Blessed with the gift of gab as a child, Joshua Shea was always an overachiever, while simultaneously hiding his addiction secrets.
Already a full-time award-winning journalist at 19, Joshua hid his alcoholism and pornography addiction from family friends and colleagues for years. At the age of 25 he was diagnosed as bipolar, but despite medication to balance his moods, the addictions continued. As his personal and professional lives flourished, he was able to maintain "functional addiction."
In 2009, he created Lewiston Auburn Magazine, a regional magazine in Central Maine, serving as its editor and publisher for more than four years. He was also a co-founder of the Lewiston Auburn Film Festival, dubbed one of the country's "25 Coolest Film Festivals of 2013" by Moviemaker Magazine. At the same time he did these two things, he served a term as a City Councilor in Auburn, Maine between 2011 and 2013.
Following a drop in business in 2013, Shea made the horrible mistake of pulling himself off of his bipolar medication, rationalizing if he could tap into his manic, creative side, he'd be able to save the company. It was a gross miscalculation. His addictions exploded and life took a serious turn for the worse. As his 20-year addiction was reaching a critical level in late 2013, Shea made the error of engaging a teenage girl in an online chatroom.
Shea immediately entered a facility for alcohol addiction in California where he spent 10 weeks and shortly after that spent 7 weeks at an inpatient facility in Texas for sex/porn addiction. He also spent the two years between his arrest and sentencing in deep therapy, attending 12 step groups and learning as much as he could about addiction and more specifically, pornography addiction.
While serving a short jail sentence in early 2016, Shea wrote his first book, "The Addiction Nobody Will Talk About: How I Let My Pornography Addiction Hurt People and Destroy Relationships," eventually released in January 2018. His follow-up book, "He’s a Porn Addict…Now What?" was released December 2019. Both are available through Amazon.
In 2017, Joshua launched RecoveringPornAddict.com. He has also contributed articles about recovery to TheFix.com and Recovery Today magazine and has developed and presented three versions of a speech about addiction and overcoming the odds for churches, libraries and other groups.
Shea has made over 75 podcasts, television and radio show appearances using his personal story to promote the ideas that porn addiction spans all demographics and those with a problem should seek help before it’s too late, as it became in his case.
He's also an expert at explaining the issue as it faces society (32% of men under 30 say they have a problem with pornography) and talking about what needs to be done to change things.
Sober since early 2014, Joshua still lives in Central Maine with his wife and two children.
