|
Post by freshstart on Aug 31, 2007 11:36:59 GMT -5
Well i am sober today for the first time in a long time. I will call today Day 1. That is not to say that i am perfectly white today. There have been a lot of bad thoughts, and some flirting around the edges. But today, i will hold on to what i have. But still i realise, it must get quantitatively better.
FS
|
|
|
Post by suedehead on Aug 31, 2007 11:55:27 GMT -5
Hey FS. I just completed my first day 1 in a quite some time. It feels pretty good. I know one day sounds paltry, but in our circumstances, I think it is worthy of some congratulations. So to you: congratulations. Just one more day.
suede
|
|
|
Post by suedehead on Sept 3, 2007 23:04:45 GMT -5
How are things?
|
|
Andy
Full Member
Posts: 233
|
Post by Andy on Sept 7, 2007 5:26:19 GMT -5
Hiya FS hows it going?
|
|
|
Post by freshstart on Sept 18, 2007 3:42:46 GMT -5
I have just returned from a two week holiday. It was fantastic. Yes i faced urges, and too frequently i engaged in dry masturbation (i.e., close to climax, but just short of it). This is somewhat different to full MB, but is not that different.
I returned on Sunday, and MBed yesterday. But i am free of P for 18 days and this is day 19. After MBing yesterday, i prayed and asked for God's forgiveness. As a penance, i did not have any lunch yesterday.
I have prayed almost every day of my holidays, and i believe that God was very generous in helping me to stay away from P. Normally, i engineer a situation where i will be on my own for a part of the day, and then i go in search of titillating material. But not this time. This time, with God's help, i avoided all situations that would lead to P. I gave it a very wide berth.
Now, back at work, i find it more difficult. The drug is so close at hand. But i have stayed sober before, and with God's help, i can do it again.
I will check in later, to see how i am doing.
Just for today, no P or MB.
FS
PS, Suedehead and Andy, thanks for checking in on me. I should have mentioned that i would be on holidays.
|
|
|
Post by freshstart on Sept 18, 2007 9:22:06 GMT -5
well i am sober, but i just had an idea. What would be so bad about checking out the P sites i normally look at. Wouldn't it be interesting to see what is new there. Wouldn't it be entertaining, and indeed, wouldn't it be a nice turn on. This is often the case, during the preliminaries, i am unable to recall all the reasons why i shouldn't look at P. Then afterwards, almost immediately after climax, they all come rushing back to me, and i am hard pressed to find a single reason as to why i would look at P.
I am indeed very impulsive, but i am grateful to God that he has given me this pause, to at least consider what i am thinking of doing.
All of my experience tells me that a) I never regret resisting these urges. b) I always regret giving in to them
Why should i look at P. -I like it -It turns me on -while i am looking at it, it makes me feel good, initally at least. -I want to look
Why should i not look at P. -I know from many areas of life, that not giving in to my wants often leads me to be much happier. -The longer i stay away from P, the more i realise how crap it is -I am paid to work, not to look at P. -If it was discovered that i look at P. at work, i could lose my job, face huge personal and professional embarrassment, break my g/f's heart, lose my g/f -It stops me from having a proper healthy s-- life, which keeps me massively unhappy. -Every week i pay €65 to someone to help me stop this. Clearly this is not what i want. -I have been a member of this board for almost two years. Clearly this is not what i want. -It wastes huge amounts of my time. It may have delayed my thesis by a few months. It stops me achieving many things in my professional life. -it pollutes my mind. -everytime i emerge from under the spell, i feel like crying.
|
|
|
Post by suedehead on Sept 20, 2007 0:28:01 GMT -5
Wow, FS, great progress. You and I are on parallel planes right now. Both on about day 19 without P, and having recently returned from long vacations.
God bless you. You are always in my thoughts.
suede
|
|
|
Post by freshstart on Sept 21, 2007 8:40:52 GMT -5
Well i have spent most of the week looking at P. I am miserable from it. It feels like i am just wasting my time. I went without lunch on wednesday as penance, but it did no good. Or did it, I know that it was very difficult to go without lunch. I have a big appetite. I was really tempted, but i was able to say no. This proves that i have the ability to say no to urges.
Today i am clean Thank God. I know that i have not wasted my time with my fight. It is always better to fight than to give in, and falling on a day does not make all of the good days worthless. Every clean minute is worth fighting for. FS
|
|
|
Post by Lion on Sept 24, 2007 12:44:55 GMT -5
Hello FS, it's been a long time. Just dropping by to support you. Hang in there and don't give up your struggle.
|
|
|
Post by freshstart on Sept 27, 2007 2:46:06 GMT -5
Hi Lion, Thanks for dropping by. I hope you are doing well.
------------------------------------------------------------------ I am not doing so well. But there is a clear reason for that. I have been looking at P, and MBing. Yes i should know that this always makes me really unhappy, and hollows out my soul, but somehow my brain keeps telling me that this time it will be different, that this time i will have a good relationship with P.
I have left step 1 behind. I need to reaffirm today that i am powerless over my addiction. In any interaction between me and P, i am always the slave, and it is always the master. I will never change that dynamic. The only thing i can do is to block P out of my life. I admit that i am powerless.
Today, i will start handing my struggles over to God, and asking His help.
I will also start on some step work.
FS
|
|
|
Post by freshstart on Sept 27, 2007 7:47:49 GMT -5
Well i am half way through the day and i have been tempted. I am keeping a note of my temptations. I am also using them as a spark to do other activities. I will read some steps.
|
|
|
Post by suedehead on Sept 27, 2007 11:41:25 GMT -5
FS, you and I know each other's patterns and struggles so well that, at this point, I wonder if there is any advice I can offer. All I can offer are my empathy and prayers. If there is any thing else I can do, please please let me know.
You friend always,
suede
|
|
|
Post by suedehead on Sept 30, 2007 23:44:51 GMT -5
You around?
|
|
|
Post by freshstart on Nov 1, 2007 12:57:20 GMT -5
I am addicted to pornography and masturbation. In any interaction i have with porn or masturbation, I am not in control. It is in control. It is the same way with other things in my life, for example television usage, but i never crave television the way i crave porn.
This week i found a way to download free porn videos from a site where i have only ever seen trailers. I know all of the characters in the videos at this stage, and i was very excited to see two of my favourites in the one i downloaded.
[as an aside: I downloaded this at work. This is incredibly dangerous. The pornography is gay pornography. If i was discovered - maybe the web technicians already know and haven't done anything - i would be disgraced, i would hurt my girlfriend in the most awful way possible, and i could lose my job and have difficulty getting another one. That i look at porn at work despite all of this is proof enough that i have no power over my interaction with porn]
I spent time downloading this video, even though i am busy at work, and am behind on deadlines. Then i watched the video. It was very disappointing. It wasn't as much of a turn on as i had expected -partly because i have seen so much that it is harder to turn me on now- and i was a bit disappointed.
Then i went to a meeting. As i was talking to someone i realised that i smelt. I had produced pre-cum from watching the porn, and i stank of it. I smelt like a toilet. I am a person who takes pride in the way i look and in conveying the right image to other people. I would be disgusted to be talking to other people who smelt like this. You would think that this would be enough to bring me to my senses. To realise the terrible effect of this addiction on my life. To resolve (yet again) to defeat it.
No. After the meeting, i went to the bathroom and masturbated. At first i told myself that at least masturbating would finish the cravings for a while. But if this was the case, i would have done the minimum to get to orgasm. In fact i made a big scenario in my head. I stripped naked in the cubicle and masturbated. It was not a quick route to the end. I was trying to squeeze the very last bit of addiction satisfaction out of it. Again, i was powerless. Once i had let it in, I was powerless.
That incident did not start that day though. It started the day before.
I didn't feel any great urges for porn. But it is such a habit now that i figured "why not", so i looked at a few sites. I couldn't find anything to satisfy my urges, so i looked further. Then i found how i could download these free videos. I tried that afternoon and almost got caught by my boss. You would think that would be enough to stop me. It would if i had any power over the addiction. I don't. [this tells so much. i had actually managed to forget that i had almost been caught downloading porn. in fact, i am not 100% sure that my boss didn't find some evidence while she was using my computer. It is amazing that i managed to forget this incident just two days later. at the time, i was pondering that i might be disgraced and out of a job later that evening. two days later it is all forgotten]
I tried again that evening, but i ran out of time. In fact i was late for a concert with my girlfriend.
So that evening i tried to persuade myself not to look the next day. But really i knew it was inevitable. In fact, while i didn't feel very strong urges, i downloaded it anyway. Why? - I knew i would eventually give in, and figured i should just get on with it. - Free videos from a premium site seemed to good to waste. Would you refuse free chocolate? Well yes actually i would. But i am not addicted to chocolate.
All of these are the marks of powerlessness.
I have come to believe that i am powerless over my addiction, that my life has become unmanageable.
|
|
|
Post by freshstart on Nov 2, 2007 13:33:22 GMT -5
I am addicted to pornography and masturbation. In my interactions with pornography, i have no control. The porn is in control. Whenever i interact with porn it will always be this way. I will never recover the skill of being able to deal with porn on an equal footing. I will inevitably try to fool myself that i can just try a little. But my experience over the last 4 years tells me that this is not the case. I can never again try just a little. It will always lead to a binge.
I cannot continue to fool myself.
How do i know i am addicted. Despite all that i wrote yesterday, and despite the fact that i thought my 10-year relationship was on the rocks, i still had a thought today that it would be great to look at Porn. I was in a meeting today, and while someone was talking, it suddenly struck me that when the meeting was over i could have a nice binge. This is after all i wrote yesterday. One of the most amazing things to me is the level of amnesia i have with regards to the level of misery porn brings to me. Time and time again it happens, but in my mind, the only association i have with porn is pleasure. Its crazy that after all of this, i still have a strong association between porn and pleasure, and no association between porn and misery.
I completed a PhD two years ago. When i was working on the PhD, partly due to my bad time management, i ended up in the lab quite late. One friday night, i had been working on an experiment all week. That evening i was due to get the results. I ran the samples on the machine and was analysing the results. The computer stopped responding, but i presumed that it was just processing the information. I decided to leave it for five minutes and went to check my mail. Three hours later i returned after a porn binge. The computer had actually crashed. I had left my samples out on the bench, so they had degraded and i could not rerun them. I had no results from my weeks work, and it was now very late on friday night. All of my friends were at home or out socialising. I was at work looking at porn and watching my weeks work go down the drain.
I came in early the following morning, and took samples from the frozen stocks i had made the previous afternoon, and i reran the samples. The results were not as i expected, and i couldn't be sure was that because they don't work well from frozen, or just because that was the real result. I had to repeat the experiment. It was now saturday afternoon. I went home to visit my parents. I was meant to go home on friday evening, then saturday morning. Now i travelled on saturday afternoon. Miserable. My weekend wasted and my weeks work for nothing.
But still i went back to porn. It is like the abusive relationship i just cannot leave.
|
|