Dear Gary Wilison (RIP),
Your impact on my life has been huge. Up until recently, it was a very secret impact, as I privately watched your talks about recovery, always on VPNs, dreaming of a day when my insatiable addiction to smut and Internet Pornography would somehow, someway, stop. It has almost killed me multiple times, this addiction.

Your brave, scientific and common-sense stance towards recovery and physical harms is both real and objective. I have lived it; we addicts need little convincing. What you have provided is a framework of understanding, so we know what is actually happening to our bodies, and so others might believe us when we say it is destroying our lives.

Your work has been a beacon to me for years. How could someone get in front of a room full of people and talk about pornography?! I still can't fully comprehend it. You give us the courage to come out of the shadows and speak about what this industry and this culture have done to me and subsequent generations of youth.

I hope someday to be as brave as you, and to be able to publicly merge my desire for recovery with a heartfelt activism. You've been a trail brazer that has left a massive impact on people's lives, far more than any "hits" or "likes" could convey.

and I live with the hope and the belief that someday, people will see this toxic consumption of body parts and dopamine for the health epidemic that it truly is, just like the previous generation has done with tobacco, as you say. Thank you.