Surrender... But to whom?

I keep stumbling in my recovery. I had almost 14 days clean… Before that I had about 50 days. And before that 5 Months. This past Saturday I jumped off the wagon… Again. Sunday I didn’t attend my SA meeting because I didn’t want to admit what I had done. Monday I came close to acting out with images online but I avoided nudity and didn’t self pleasure so I reasoned that my behavior “didn’t count” against my sobriety. Early the next morning I awoke and suffered a horrendous panic attack for about 3-4 hours. When I act out either the rush of the dopamine and endorphins causes me to experience panic or else it’s a combination of the neurochemicals and the self-loathing and shame that sparks the anxiety/panic. It’s a terrible place to be. I crave getting high but I can no longer physically/mentally/spiritually survive the affects of getting high on porn. It affects my roommate/friends who must endure my acting squirly from the panic attack.

Today I decided it would be “ok” to search for some images online of men wearing pajamas. (for no good reason). Before long I was seeing racy images and the thought process intensified that I should STOP. but I kept going and it escalated into seeing nudity and me masturbating. AGAIN.

So I think that I have to count the last three days as a binge and reset the clock. I am fully cognizant of the damage that porn does to the brain, the body and the soul. All of me is suffering the consequences of my 30+ year sex addiction.

Today something new dawned on me. When it comes to my acting out/getting high… It will ALWAYS result in me surrendering. When I’m selfish I say, “NO! I don’t want to surrender this up to God and pass up the physical pleasure of the activity.” But then I realized. I will either surrender this up to God and follow His will. Or I will end up surrendering my body, mind and spirit to the Evil One who is behind the addiction. MERCY!

When I’m tempted to get high on porn I shouldn’t ask myself whether or not I’m going to surrender. I must ask myself, “To whom will I surrender?”

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Jamie Lee Curtis said that addiction is one of the few diseases that convinces us we don’t have it. That’s my disease and I’m powerless to that, so I surrender to it. I don’t fight it by myself, I get as much help as I can because I need it.

For me, surrender is continuous. Sometimes I have to surrender multiple times a day because there’s a part of me that keeps trying to convince myself that spending every waking moment looking at porn, having sex with every woman I encounter, and being in love with numerous people at the same time is normal for me.

For the first few years in sobriety, I missed acting out. It was my BFF, it didn’t judge me, and it was always there for me. I also ended up in jail, caught STDs twice, spent $250k in two years, got two divorces, lost custody of my kids, lost a house, a business and two cars. And still I had to mourn losing my addiction.

Since I used to put my addiction before everything else, I now do the same with sobriety or else I would lose it all anyway. So recovery is the first thing I do when I wake up and the last thing I do before I go to bed. I have a garage full of tools to keep me sober, and I’m always looking for more tools. Addiction is a progressive disease, so my recovery must also be progressive.

8 years later, I spend anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours a day on recovery, and I live the rest of my life. In addiction, I gave up everything for one thing. In recovery, I give up one thing for everything.

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When you say you spend “up to two hours” on your recovery, what do you mean by that? What kinds of things beyond attending meetings do you do,?

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Besides meetings…

Lots of reading
Some journaling
Meditation/prayer
Sponsorship
Fellowship
Service to others in recovery
Self check-ins multiple times a day

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Just putting this out in the open. I binged again yesterday. I am so used to self medicating through porn. And yet it goes against my values and morals and religious beliefs. I seem to either medicate binging on porn or binging on food. I have someone who is technically my sponsor. However he’s very busy with his job and has many sponsees probably too many… So we aren’t really in contact outside the meetings. I’ve been attending the program regularly for over a year. I need to get my self straightened out.

In my early days, I had a sponsor who was busy, and I thought it was a good thing because I didn’t have to check in so much or do a lot of work. Looking back, that set my recovery back, proving the saying half measures avail nothing. I should’ve gotten a new sponsor, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

As a sponsor, I feel my job is to take someone through the steps because that journey got me sober and keeps me that way. When I was sponsoring 5 people, I felt overwhelmed, and I didn’t take on anymore people because I felt I would do a disservice to them.

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