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Viewing 1 - 7 out of 7 Blogs.
Overall I would say that I have not been doing well on my program to overcome porn in my life. I got a new computer the other day and in the process of hooking it up I did not have any filtering on it. In fact, it was a MAC instead of a PC and so I wanted to check out how good the filtering was for the new Parental Controls. So I ended up going to some bad sites to see if it would filter them. It did to some degree, but some of them got through. I added the bad sites to the filter so that I can't go back there again unless I log in as admin. But that is the rub. I can log in as admin and have been able to do so for several days. But I have stayed away from that evil of visiting bad sites for the past few days. Even as I was checking out my filter, there was a part of me that was really disgusted at what I saw. Porn is undoubtedly destructive in so many ways. In fact, the only thing that I can think that I got from it was a feeling of lust in my body if I lingered too long and let myself fall into it. But although there may be a short "high" from that, it actually turns out to be destructive in the long run. Destructive to my health, my body, my relationships (especially with my wife), my work and everything else. There is no good that comes from it. And so I thought that I would "just say no" to doing it anymore. When I have looked at porn in the recent past, it was as if I thought that I SHOULD be doing it. Weird, I know, but somehow that is how it seemed. Especially when I felt like I was under stressful circumstances, then that seemed like what I "should" do. But I really don't have to. There is nothing that says that I have to except me. And so if I decide that I don't have to, then I don't have to. I am wondering if it is as easy as that. It has been a long and difficult path in some ways. Anyone can read my posts in the forums about working the steps and see that I spent a lot of time and energy trying to work the steps. And then I thought I worked the 6th and 7th steps of giving it up, but found myself back with the behaviors that I just described. But really the 6th and 7th steps are about giving the behavior up. And that is really up to me, isn't it? I think that it is. Obviously, God will let me do these bad behaviors as long as I want. Yes, there will be bad consequences, but I can keep doing the bad behaviors. I will lose what I love, but I can still keep doing the bad behaviors. God will not stop me. But I don't have to do the bad behaviors. So I am wondering if at this stage of my recovery I can "just say no", as the 1980s phrase from Nancy Reagan about not doing drugs goes. If I can, it would make my life so much simpler and better. One thing that I need to realize is that it won't make all my problems go away. Some of them will still be there and new ones may arise. But l believe that life will be better. I will have more peace, more love, more strength, probably more health and more of the things in life that truly are meaningful. I don't know if this will work for me, but I hope that it does. I may have to go back to having to set up filters on my computer, adding sites to an allowed list and all sorts of things that cut down my time and productivity. Or I can just say no each and every day and truly enjoy my freedom. I hope that I can do the latter. May the Lord help me in this.
Tags: Reflective
Last Sunday we sang a song in my church that was a devotional song and one of the lines mentioned a longing to hear God's voice. It is a worthy sentiment, but I thought about how that gets twisted in my 'stinkin thinkin' mind and how that has played out in my addictive behaviors. When I act on my addictive behaviors, then, especially by now, the routine is pretty 'comfortable'. I know what is going to happen, how it will play out. There is a little "buzz" at first and then followed by a period (sometimes a long period, unfortunately) of compulsively going from one porn image or video to another, each time questioning myself about when am I going to quit this stupidity and feeling more and more guilty each time, with that counteracted by an excitement of the moment. At some point when my conscience gets the best of me or I feel saturated or there is some interruption, then I will quit. I will begin to feel a deep hatred for myself and what I have done and tremendous guilt. Then I will get on my knees and pray a prayer asking for forgiveness. I go through all of this because perhaps then comes the payoff. Sometimes it seems like I "hear God". In my mind I find ways to try to avoid the behavior in the future. I become so earnest and passionate in my desire to not let this happen ever again. God has been gracious to seemingly help me find a way out of this every time and I become busy implementing whatever it is that will put a bigger wall between myself and my temptation. I then have a purpose and I know in my heart that it is of God because I know that God hates what I was doing. Even though there was a type of comfort and a familiarity in doing it. But perhaps that comfort is from this final payoff of getting back in a (self-?) righteous mode. And when does this usually happen? It usually happens when I am feeling overwhelmed, stressed and/or uncertain about things in my life. So I am wondering if this is a way out of the uncertainty, among other things. There are so many uncertain things in my life and life in general. What do I think about politics? about religion? about the war in Iraq? about situations in my family? about my job? the list goes on and on and on. I like to have concrete answers, but they are so hard to find in so many cases and, even then, the concrete answers don't seem so concrete after awhile. But after my addictive behaviors, following the above scenario, I do have concrete answers. I know what to do (fight the disease, build walls against my addiction) and I can do it with abandon and a feeling of knowing that what I am doing is right. I have "heard God's voice", in a sense, and now am ready to "fight the good fight". The problem is, of course, that... well, I am missing something here. It is downright hypocritical, stupid and ludicrous to keep going through the same cycle. And it is not what God really wants for how to live my life. Not really. So what I need to do is to do better at being comfortable with the silence of God. Yes, God may not give me concrete answers to all of the myraid of issues and situations in my life when I want them. But that is OK. After all, God gave me a mind and I can figure out a lot of things myself over time. But I need to be patient with the pace of my own understanding and with life in general. I should be able to live in this life of uncertainty without having to have all of the answers. I just need the answers for living this one day, one minute at a time, one hour at a time, one day at a time. I have some good habits and I need to keep those and live so that I can rationally assess changes that I might need to make on a day to day basis. But for the uncertainties of life, I need to always remember that solving those things never takes precedence over my sobriety, over my staying in a good relationship with my God, my Higher Power. And I think that sometimes instead of trying to hear God's voice, that means listening to God's silence.
Tags: Reflective
I have been reflecting somewhat on the blessings of my marriage these past few days. It has definitely not been an easy path. We will be coming up on 23 years soon, but the first 10-15 years were pretty miserable - in fact, very painful and miserable. We both had our own struggles and addictive behaviors and were not very honest with each other. It was only by God's grace (sometimes working through others) that we made it through that time. And now we share a growing oneness that is irreplaceable. I don't think that I would have found this had I given up. And so even though I struggle with addictive behavior still, it is my marriage that gives me an accountability, strength, peace and purpose that I would not otherwise have in the same way, as I see it now. It is not a perfect thing, and never will be. In that way, it reflects the 12 step program saying of "Progress, not Perfection". And my path is not everyones, I know. But for me, I am thankful that I have this relationship in my life, and that by the grace of God it has been a vehicle for me to grow in ways that I never imagined before, and hopefully for my wife as well. I just wanted to share that in a public way to make it more real.
Tags: Reflective
I have been investigating different avenues for doing online meetings. The Live Chat on this site is OK, but I think that I have found something much better. It is called Skype and it is free. It is basically calling by voice over the internet (VOIP or Voice Over IP is the technical jargon). I had heard about it but never tried it. It was so easy to set up and it allows people to conference call with real voices. I downloaded it today and a few minutes later I was talking with someone in Saudi Arabia, Belgium and a little French island in the Indian Ocean (Crotset??). I was really taken aback. The sound quality was great and there seemed to be no delay. Amazing. We did get booted off after about half an hour or so. I guess there are still some technical difficulties. So I am sure that to some this sounds like a commercial, but it is free to use for Skype to Skype interaction. Which means that anyone can download it for free (www.skype.com) and set up an online meeting for free with REAL chat (not just typing chat). There are clients for any platform (Windows, Mac, Linux). I think that could add a huge extra dimension to online meetings, making them closer to real face to face meetings. Anyway, if anyone wants to try this out with me, I am planning on being online with Skype tomorrow (Sunday) at about 8 PM Central Standard Time US. My skype name is more.awake. There is a lookup directory so hopefully you can find me. I would love to try this out with anyone who is interested. A note to addicts. There are some inappropriate chats going on from the looks of things. I will work on figuring out how to block those with some measure of certainty. I don't want to go down that path anymore, just as I know many of you are trying to be vigilant against that sort of thing. The potential is so good for good fellowship and encouragement that I am thinking this is worth investigating, though. So - tomorrow, Sunday at 8 PM Central time - hope to see you there. Also, if another time is better for someone, then please leave a note about what is best for you either as a comment on this blog or a message to me and I will try to accomodate. 
more.awake, aka byGrace
Tags: Happy
Struggling again. I appreciate others who share their successes, but I seem to only become lucid after my failures, which I had yesterday. Which leads me to the real reason for this blog. I was checking around on different sites about overcoming porn addiction this morning to see what I could do differently. I came across an interesting site at www.sexualcontrol.com. He takes a different approach than the 12 step or religious approach. I identified with many of his insights about how he thinks it works (and did work for him and how he counsels others to make it work). He points out that sexual addiction is similar to food and money addictions in that they are all born out of natural drives, whereas drugs and alcohol are different in that we can reasonably strive to give up drugs and alcohol, but we have to learn to manage our drives for food, sex and responsible money management. That is then part of his argument for not using a 12 step approach for porn or sex addiction. Furthermore, he states that there is a problem with repressing our desires for our addictive agent (in my case porn) rather than being honest about it all, talking ourselves through when we feel a desire for something, facing our feelings and then honestly assessing whether we want to pay the price for it. He puts it much better than I have here, so I would endorse going to the site and reading the material. I thought many of the insights were good, but I have yet to process them or try to apply them in my life. One thing that resonated with me, though, was the fact of how "normal" or natural I feel after having acted out in looking at porn. It seems like the normal thing to do. This is my emotions/heart speaking, I know, because my mind can think of all sorts of reasons that this is the wrong thing to do. But somehow it "feels right". That is the scary thing. So I want to get to the point where it "feels wrong". Somehow I have to convince my heart of that. I am not ready to give up on the 12 step or religious approach. In fact, many of the blogs here I have read talk about the difficulty of dealing with the real underlying emotions. So there is much overlap. And the religious and 12 step approach is so much a part of my life. But I do want to be real and find what works for my life and perhaps I need to adjust things somewhat, or perhaps a lot. I know that there are several other people on this site that suffer from similar addictions, so any feedback is welcome. Thanks for "listening"....
Tags: Disappointed
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Regrets
Posted On 05/01/2007 10:07:11
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I am coming up on 90 days now from acting out in my porn addiction. I have made it longer before, and I hope to make it longer this time also. Perhaps never again. That is my hope, taking it a day at a time. I had one fall after getting to what I thought was my 7th step of giving it all up. And so I think that I am on my 8th step now. Trying to do the 8th step has been a time of reflection of how my addiction might have affected myself and others. Porn is a fairly easy habit to hide. My wife suspected things but never really knew for sure until she found my journals. And just like it is easy to hide the behavior from others, it is also easy to hide the long term effects from me, it seems, as well as how it might have affectd others. One thing that I needed to overcome this beast was professional counseling. But when I look over my journals, I realize that I rejected professional counseling about 20 years ago because it was too expensive and I wanted to champion the cause that recovery should be for anyone even if they could not afford a therapist. So some misguided frugality and misguided altruism allowed me to wallow in my addiction for another 20 years or so. Some write in the program that they are thankful for what they have learned through their addiction. But I would like to extend a saying that I have heard and say that "It's never to late to stop an addiction, but it's also never too early". What I learned from going through this - my need for God, greater humility, greater discipline, greater empathy and thoughtfulness - could have been learned without my addiction. And, in truth, probably much better. I am thankful that I have, by God's grace, finally learned these things to some degree. And apparently it took my addiction to learn them. But I look forward now to learning those things in a more and more refined way - as a "sober" (i.e., no porn) follower of my God - what I wished that I had learned more than 20 years ago. But I will always agree that - it is never too late, and I will be thankful for this day that my God has given me.
Tags: Reflective
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