the data online if Ashley Madison and fellow Avid Life Media site establishedmen.com were not permanently closed. By July 22, the first names of customers were released by hackers, with all of the user data released on August 18, 2015. More data (including some of the CEO’s emails) was released on August 20, 2015. The release included data from customers who had earlier paid a $19 fee to Ashley Madison to allegedly have their data deleted. The fee was also applied to people who had accounts set up against their will, as a workplace prank, or due to a mistyped email address. The hack also exposed what a shame the site is. The male female ratio is distorted. Fake female accounts were created to instill a false sense of “possibility” for lustful men giving their money away for nothing but a scam. Now on top of it they got burnt. It’s an arm and a leg for a little romance.
The hack of the cheating website Ashley Madison has triggered extortion crimes and led to two unconfirmed reports of suicides, police said. The company behind Ashley Madison is offering a $500,000 Canadian (US $378,000) reward for information leading to the arrest of members of a group that hacked the site. Police acting staff-Supt. Evans said the hack is having an “enormous social and economic fallout.”
The most celebrated outed person to date has been Josh Duggar. Joshua James “Josh” Duggar born March 3, 1988 is an American television personality, political activist, and former car salesman, known for his appearances on the reality television show 19 Kids and Counting which focuses on the life of the Duggar family. The eldest of Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar’s 19 children, Duggar is the former executive director of FRC Action, a non-profit lobbying PAC affiliated with and sponsored by the Family Research Council.
On May 21, 2015, Duggar resigned his position at the Family Research Council, after it had become public that, when he was 14 and 15 years old, he molested five girls, including four of his sisters. The abuse occurred while they were asleep and sometimes while awake without permission, according to a police report. TLC suspended airing the reality series 19 Kids and Counting on May 22, 2015, and canceled the series on July 16, 2015. So this latest revelation about him having two Ashley Madison accounts is not surprising.
On August 20, 2015, following the online posting of information from the Ashley Madison data breach which included records of credit card transactions under Josh Duggar’s name, he and his parents released a statement on the family website in which he admitted to watching pornography on the Internet and being unfaithful to his wife. According to the material obtained in the data breach, Duggar’s credit card was used to pay $986.76 for two Ashley Madison subscriptions starting on February 2013, which were canceled in May 2015 shortly after the molestation allegations surfaced.
The statement contained the following:
“I have been the biggest hypocrite ever. While espousing faith and family values, I have secretly over the last several years been viewing pornography on the Internet and this became a secret addiction and I became unfaithful to my wife”… “the last few years, while publicly stating I was fighting against immorality in our country I was hiding my own personal failures.”
The reference to pornography was later removed from the website.
On August 26, 2015, Duggar checked himself into a Christian rehabilitation facility that his family described as a “long-term treatment center”. After the story broke his wife made a statement saying that she blames herself for his infidelity. OMG. THIS STORY IS LONG FROM OVER.
Now let’s talk about Trainwreck, a 2015 American comedy film directed by Judd Apatow and written by Amy Schumer (marking the first film Apatow directed but did not himself write). The film stars Schumer and Bill Hader along with an ensemble cast that includes Tilda Swinton, Brie Larson, Colin Quinn, Vanessa Bayer, John Cena and LeBron James. Principal photography began on May 19, 2014 in New York City. The film premiered at the 2015 South by Southwest Film Festival on March 15, 2015, and was released theatrically in the United States on July 17, 2015, by Universal Pictures.
Sara Stewart of the of the New York Post gave the film four out four stars, saying “Trainwreck is very funny and sweet and even a little weepy, and it has maybe the best scene ever filmed of dirty talk gone wrong.”
Spoiler Alert!
This is the short plot: Gordon Townsend (Colin Quinn) is telling his two daughters Amy (Devin Fabry) and Kim (Carly Oudin) that he and their mother are divorcing because monogamy isn’t realistic. Twenty-three years later, Amy (Amy Schumer) regularly gets drunk, stoned, parties and sleeps with many guys, even though she’s already dating a gym-addict Steven (John Cena). The movie world see’s funny and I see addiction. The hardest pill to swallow with my lenses is how she stops drinking and sexing and straightens herself out in a blink of an eye. Oh how I love Hollywood, and yes the movie DID make me laugh.
Last but not least.
Catfish: The TV Show is an American reality-based TV docu-series airing on MTV about the truths and lies of online dating. The series is based on the 2010 film Catfish and is co-hosted by Nev Schulman and Max Joseph. It premiered on November 12, 2012, with the fourth season premiering on February 25, 2015.
On the Internet, a “catfish” is a person who creates fake personal profiles on social media sites using someone else’s pictures and false biographical information to pretend to be someone else. These “catfish” usually intend to trick an unsuspecting person or persons into falling in love with them. The term “catfish” is derived from the title of the previously-mentioned 2010 documentary, in which filmmaker Schulman discovers that the woman with whom he’d been carrying on an online relationship had not been honest in describing herself.
MTV and the Catfish film’s producers, Schulman and Joseph, help people who are emotionally entangled with someone they have never met in real life. Each episode is an investigation into whether or not the other participant in the virtual relationship is legitimate or if they are, in fact, a “catfish”. Some couples have been communicating for a few months—others, for years. Sad but true.
Nev claims that he has received requests from people asking him for his help in determining whether or not their online-only lover is lying or truthful about their identity. In each episode the hosts help a different individual with a different story, traveling to wherever they live and using background checks and research to uncover the truth. Nev and Max contact the other person to arrange a first-ever meeting between the two virtual lovers, then documents how both people are impacted. Schulman said at the Television Critics press tour in August 2012 that it’s not all about pulling the rug out from under people, explaining:
“Whether or not two people are totally lying to each other and it turns out to be a huge disaster, we then want to know why they are doing it, who they are, what they are feeling, what led them to this place, and why that resonates with thousands of other young people who have the same feelings, who don’t have someone to talk to or don’t know how to express themselves.”
Much like the TV reality show Intervention, this show spends all of the time searching for the truth and the truth is always the same: HURT PEOPLE HURT PEOPLE. My sadness is that no help other than the truth is offered, and these broken people stay broken. At least Dr. Phil offers treatment past the telecast.
Now let me share what’s been happening on the No More Secrets front…
At the end of June we graduated our latest group of men who were in the fox hole with each other for four long years. They have come out whole and complete but like with any addiction never cured. Marriages have been reconciled and new and better lives have been started. I am proud of them for their courage to face their demons.
In July, 60 of us including kids and extended family and friends went to a Seattle Mariners baseball game. It was a great Sunday in the sun and our great day was topped off with a M’s win on a walk off home run in the 10th inning.
On August 23, we had our 11th annual No More Secrets BBQ-Softball picnic and we had over 90 folks come thru during the course of the day. We even had three men from our very first picnic in August 2005 swing by to say hello. Like always we took our group photo that will soon be up on my wall. As I always say, the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is CONNECTION.
WE ARE ALL DIVINELY BLESSED.
If you want what we have and are willing to work to get it, feel free to contact me.
Never forget, misery IS optional!
NO MORE SECRETS 