Find Drive

It was the mistakes

Sam Louie, 49, wanted to be a TV journalist, but to cope with the pressure he harboured a secret life of porn and sex addiction. Therapy put him on a different career path

that would crush him. “After I messed something up on air, I would want to curl up in bed in the foetal position and not go anywhere,” says Louie, who started out as a television reporter in Montana in 1996.

At first, porn was a way to release that pressure. “Every night, I’d get home and be online looking at porn while my wife was in bed,” Louie says. She caught him; they went to couples’ counselling but ultimately divorced. After that, Louie’s addiction progressed to prostitution, until finally he sought help in the form of therapy. Louie says an idea kept popping up: “You’re drawn to this

mental-health stuff. Why don’t you do it?”

Today, Louie has 15 years of recovery, works as a mental-health counsellor and is the author of Asian Shame and Addiction. “I’ve found what I’m supposed to do with my life. I no longer need external validation,” he says. “There’s freedom in that.”