Post by freshstart on Dec 18, 2007 9:12:22 GMT -5
Well looking back to Dec 11, i can see that i have not kept to my good habits.
I am now free from porn and masturbation for 4 days. This is my 5th day.
I looked at my day, and it struck me that apart from porn, i waste a huge amount of my working day on news blogs, wikipedia etc. This is very far from porn in a way, and in fact i often thought that this was good, because it was like a replacement for porn, i.e., it allowed a bit of escapism, and it partially filled the porn-shaped-hole, but it wasn't porn.
In fact, i now think that it was the opposite. Even when clean from porn i was allowing myself to seek escape every day. I was using teh internet, and that uniquely internet phenomenon of endless content, endless linking, which means you could stay browsing all day long. As soon as you get bored with one area, there will be 100 other links you could follow. It seems so endless, and it is so temptint to continue.
So yesterday i made the resolution to stop all non-work-necessary web browsing. I know this will seem like the most obvious thing to other people. But it has taken me this long to see clearly that this is a problem. I don't think i have an internet addiction, but i have something just short of an internet addiction, and it is inherently connected to my porn addiction.
Anyway, that is the positive.
For the purpose of honesty, i have to state that i broke it yesterday (my first day of the resolution). I googled a work colleagues name, and that led to me an unrelated bebo site. There i started looking through the peoples pictures, looking for some flesh. I was skating on thin ice, and i am only sober by luck rather than design. But i now keep a note of this activity. Hopefully it will help to reduce it further.
For the negative:
I feel sorely tempted to look at porn, or something approaching porn. But i am telling myself that i have only 3 hours of work left today. I can keep my door open, and get a lot of work completed.
I think i like the idea of the hunt for porn, like it shows great skill to find it, or like it is activating some ancient "hunt for mates" pathway. But there is no hunt for porn. I know of a site where i could go right now, and in five minutes i would have endless high quality full length porn videos. But i know that they would not make me happy. They would make me very, very unhappy.
There is no hunt. The only hunt, and it is a very challenging hunt, is for recovery.
FS
I am now free from porn and masturbation for 4 days. This is my 5th day.
I looked at my day, and it struck me that apart from porn, i waste a huge amount of my working day on news blogs, wikipedia etc. This is very far from porn in a way, and in fact i often thought that this was good, because it was like a replacement for porn, i.e., it allowed a bit of escapism, and it partially filled the porn-shaped-hole, but it wasn't porn.
In fact, i now think that it was the opposite. Even when clean from porn i was allowing myself to seek escape every day. I was using teh internet, and that uniquely internet phenomenon of endless content, endless linking, which means you could stay browsing all day long. As soon as you get bored with one area, there will be 100 other links you could follow. It seems so endless, and it is so temptint to continue.
So yesterday i made the resolution to stop all non-work-necessary web browsing. I know this will seem like the most obvious thing to other people. But it has taken me this long to see clearly that this is a problem. I don't think i have an internet addiction, but i have something just short of an internet addiction, and it is inherently connected to my porn addiction.
Anyway, that is the positive.
For the purpose of honesty, i have to state that i broke it yesterday (my first day of the resolution). I googled a work colleagues name, and that led to me an unrelated bebo site. There i started looking through the peoples pictures, looking for some flesh. I was skating on thin ice, and i am only sober by luck rather than design. But i now keep a note of this activity. Hopefully it will help to reduce it further.
For the negative:
I feel sorely tempted to look at porn, or something approaching porn. But i am telling myself that i have only 3 hours of work left today. I can keep my door open, and get a lot of work completed.
I think i like the idea of the hunt for porn, like it shows great skill to find it, or like it is activating some ancient "hunt for mates" pathway. But there is no hunt for porn. I know of a site where i could go right now, and in five minutes i would have endless high quality full length porn videos. But i know that they would not make me happy. They would make me very, very unhappy.
There is no hunt. The only hunt, and it is a very challenging hunt, is for recovery.
FS