That broomstick analogy seems apt, you need a stronger foundation than the addiction to ground and support you. You can’t just get rid of the broom stick you need to integrate a superior replacement system.
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I have been wanting to look at porn for like a week and a half. I feel like I cannot hold out any longer. I am getting exhausted in my daily life. I am trying to hold things together at work. My relationship with my wife has been getting out of my control because I can’t guarantee my wife being in a good mood. We both feel exhausted truing to take care of our child at times and feeling like we can’t get anyrhing done. My brain is looking for realease somewhere and it only knows to get it through porn. I have had a good length of sobriety. Almost 4 months now. I don’t know what to do. I hate this feeling of I need to use. The only thing holding me back is the desire to not ruin this Easter weekend. Just coming here to vent. Thank you for reading.
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Pretend you porned 3 hours ago, or yesterday. What problems wouldn’t still be right in front of you? Also the dopamine crash is going to change your baselines, so if you think you’re exhausted now just try to remember the bad old days. Hope you get through the weekend, and the next day. It’s a marathon, endurance is just what we gotta learn to master.
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Checking back in. I ended up acting out. Its been a rough night for me. Trying not to spiral into shame. Hotta get back up and try again.
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That’s so hard. My heart does go out to you.
Craving for that much time until finally caving. I’ve done that so many times.
Anyways, you’re getting back up. That’s great. Never give up. Any thoughts on the learning experience before I chime in some more?
The thing that I learned is I have been neglecting step work and neglecting giving myself more space in recovery. I need healthy methods of coping with stress. I saw the temptation coming on more and more and my thoughts being geared more and more to acting out through the week. I put myself in a bad situation and dipped my toe in. Once I dipped my toe… it became “I have already gone this far, I might as well go all the way”. I have done that so many times. But I need to identify my danger zones even before I enter into them. I need to anticipate the danger zones. And if I do enter a danger zone, I need to call it out right away. Falling is not invetable.There is always time to turn back.
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Relapses are opportunities that God uses teach us what more he needs us to learn. Danger zones is a really good term. You are sharing how you were craving for a week and a half. That’s a long time and I can relate.
Take a look at the toxicity meter that I designed and see how it applies to you.
For me, it’s very important that I gauge what’s going on in my mind. I know that certain things will raise my TL too high. For instance, giving myself permission to look at all the women in a grocery store will raise it. I can say to myself, “It’s Okay to look. I just won’t lust. One look won’t hurt.” But I discovered that such behavior raised my TL which leads to lust and more looking and then more lust and then craving and then fantasy with more craving. And after several days of losing streaks with TL levels reaching 7 and 8, it’s only a matter of time before I reach level 9, then 10, full blown relapse.
I think of this addict inside me as like the Hulk. It’s very subconscious. But once it comes out, there’s no stopping it. It cannot be controlled. It cannot be reasoned with. It cannot be overpowered. Dr. Banner keeps his life manageable by simply not getting angry. If he does that, the Hulk doesn’t come out.
For me, my addict is the same way, it’s my subconscious or my flesh. It cannot be bargained with. There’s no reasoning with it. When it comes out, it’s much stronger than me. My flesh is going to do what the flesh is going to do.
The vast majority of our decisions are done subconsciously. And it usually does a very good job. Consciously making every decision would be exhausting and time consuming. So our subconscious takes over. The problem with addiction is that our conscious chooses to stop, but our subconscious desires to continue. That’s why it’s so hard to stop.
My subconscious makes some pretty good decisions, but in some areas, it’s broken. I’ve discovered that when I look at a woman, my subconscious misinterprets the information from my eyes, and spits out a calculation, a conclusion that is absolute crap. So I take measures to ensure that my subconscious doesn’t get any stimulus that would let him out of the ring. By keeping custody of my eyes and mind, and a lot of prayer, my TL stays low and sobriety is much easier.
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Yes, you are right. I have seen a lot of progress over the past year! 4 months before this recent relapse. then before that I had a month where I relapsed 4 times. And before that I had 6 months of sobriety. That is the best amount of progress I have ever had! Progress not perfection is a saying I like a lot and progress is there.
It has still been hard coming out of this relapse. I told my wife about the relapse though I try not to use her as an accountability partner. Obviously she was hurt, betrayed by what I have done. I have caused so much betrayal trauma over the years. I have no clue how to heal that. I said things that I shouldn’t have said in the process of telling her. I did not go perfectly. Wounds are there but somehow I think God can heal those wounds. I am praying for healing and trusting in God. My wife loves me and I love her. I am so lucky to have her and she doesn’t deserve the hurt I cause. We made up I guess you could say but the journey to healing for both of us is hard and steep. I struggle with the fact that I cannot control her healing and I cannot force her to seek healing. I do wishe healing for her.
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Your toxicity levels help a lot I think. You are so right that we need to guauge where we are at. That is kind of how I use danger zones. for me danger zones are person, places, things, feelings, actions, and emotions that have been historically been associated with relapses. A danger zone can be entered into voluntarily or involuntarily. It is important to recognize them and call them out. I feel I could do that more intently. If I do it with intention, recognizing where I am at can really help to strategically navigate those situations to give my self the best chance of success. This past time I entered the danger zone voluntarily and I told myself I wasnt going to do anything. Like I said I tickled the temptation and that was already too far. I noticed it but I didn’t call that out.
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Would she had found out if you hadn’t told her?
No probably not. She probably could see that something was up and that I was acting weird.
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I totally understand not wanting to make your wife an accountability partner, but there’s just no way I could keep it a secret. I’m up to 30 days so last time I told her was that long ago and it was so dreadful up until I told her but she understood that put I myself in a vulnerable position and the pins lined up and I stood no chance against temptation. Before that I had a really good run so I think the overall progress punctuated with failures is just part of the process (not an excuse to play sour notes on your instrument on purpose though, you have to keep practicing) since if we could just easily go cold turkey there’d be no such thing as addiction. Anyway good luck man, we’re all here working it out with ya.
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Welp I witnessed a sex act on a meme website, literally couldn’t believe my eyes, it was supposed to be funny but normal that sort of thing is censored and never actually sex. Guess I can’t go there anymore, even Twitter has bad stuff so I’m just gonna look at memes here. I did not get aroused or anything thank God so my unconscious values are sharp and not secretly enjoying it. Bunch of bullshit.
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Did you report it?
No, I’m not making an account there it’s just easier to leave.
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I’m not a fan of memes. But for those that are. The Meme Wars threads are so massive, one could take literally months to get through all of those. Have fun!
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Meme wars threads have sexual content on TS. I muted them long time ago. Every time I try to go back, there’s something borderline explicit. Be careful.
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Sigh. Well maybe it’s time for me to grow up and stop looking at pictures with words for 30+ minutes a day. I started doing Bible in a year and dropped off when I hurt my back so I should catch up on that instead.
Edit: weirdly, bands like Guns n Roses, Kiss and Motley Crüe etc never ever trigger me. I never even noticed the connection until just now listening to the orgasm on Rocket Queen while I was typing. Thank God the music I love has been safe, I’d never want to give it up.
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I’m having this weird late night thought based on The Matrix. I’ve only looked at P a handful of times in the 3, going on 4, years and I just randomly had this “there is no spoon” moment thinking about the illusion I actively participated in since I was literally like 10 years old. I finally feel like I’m outside the matrix… I can see how I can go back in, like they do in the movie, but I think there’s really something to be said about the shattering of the illusion that addiction pulls over your eyes (an apt metaphor in this case). I finally feel like I’m in reality again. I love movies about VR so maybe this is just a biased yet useful heuristic that works for me but it really is how I feel. Very strange, even humbling. I feel like I have to treat my sense-making apparatuses with more respect so I don’t fall (and cease continuing to fall) for any further pathological delusions.
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