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So I have been in recovery since 2010, and if I wanted, I probably could push this date back even further to about 2008 when I left seminary to come home for help or even 2004 when I first began to reach out to various counselors and church leaders. And if I really wanted to deceive myself, I could push it back to around 2000 when I was dealing with my porn problem with the Dean of Men at my Christian Bible College. However, the fact is that I have only been in recovery since 2010. The rest of it was me standing divided wanting to be free but also wanting pornography. However, I never wanted to be free so badly that I would forsake my high place.
So what happened? I don’t know. I really don’t. Something happened. When I trace back, all I can see that could mark the beginnings was a counseling appointment that I went to with my wife. She is in a group therapy and has to meet with her counselor periodically and this meeting was the 2nd time we met as a couple. So it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary though I was convinced that this session was going to be a beat down on me. Nervous. Cautious. I went anyways with a good heart.
I don’t really remember the meeting. I don’t recall any profound statement. My only takeaway was that I was doing nothing to make recompense to my wife for everything that I have done andthat I needed to do work aroundthat. So whenever I offend my wife doing whatever whether porn or something else, it was up to me to do the work of reconciliation and investigation. Simply, it was up to me to restore the relationship whereas in the past my wife would over-function and do all the work for herself and for me.
Then I went to Bethesda Workshops and had a challenging, exhausting, reviving, and exciting weekend of recovery. I remember the first day quite well, and we did what they called Continuums where there was a line that went from wall to wall in the room and they asked several questions about where you were in your recovery. I remember being extremely honest standing in the middle for my waivering or 3/4 positive. Later, another guy who I thought wasn’t going to make it revealed to me that he thought I wasn’t going to make it! How ironic.
Having returned from Bethesda, things continue to come together in my head faster than I can process, faster than I can record. I don’t know what it is except that I am doing the work whatever that is at the time. While I haven’t began the 12 step process within SAA or SA yet, I am doing lots of work at Bethesda, at group therapy, and within Carnes’s Facing the Shadow, a book that I cannot recommend enough!!
So simply, I just now have committed myself to good, solid recovery. Nervous. Cautious. Yet moving forward…
So for some reason, I am a little irritable today. At work I work on a floor with tons of cubicles. The good thing is that mine is in the corner near the windows (though I don’t have a window view). However, there is a new table there (a former small conference room table), so people come over during the day and sit there usually without disturbing me. However sometimes, people use that area to talk on their cell phones to whomever. And the company I work for has a lot of older people so they are all “yelling” at the phone while talking on it.
Then I have the area printer beside me, but only three of us use that printer: my boss, my colleague, and myself. My colleague and I have very little printing except when our boss wants us to print some things off for him. However, he on a daily basis will printer reams of paper. He prints every email he receives (and sends for that matter!). He prints every attachment, and when working on a PowerPoint, he prints it out three or four times in a morning or afternoon. It’s not bad except that it is right behind me and drives me nuts. Furthermore, I do some recording for various reasons whether it is web conferencing, podcasting, or whatever (which I use a port-a-booth which allows me to talk at a normal level and get great recordings). So whenever there is printing, I cannot record. So I could go days without recording just praying for my boss to be out of the office if only for a couple of hours.
Then my colleague is an older gentleman and after lunch almost every day, he comes back and smacks his lips as if he is trying to suck something out from between his teeth. It’s over and over again and no level of headphones or music can stop my ears from hearing that sound. Trust me, I’ve tried it! Sometimes it gets so bad, that I just go to the bathroom, take a ride on the elevators, walk to my car and back, or something just to get away.
So today, all three of these were happening at the same time this morning! I just wanted to stand up and yell to the guy on the cell phone to SHUT UP, then turn off the printer so my boss couldn’t print anything else (went through 2 reams this morning!), and then dump a bucket of water on my colleague. Instead, I went to YouTube and watched Brian Regan. He actually made me laugh so hard that I was crying and had to stop listening. Especially funny were his talks on UPS (probably because I worked for them) and Food. You can watch the entire stand up routine by starting here. Sometimes you just need to laugh.
It’s been 2 days since I last looked at pornography. I am sitting here….laying down actually…trying not to close my eyes because every time I do I see an inappropriate image. So I open my eyes exhausted and tired yet unable to go to sleep.
So I get up & read. The chapter was great & insightful. It was a page turner & I want to read more but I’m exhausted. So I go back to bed to sleep. And the same thing happens again. And again. Pornographic image after image. Glimpses yet enough to get preoccupied thinking, “I could call someone but who’s going to answer at 2am? No. I could wake my wife up but she’s got the kids all day with an extremely busy day tomorrow plus she didn’t sleep last night because we were in a huge fight and I ended it like the good husband should (sarcasm). No.” So the battle begins. I think, “I could just masturbate and it will all stop and I could easily go to sleep after all men fall asleep after sex.” No. I can’t do that. That’s breaking sobriety too, even with SA (no sex with self). I am keenly aware of my desire to masturbate.
So then I begin trying to force myself what did I learn today. I learned 2 key truths: (1) To become free, I must first realize how bad my pornography addiction was and how bad it is, and (2) Spiritual health and emotional health are inseparable, something I started realizing this past year or two, but was confirmed in this book I’m reading. Yet neither truth helps me and then I recall one book saying that in order to know how bad something is that I need to “think through the drink” as they say in the Big Book for AA. So I began thinking through the masturbation only to think about how much more I wanted it, only to think that the grass is greener on the other side even though I’ve been there numerous times and realize that it’s not. Now having typed this out on my phone, I am exhausted. I’m going to try to go to bed again…
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UPDATE: I was able to go to sleep successfully without masturbating or fantasizing or anything. Sober night.
Failure for a pornography addict is to be expected, but it’s what you do after that failure that matters. In light of my many continuous failures, I decided to look around and think about failures in a positive manner.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up [...]
Clement writes,
Let us consider that wonderful sign [of the resurrection] which takes place in Eastern lands, that is, in Arabia and the countries round about. There is a certain bird which is called a phœnix. This is the only one of its kind, and lives five hundred years. And when the time of its dissolution [...]
Marcus Aurelius summarizes quite well the two necessary ingredients (or rules as he calls them) for recovery from pornography addiction. In reality, they are rules for life. Marcus Aurolius, the great Roman emporer of the 2nd century CE, once said, “The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things [...]
RAM is an acronym for Random Access Memory. It is the part of the computer that helps process the programs that are running while the computer is running. It controls the tasks at hand, and there is a limit to that memory. My cell phone has a low level of RAM and is constantly freezing. [...]
Pornography’s power lies within secrecy. It’s even worse in Christian circles because the modern day leper is the Christian who struggles with pornography. It’s the pink elephant in the sanctuary that no one sees. It’s the core issue facing the church right now just as alcoholism was back in the 70s and 80s.
I can remember [...]
There is an old recovery story about a man desperately trying to get out of a jungle. Searching for an escape, he came to a raging river with apparently no way to get across. So he built a sturdy raft out of wood and vines, which was all that was available. He launched the makeshift [...]
This was originally written as a guest post for PorntoPurity.com.
Denial. No! What is it, really? I hear it thrown around constantly, and you probably do too. If you are anything like me, when you hear something like the first step that says, “We admitted we were powerless over our addictions [...]
Ok, for the majority of my life I have been in school. It was only recently that I stopped going to school; however, even now, I still maintain a school-type mindset for some reason…maybe it’s what I know and it’s what I’ve done well. Anyways, I am one of those people who is interested in [...]
4 Options: 1.Live in addiction; 2.Live in true recovery; 3.Live in addiction faking recovery (miserable); 4.Live in recovery alone (fatal) about 1 day ago (reply)
Those wanting true freedom have discovered this truth:bad news that is real is better than good news that is fake ~ @craigxxxchurchabout 1 day ago (reply)
17:30 Therefore, although God has overlooked such times of ignorance, he now commands all people everywhere to repent, […]
My Definition of Pornography
Any material (either pictures or words or video, etc) that is sexually explicit that is designed in any way (whether primarily or even secondary or tertiary, or even accidentally) to produce sexual arousal in viewers, or any non-sexually explicit material that can also be used to produce sexual arousal (but not necessarily at the fault of the creator).
My Sexual Sobriety Definition
To live a life of self-control and complete honesty and transparency and authenticity and to free from bondage to my addictive behaviors of viewing pornography and masturbation. This means to not look on anything on purpose (or accidentally on purpose) that could be considered pornography and definitely absolutely no masturbation.
