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Post by petitjean on Oct 22, 2007 12:55:59 GMT -5
2 full days without porn ------ Hello and welcome to my journal, Before proceeding any further, please check out my initial posting, in the atheist addicts' thread, so you know where I'm coming from: lightwave.proboards48.com/index.cgi?board=addicts&action=display&thread=1174492147&page=11#1192985711I'd just like to say first that I had a wobble today but I'm not going to count it as a slip. I was trying to trace through Google a weird character I met in a usenet porn group BR (Before Recovery) and accidentally displayed a page of very small but suggestive thumbnails. I resisted clicking on any of them but I undeniably stayed on the page a few seconds longer than I needed to. Let's just call it a warning, from myself to myself. My aim in coming to this board is to be totally free of porn, which I define as any sexually titillating (intentional or otherwise) media product I wouldn't want my SO to know I'd been consuming. The rest - no-porn masturbation, short-lived daydream fanstasies, appreciating attractive women generally - I can live with; unless I subsequently prove myself wrong. These latter are all things that my SO knows I do and has no problem with. I do have a *big* problem with porn, which she knows about but doesn't know the full extent of. The aim of this journal is for me to analyze my addiction, where it comes from, what forms it takes, what needs it corresponds to - on the principle that to know your enemy is a key element in conquering it. The method of this journal will be based on a close reading of all my posts in turn, including this one and my initial post, taking words and phrases as springboards for ideas and memories related to my addiction, each 'springboard' being the basis of a new post. In time I should build up a global picture. Obviously I have some ideas already but I'm not sure where this whole process is going to take me. I hope all this is clear. What I want to avoid is a "Had breakfast. Went to work. Didn't use P. Praise the Lord" type of journal. I caricature but you know what I mean. An important part of my recovery will be the insights of others and you are most welcome to post supportive and constructive comments. If you want to spit at me, please use a PM or a posting in another forum. And no religion please - I'm British! Ideally I would want to post every day (it keeps me off the porn!) but that won't be possible in practical terms. I will let my readers know when there are going to be long gaps. I have one more important thing to say before I start my Method but this post is getting too long already so I'll leave that till tomorrow. petitjean
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Post by petitjean on Oct 23, 2007 15:11:39 GMT -5
3 full days without porn ------ ...and no masturbation either, in contrast to my previous first three days of freedom. What I want to avoid is a "Had breakfast. Went to work. Didn't use P. Praise the Lord" type of journal. I realized immediately after posting this how arrogant it sounds. Especially that cheap shot at the religious approach, which doesn't add anything to the point I was trying to make. As I've said before, everyone needs to find their own way. I'll move onto the last important point that fell off the end of yesterday's post, namely that I want to avoid too much expression of guilt, shame, and self-pity in my journal. Sure, like most of us here I guess, I feel all these emotions from time to time, but I'm convinced they're part of the problem not the solution, that they actually feed the addiction cycle. A new guy put it really well the other day: I hate myself, so I use porn. I use porn, so i hate myself. It's like with gamblers, the feeling that comes with losing makes the next round of gambling desirable and necessary. Deep down, I want to punish myself, and that probably comes from some situation many many years ago when I was made to feel unworthy. Using porn eroticizes that desire for punishment and makes it pleasurable, as well as providing a 'rational' pretext for it. Phew! Are you with me so far? Move over Dr Freud! The corollary of not wanting to feel guilty is that I shouldn't feel overjoyed with myself for small victories over porn. I won't be throwing a party after 50 days. I will just try to be neutral and objective about myself. OK, tomorrow I really start my Method, as detailed in yesterday's post. petitjean
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Post by petitjean on Oct 24, 2007 15:22:09 GMT -5
4 full days without porn ------ But I did masturbate this morning, which is OK by my rules. The trigger was the neighbours' teenage daughter (about 17), who I've referred to in my posts on the Great Pornoff site, getting dressed with her blinds open. The lines of sight are such that I can never see very much, but it unsettles me all the same. This is a frequent trigger and it works in a very sneaky way; I tell myself it's wrong to peer into people's bedrooms so I retreat to the computer, which is out of sight of the window... I can't see her and nobody can see me... But I didn't go the computer today, I went to the bathroom... Afterwards I felt clear-headed and got some good work done. My afternoon class went like a dream. Hello, New member petitjean here, 51 years old, teacher/writer... I teach mainly young adults. The nature of my courses is such that most of my students are male. However, there are always some female students and of course by the law of averages a proportion of them will be very good-looking. Just recently my duties have evolved in such a way that I have to give a lot more 1-2-1 support in private. But let me say from the outset that I've never ever indulged in any inappropriate behaviour with students, nor ever been remotely tempted. I'm just in a different place when I'm teaching; I love my work and I take it very seriously. Which, in a roundabout way, was the motivation for this current attempt to kick the porn. Each summer I teach on a residential course; it's very intensive work but also very rewarding (in both senses of the word). This year, for the first time, I had a laptop with me. No doubt for legitimate reasons, but in fact I spent an average of 1.5 or 2 hours per evening looking at porn when I should have been preparing the next day's lessons, or sleeping. Just in case I didn't get internet access in my room, I had my stash with me on a CD. I did have internet access as it happened... At the end of the course, my score on the students' evaluation questionnaire, though still good, was significantly down on previous years. I kept making silly mistakes in class, forgot key admin announcements, got the date wrong... I also got into an unnecessary conflict with a colleague basically because I hadn't been paying attention in a meeting. Because I was tired, because I was only getting 4 or 5 hours' sleep per night, because I was gorging on porn. I decided on the way home that this couldn't go on. Although I didn't do anything about it initially, it's an important factor in why I'm here now. petitjean
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Post by petitjean on Oct 25, 2007 16:49:44 GMT -5
5 full days without porn ------ New member petitjean here, 51 years old, teacher/ writer... I'm not a famous novelist or anything, I just write textbooks and reference materials in a couple of narrow specialisms. This means I'm at home quite a lot, alone in front of the computer, which can easily drift into porn use or other time-wasting activities as a way of procrastinating a particularly boring or difficult task I have to do. I was reading a thread about procrastination and time-wasting on this board and could recognize myself in it. But I can't find the link any more, so if anyone can redirect me... Incidentally, you don't have to be a porn addict to suffer from this syndrome, as any freelance writers' or home/teleworkers' forum will reveal. I didn't actually become a freelance writer by choice, it was just a by-product of being made redundant three times, something to fall back on as full-time salaried jobs are hard to come by in my area of knowledge. I do OK by it, but I regularly deliver late, and porn's a big factor in that. For about 12 months in 2000-2001 I timed my porn sessions and I reckon I lost the equivalent of 16 full working days in that period (not counting non-porn time wasting). Part of me said, "Well it's no more than if you'd had some kind of physical illness or operation", but I know I shouldn't listen to that part. From time to time, I've undertaken feverish searches for office space to rent away from home, where I can be with other people, to reduce the temptation. But I've never found anything suitable where I can justify the expense. My friends are totally mystified when I get into this office-searching mode, as from where they stand I have a pretty good office set-up at home (here and in my previous place). If only they knew. petitjean
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Post by petitjean on Oct 26, 2007 16:14:13 GMT -5
6 days without porn ------ New member petitjean here,...UK nationality but resident in FranceWelcome to the world capital of s*x. I've read other contributors on this board telling us how they cover their eyes or avert their gaze any time they see anything sexually suggestive. Good luck to them. If I did that here I'd be bumping into things all the time - you might as well give me a white stick. The feminist movement in France has not been so much concerned with issues of representation as its anglo-saxon counterpart. With obvious results... A few years ago every Paris metro station was showing a series of C & A (that's the name of a store BTW) ladies' underwear ads in which a C & A clad young woman was beckoning the unseen male partner (ie, you the viewer) into her boudoir. Another ad featured a man sniffing his departed gf's knickers. Lingerie shops are everywhere. Many window displays in pharmacies feature (half-)naked women. In newsagents' displays, Hot Video nestles next to car & computer & news magazines. Upmarket women's magazines like Elle and Vogue have a bare-breast cover at least once a year (unlike Hot Video which puts little crosses over the n***les). And on top of that, I have to go and rent an apartment near the red light district! There are three girlie bars literally within one minute's walk of chez moi, and the main streetwalkers' area is less than half a mile away. Oddly enough, and to get something useful out of this post, none of this is really a significant trigger for me. I've never been tempted to 'act out' in the bars or with the streetwalkers. And the rest is like so much background noise, which I find quite pleasant if I'm honest with myself. No, my triggers are much more personal, to do with being alone, catching fleeting glimpses of things I shouldn't... Need to pin this down more. petitjean PS. Neighbours' girl (henceforward NG) was getting changed again. Felt vaguely unsettled but didn't need to masturbate, or use porn.
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Post by petitjean on Oct 27, 2007 16:06:52 GMT -5
7 full days porn free
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Notice I've changed the wording of my header slightly, as the previous one might have suggested porn was something I was being deprived of. (Imagine '7 days without food/sleep/breathing'.)
Mighty mighty wobble this evening though, and only through jesuitical reasoning and my own carefully worded definition of porn does it not count as a slip. NG was getting it on with her bf you see and they didn't seem to care who was looking. I thought seriously about going back onto the porn and only through masturbation could I relieve the feeling of agitation. Thankfully her blinds are now closed for the night. Must do something about this trigger (looking away maybe!), otherwise it's only a matter of time.
Will not masturbate any more before SO comes back on Tuesday evening. I want to 'save myself' for her.
It's December 25th 1997. I'm spending a few days with my dad, who is infirm. In fact, this is the last Christmas he will live at home. The old house is totally unsuitable for his needs and he needs a team of home helps to get him through the day. But they cost him 35 pounds a week so, his attitude to money being what it is, he has given them a few days off. Guess who is expected to step into the breach.
I cook him a marvellous Xmas dinner: turkey, stuffing, roast potatoes, sprouts, the lot. Afterwards, he says to me (he's a man of few words): "I'm glad you came home for Christmas son..." (my heart begins to warm) "...it meant I could save money on the home helps." (goes cold again). We don't exchange another word all evening. At ten o'clock he goes upstairs to bed. It takes him a while and because he's eaten so much he doesn't make it to the toilet in time so I have to clean him up.
I've got my laptop with me and have a dial-up connection to the internet. The internet for home users is only just out of its infancy; my dad's heard about it so earlier I've given him a demo and called up pictures of his favourite footballers. After that he loses interest and doesn't quite realize the potential.
I do though and, feeling like s**t after the day's events, I type in http://www.<address>.com to Netscape, where <address> is the name of a porn mag I've used before. The site exists but consists only of a few grainy pictures plus a lot of links to other porn sites. This is my first encounter with internet porn, a whole three months after being wired at home for the internet.
Click ... click .. click ... and I get a crash-course in internet porn, including pop-up hell. I finally find a TGP site where most of the links seem to do exactly what it says on the can and I make myself a TIFF file with about 20 photos. I finally disconnect at 5:30 in the morning.
The next morning, my dad just has to wait till I am awake to get him out of bed.
petitjean
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Post by petitjean on Oct 28, 2007 17:38:07 GMT -5
8 full days porn free but I slipped today ------ Ironically I slipped while I was deleting my stash. But I didn't go online to find new material, and I reckon 2.5 hours on as against 380 hours off is not bad as a first attempt. But I need to go further and cut it out completely. The trigger for today's slip was exactly the same one as I mentioned in my last post. I tried, I really tried, I even tried the buttock-clenching exercise recommended by the French porn addiction guru Orroz ( www.orroz.net/rechute.htm , in red, if you can read French ). I held out for over an hour once the show had started across the road, I looked away and looked back several times... But in the end I cracked... This time I did go online. I went back to a site where a cancelled subscription still had a few days to run, which would provide me with the same type of material as I'd just been seeing in real life. I briefly visited a couple of other free sites for good measure. The whole slip lasted about 2.5 hours, similar to the previous one. 5 hours on as against 528 hours off is not bad, compared to my usual behaviour when SO is away. But I need to go further and cut out the porn completely. This is a very serious trigger I've identified; if it happens again tomorrow I'm going to go out whatever I'm doing at that moment. Or someone needs to tie me to the mast. As I'm still saving myself for SO on Tuesday, I chose not to end the session with ejaculation, which is unusual for me (though I was masturbating like mad). Closing down all the windows and deleting the history felt like jumping off a speeding train. Afterwards, I just let the feeling subside once the shutters had been closed across the road. I made myself a bite to eat and put on at high volume Aimee Mann's "The Forgotten Arm", a wonderful, but pessimistic, concept album about an addict (booze) and his partner: "...way more real than real, the world inside the glass, the struggles to conceal, the wreckage on the overpass..." So tomorrow will be white-knuckle day. No teaching, a day at home in front of the computer with a stack of fairly straightforward but repetitive work which I absolutely must finish. Wish me luck. petitjean
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Post by petitjean on Oct 29, 2007 17:29:05 GMT -5
0 full days porn free ------ But no further slips today (yet). External temptations have not been placed in my way. The shutters are closed. What's more I got the work done I needed to. I'm goggle-eyed from staring at the screen but for once it's not from porn. Ironically I slipped while I was deleting my stash. Let me tell you about that stash, deleted on October 19th, never to return. It was about 1 Gb in size, which is small beer I know compared to some here. But bear in mind it was about the third stash I'd deleted over the years in a fit of self-disgust. I was never much into movies - download times were too long and I needed the quick fix; carefully ordered series of pictures was my thing. Here is a summary of the content, which I'm going to cover up with the trigger icon: [trigger]60% teen & young amateur stuff, solo striptease sets from mainstream sites; some g/g and b/g from the same sites; unfortunately some s**t downloaded from usenet that is not child sex but not that far away - I'm not proud of this I am/was *not* into: extreme s/m, silicone porn stars, pictures of old/fat/ugly women, anything toilet- or animal-related, gay or transexual porn [/trigger] I'm sort of glad I've got that off my chest but I feel almost physically sick having written it, so I'm almost calling it a night. SO is arriving tomorrow and will stay for just over a week. I might just slip in a post tomorrow but time will be limited after that. But I'll be back! petitjean
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Post by petitjean on Nov 2, 2007 10:43:32 GMT -5
4 full days porn free
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Just checking in while SO is here - no time for a full post. It's been great since she arrived - we made love almost straight away - and right now I feel about a million miles away from porn. I know it's an illusion though and I need to be really on my guard immediately after she leaves (next Wednesday) as that's a major triggering point. A few times I've literally *run* back to the flat after seeing her off, as I couldn't wait to get back on the porn. Must think of a strategy to avoid that... Suggestions welcome...
petitjean
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Post by petitjean on Nov 9, 2007 10:51:50 GMT -5
10 full days porn free, then I slipped yesterday
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I've gone a week without posting and my journal is already down on page 4! So many people struggling with this, whether addicts or SOs, religious or atheist. I feel kind of humbled but also a great sense of solidarity. There is almost a tear in my eye.
Yesterday's slip was a very bad one and I mustn't let it off the hook, must analyze the reasons so it doesn't happen again. I spent 10 hours and 15 minutes of a 24-hour period looking at porn, in two separate sessions. Finally got to bed at 4 a.m. after nearly falling asleep in front of the computer. It was mostly the accursed usenet, literally millions of porn images, dirt cheap cheap dirt. Plus a certain free website I often return to. Not for the first time, I've now blocked my usenet account and that certain website, but I know how easy it is to unblock them. On the plus side, no attempt to start reconstituting a stash.
The trigger was not at all sexual. In fact, I had been very pleased with myself for not going straight back onto the porn after my SO left on Wednesday (back on Nov 29th, which is my next target), and I was really concentrating on that, but in the end I just delayed the lapse by a day. The French have an expression "un train peut en cacher un autre" which sort of translates metaphorically as "one danger can hide another" and this I feel is what happened to me.
In fact the real trouble was brewing on Tuesday. We had had a friend of mine staying with us on Monday and I sort of assumed he would be leaving early on Tuesday morning. But in fact his train wasn't till late afternoon so that meant I had to 'entertain' him until then, which included a very boozy lunch. Which meant I only got done a fraction of the work I needed to do, which meant that I didn't prepare for Wednesday's class properly, which meant that the students' task was badly designed, which meant that the class descended into chaos, which meant that I felt bad - and nothing to do with porn! And when I feel bad I like to make myself feel good... I expect alcoholics and drug addicts recognize the same syndrome.
Part of the problem is that my work is concentrated in bursts with a lot of 'idle' time in between. I need to get into the habit of doing lesson preparation, etc, during that 'idle' time, in order to take some pressure and stress off myself, which can lead to porn. Sometimes I just dream of some easy, mind-numbing, regular 9 to 5 job...
To end on a positive note, since I started my recovery effort on Oct 5th, I have used porn for 15.25 hours out of 840, ie. less than 2% of the time, which is definitely a big improvement on previous performance. Let's see if we can get that ever closer to zero!
petitjean
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cammy
Full Member
Posts: 221
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Post by cammy on Nov 9, 2007 11:46:23 GMT -5
Salut Jean,
Comment ca va? Do you speak to anyone of this or are you alone in your fight right now?
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Post by petitjean on Nov 10, 2007 19:54:27 GMT -5
1 full day porn free
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Hi Cammy,
... and welcome to my journal. First person other than me to post, and many thanks for that. I was wondering where the 100+ views were coming from.
In answer to your question, I'm pretty much alone right now. God doesn't exist, so he's not much help. SO found out by accident in Jan 2006, was crushed for a time, not at all sympathetic, then came back to me and doesn't even mention it any more. The other day she even said she "adored" me. For my 50th birthday she decorated the whole flat with balloons overnight while I was sleeping. But she doesn't know the full extent of my addiction.
I had some sessions with a therapist in 2000-01 and it did reduce my dependency for a while - I never abused on the days I was seeing him. He confessed I was the first case of this problem he'd come across, and he seemed to get it into his head that I was latently gay. I kept asking him if *he* was gay and he came back with therapist-speak: "Why is it important to you to know whether I'm gay?". I can do that, gizza job. It was getting expensive so I quit.
I have toyed with the idea of confiding in a friend who struggles with alcohol (in fact the same friend who I had the boozy lunch with - see previous post) - with the idea of mutual support. In fact I almost did so while sitting with him overlooking the river in front of the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand in Paris. But I chickened out at the last moment.
So no flesh-and-blood people I can put a face to, but this board is helping. Something tells me I need to do more.
petitjean
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Post by unico on Nov 11, 2007 6:50:04 GMT -5
I switched to loosely using the Rational Recovery approach to addiction after I had managed 100 days porn free. The RR Handbook introduced me to the use of the word Never when tackling my addiction (see my blue 'Big Plan' at the bottom of my post) RR ideas are used by Wes (Webmaster here) and his 10 steps download has been tailored from RR to focus on porn addiction. I am about to reach 6 months porn free so it is working well for me
take care
Unico
p.s. I confided my addiction to my psychotherapist. He didn't become someone i was accountable too, but I certainly found his input useful, and just telling someone lifted some of the negative power this addiction has from my shoulders
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Post by petitjean on Nov 11, 2007 19:07:44 GMT -5
2 full days porn free, then I slipped this afternoon ------ Damn & blast. My shortest clean period since I began my recovery efforts. 5 hours' indulgence near as dammit, which takes me back over the 2% mark. Damn & blast again. Mainly on two free sites, no usenet, no stashing, and a shorter slip than last time. Progress of sorts(?). The trigger was again non-sexual. I forgot today was a public holiday, so something I normally do on a Sunday didn't take place and I had some unexpected free time. Whoopee... Actually I held out for more than hour before giving in to the urge, just enough time to do some cleaning around the flat. Reading Unico's post in my journal gave me that extra ounce of strength. I am honoured by this visit from a Tribal Elder. I switched to loosely using the Rational Recovery approach to addiction after I had managed 100 days porn free. Yeah, I had a look at that when I first discovered this board but at a cursory reading it seemed rather eccentric, and as dogmatic in its own way as the 12-step programmes it so deplores. Maybe I'll give it another try. Right now I'm working my way through www.orroz.net . Orroz seems to be the only French person writing seriously about this problem, in a popular vein and from a non-preachy standpoint. He's got some very practical physical advice (wish I'd followed it today!) and advocates porn-free masturbation, at least in the early stages of recovery. petitjean I am going to borrow Unico's slogan till I find one of my own: I WILL NEVER USE PORNOGRAPHIC MEDIA AGAIN AND I WILL NEVER CHANGE MY MIND
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Post by petitjean on Nov 12, 2007 17:44:31 GMT -5
0 full days porn free ----- No slips today (so far) but I don't count a full day unless I've got up and gone to bed without using porn, and I haven't gone to bed yet. Ironically I slipped while I was deleting my stash... This is going back to my first slip on October 19th, which I haven't yet analyzed for triggers. Looking back, I must have been mad. I promised myself (and others on the other board) that I would delete my stash once I'd completed the two weeks of the Great Pornoff challenge. However, when it came to the moment, I was in no state to do that. I'd been unsettled all day by an incident at the bank and was in an uncharacteristically angry mood - I'm generally a placid kind of guy - thus in no state to go anywhere near my stash. I got this hair-brained idea, instead of deleting my stash, I would greatly reduce its size by selecting "highlights" from among the images - the reduced stash to be used in "emergencies"! Since I know my own filename coding system (I'm a**l like that), I could in theory do this without actually looking at the images. Of course you know what happens next: one click to select, double click to view, you have to be incredibly finger-disciplined to get it right. And I am not... So off I go for a 2.5 hour session with the stash. But on that occasion I didn't go online for new images, and I finally deleted my stash at the end of the session. Lessons to be learned: 3 out of 4 triggers have not been directly sexual and all of them have involved outside events over which I have no control: bank incident, neighbour getting undressed, friend overstaying, cancellation of planned event. And I seem to use the word "unsettled" quite a lot. Conversely, today I had no trouble avoiding a slip because everything happened to plan in a routine sort of way. Nothing unsettling at all. So all I need is a totally predictable life where nothing ever unsettles me! It's so simple really! goodnight from petitjean ------ I WILL NEVER USE PORNOGRAPHIC MEDIA AGAIN AND I WILL NEVER CHANGE MY MIND
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