I have had a bit of a rough week.  It has been really difficult to drag my brain out of the gutter.  Several times I have found my thoughts drifting towards sexual fantasy from the most innocent of beginnings.  I have twice rung fellow addicts to distract myself and break the trance I was in.  What worried me was that the temptations have all been in the same direction. I didn't want to spoil the relationship that the addict in me wanted to sexualise. Then I figured that my bottom line only forbids fantasy about real people so I invented someone that I could fantasise about and off I went.

But that felt like cheating.  Like giving up smoking and wearing a nicotine patch instread even when the cravings stopped.  I think I learned a lot from that and a lot of clarity about what I am giving up.  And that it is good to talk and pray with other people when I am tempted.

I am also acknowledging my powerlessness over this aspect of my recovery and loosening my knuckles a bit to rely on my Higher Power.  He has the power to release me and I need to turn more to Him in prayer each day.Cara

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I knew the difference between sympathy and empathy but tonight I witnessed it first hand at a meeting.  The meeting had been taken up by someone sharing thier first step and into it came my sponsee feeling very sorry for himself.  I could see his obvious annoyance that he had no space to talk about his problems and he seemed unable to find anything positive to share at all.

After the meeting he was taken aside by two of the men who knew exactly what it was to have thier lives destroyed by addiction, one who himself had been to prison.  They did not give him sympathy but they did give him the strength of their own experience.  Gently they lifted him from the pit he had been digging for himself and gave him support and encouragement.  I watched with admiration feeling supported myself as I have been the one he has bombarded with phone calls and texts.  I have tried to encourage him to live each day at a time and to be positive but it has been an uphill struggle in the face of his panic.  Tonight I knew I was not alone but part of a caring fellowship.  I was able to leave him safely in the hands of these brothers and talk to my own sponsor for a while.  I thought I would share this because this is what recovery is about and it was so encouraging to see it working so well.   Thank God for my fellowship, I love those guys. 

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I have been a bit busy over the last couple of weeks.  The man I was sponsoring has been to court and has been given a two year jail sentence although his barrister is now appealing against some dodgy decisions given by the judge during the trial.  I have written a letter to the probation officer about his recovery and we are really hoping and praying that he will get the sentence suspended.  Two years of probation, perhaps tagging is not going to be fun for him but he considers it better than a custodial sentence.  Five years of being on the sex offenders register is going to be no fun either.

He is shocked and despairing, cannot continue in his career and has lost the means of supporting his family.  I am asking everyone to pray for him.  His faith is not very strong and he feels God has let him down.  I am praying that he will find some hope. Cara

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17 days and counting.  I have had some bad days this week when all I wanted to do was pick a man (any man) and invent a whole romance with him in my head.  There were so many triggers stress, tiredness, boredom, the usual times when I fantasise, supermarkets, even a walk in the rain.  On Friday I was tired, bored, got driven twice in the car and shopped for food with my hysband who likes to examine every price in the store.  By the time I got out I was screaming internally with frustration and temptation and the first thing I thought was 'I need a drink' Well there is nothing like exchanging one addiction for another is there and using alcohol when I was lonely, tired and tempted was not a great idea but I did have one and that was ok.

I have a rubber band around my wrist and I ping it when I get tempted, simple conditioning, I have been told it works.

One thing I have discovered is that I have been chanelling a lot of my sexuality through the fantasies and I'm not at all sure what to do with all of it now.  I have been drawn more to masturbate as my current sex life does not seem enough somehow.  I'm hoping this is a temporary setback I don't want to add compulsive masturbation to my addictive behaviours.

Hey ho.  But it is working. And thank God I am doing this. Cara

Tags: Fantasy Thank God

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Well the weekend arrived at last and the sun actually shone, yipee!

Perfect peace here with my younger son visiting the elder in the far north. I have decided I am going to change my inner circle to include romantic/sexual fantasy about real people. It's not going to be easy, there was a time when I swore I could never live without it. But it has been an easy way to medicate which means that although to all intents and purposes I am sober I am getting my kicks all day every day and really messing up what could be nice relationships by thinking that way about male friends and fellow addicts. It has been bothering me for some time but I really didn't want to do it if I wasn't going to last more than a couple of days. I suppose I think if I don't kick this then I can't really call it recovery.

I do believe that this was prompted by my Higher Power who seemed to intervene in a fantasy I was having 10 days ago and stopped me in my tracks.  I have been able to do without it since then.

So I have managed not to do it for 10 days, it has not been easy especially as I have had the odd involuntary flashback (I knew my fantasy world was an alternative reality to me but that was wierd) I have felt very tempted and sometimes it felt really 'wrong' not doing it. This is something that has been going on in my head for four decades so I suppose I am doing well.

The hardest thing is finding something else to think about, my mind just goes blank and wants to go down it's usual path. I'm curious to know if I will still get obsessed with anyone if I don't do this. Chicken or Egg!

Yes, there we are, cause and effect, depression, probably adrenaline withdrawal. Watch this space.

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Gottta say thank you so much for coming back so quick with those very encouraging replies.  Told you, you guys are awesome and I hope I can do the same for you.  Its good just to know you have been there too and lived to tell the tale.  Still feeling wobbly but God came through for me today and reminded me that I only need to take it 'one day at a time'.  I only need to care about the next 24 hours.  So as long as nothing devastating occurs in the next couple of days I may be ok.  My sponsor told me once that if you are feeling really down you are only 36 hours away from feeling better.

Yes, maybe that man I was searching for was Jesus all along, He's the only man I know who really could sort me out. 

The irony is, it is National Depression Awareness Week this week and nobody else knows I was depressed.   I'm good at hiding it.  I have always had a horror of being labelled as a depressive.

Was reminded of my favorite song too 'Be thou my vision, Oh Lord of my heart'

Tags: Gratitude

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Ok, just writing this might help and if anyone has been here before me your experience will be very gratefully received.

First of all I may have to come out of the closet and admit to myself and others a tendency to mild bi-polarity. It is only since I stopped medicating with sexual fantasy that I have realised this. I remember being a bit up and down emotionally as a teen, mostly down if I remember and down enough to feel suicidal even if I didn't try that out. There is always that thing when you are depressed when you are not sure if it is your thoughts causing the depression or the depression causing the thoughts.

Either way I'm feeling a bit empty and lost right now. I'm not acting out and I'm not even using fantasy very much but without those things my life seems pointless. I had a dream this week where I was searching for a certain man at a wedding and not finding him. Well that is what I have been doing all my life and I need a new reason to exist. I can't exist for other people, I don't think I will be able to do that.

I'm just clinging to the promise I heard today that God has a plan for me to give me a hope and a future. I expect that will mean a lot more when the pendulum swings back up, right now I can't imagine that God could possibly have any use for me at all and if I am useless I might as well be dead. But God has come through for me before and I trust Him.

I like this site because the majority of you are working recovery programs and your recovery seems to be successful in the main. I do wonder about asking for support from people who are on day one after two years (no offense, if that is where you are, you need help yourself) I'd rather be talking to people who are working it and finding that it works. I don't expect that I am the only addict who has hit this wall.

Whatever, I need some encouragement. Tell me you have been here and it was necessary and you came through and how. Pleeeese. Cara

Tags: Encouragement Help

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I think it has been a while but I am glad to be back. The title says what I want to write about that step eight has uncovered a part of my addiction which I didn't know about. Relationships have always ben a problem for me but I guess I saw them as what other people did to me. While looking for the people I have hurt I have realised that it was not just in my sexual behaviour that I have hurt people but in the ways that I related to people. I knew that I had a tendency to gossip and to run down people who hurt me to others but I never saw that as a part of my addiction. Not at least until I realised that I couldn't stop when I wanted to, this was a way of acting out and a very destructive one at that.

This is not new, I know the Big Book talks about slander as a way of harming others.

So what could I do? I admitted I was powerless against my negative opinions of others and the tendency to pass them on and that it made my life unmanageable, I believed that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity in this area and I turned my will and this tendency over to God. And oh boy did that feel better.

I can't believe how long I have been trying to sort this out in my own strength and failing miserably because I didn't realise that it was as much a symptom of my addiction as any of my sexual acting out. I am hoping that God will do for me what I could not do for myself.

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This week I was hurt by two friends who didn't want to spend time with me.  I don't think they meant to hurt me but when two different peole who you have been close to tell you they just can't be bothered to meet up with you it can be hurtful.  I always end up thinking 'What did I do?' and blame myself.  Of course I didn't have to 'do' anything because what I am is enough to make people uncomfortable.  This is the way my mind goes.  And then of course I remember all of the other relationships I had that went sour on me.  I never knew the reason why that happened.  I have recently assumed that they went wrong because I was unable to be honest about myself.  So why did these two people who I have been honest with change their opinion of me?

There it is, I don't know because I didn't ask, at the first sign of trouble instead of asking why I just headed for the hills.  I discovered it is far harder to forgive a friend than it is an enemy.  When you forgive an enemy, they remain your enemy and you don't have to be with them if you don't want to.  But if a friend hurts you, the relationship is changed, you know they are capable of being hurtful and that makes you less likely to trust them in future.

Maybe I have an idealised picture of friendship, that comes of looking at it from the outside a lot. So how do I bring this up with my friends without giving them a guilt trip or looking like an idiot. Cara 

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