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Post by petitjean on Nov 22, 2007 18:32:54 GMT -5
10 full days porn free ------ Hi petitjean, just wanted to drop by and wish you all the best in your continuing progress and recovery. I know you have the strength in you to succeed. I hope to have the time to post some more responses on your journal soon, I have been busy lately and haven't had the chance. Thanks Mr B. It's nice to know people are following my progress. I'm dead tired again this evening, certainly not in the mood for one of my analytical or atheistical posts. But I like to make a point of posting every day when I'm on my own. Tomorrow I was meant to be working out of town, but the meeting's been cancelled because of the transport strike, so it'll be another one of those days at home when I have unexpected free time. Temptation may thus strike, but I'm confident I'm ready to deal with it. Not that I haven't got plenty of things that I should be getting on with! Off to bed now for me. petitjean ------ I WILL NEVER USE PORNOGRAPHIC MEDIA AGAIN AND I WILL NEVER CHANGE MY MIND
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Post by petitjean on Nov 23, 2007 14:37:42 GMT -5
11 full days porn free ------ I have various views on the harmful effects of P but that's not why I want to stop. I'm not in favour of trying to ban porn altogether. Not that I buy the free speech argument - that's reserved for expressions of opinion and personal vision. I just think that the repressive measures needed to eliminate porn would eventually have a worse effect than porn itself - remember Prohibition, and the appalling state of drugs policy on both sides of the Atlantic. Porn has been with us since cave paintings and unfortunately there's no sign of the 'need' for it disappearing. I know it's a cliché, but it is at root a displacement of the human male's drive to impregnate as many females as possible. Apart from its effect on me, the two aspects which worry me the most are (I'm leaving aside CP for now): 1) the exploitation of women (and sometimes men) from poorer countries. Although they may give their consent in formal terms, there is a lot of economic coercion involved. You only need(ed) to look at those blank and bored faces and forced smiles in dingy bedrooms. 2) What impression young people must get of human sexuality from looking at porn. I'm an older person and I've had relationships and I like to think I can distinguish between fantasy and reality. I know that [trigger]most women don't like lesbian, multi-partner, anal, or facial sex.[/trigger] But if someone's only detailed knowledge of sex comes from this kind of material, what must it be like for them and their partner when that special moment comes? I don't know what the answer to all this is - better sex education in schools certainly, that tackles these issues head on. In the UK, parents can take their children out of sex education lessons if they have strong "moral or religious convictions" - grrr! This may be a silly idea, but it strikes me as anomalous that porn is one of the few legal vices that we don't tax. Is there any way that the WWW Foundation could devise a tax for X-rated pay sites and redistribute the money to help porn victims (both addicts and performers) and sex education charities? There's a French general interest pay-TV channel, Canal Plus, that shows 18-rated films after midnight once or twice a week. At the moment, you can 'opt out' of these films in your package. Orroz - the French porn addiction recovery site - is campaigning for this to be changed to an 'opt in' system, so you would have to declare yourself a pervert before you could view these films. I wonder if ISPs could adopt a similar system? Just a thought. petitjean ------ I WILL NEVER USE PORNOGRAPHIC MEDIA AGAIN AND I WILL NEVER CHANGE MY MIND
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Post by unico on Nov 23, 2007 15:16:47 GMT -5
just wanted to drop by and wish you well in your recovery. Each and every day away from porn is a cause for celebration.
Unico
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Post by mrbister on Nov 24, 2007 9:10:39 GMT -5
Well done on your continued success.
I agree with you about the effects such material has on the expectations of young people when "that special moment" comes, as you put it. I have read articles stating about the way it can effect a man's sex drive, altering arousal patterns etc. This is for a non-addict. Surely this is, in part, a result of exactly the same nature. This person's ideas and expectations have been changed.
Better sex-education could be good, but it seems that we are forced into this in light of the broader problem of increased sexualisation in our cultures. Children are increasingly exposed to more and more extreme material at younger and younger ages. This material is also, for example, violent. There are other examples beside this too.
The problem is the nature of the sexualisation that children are exposed to. It is not portrayed in any way realistically. In fact, to some degree it cannot be. To know what sex is, one must do it. Watching is not a part of the sex act. Yet any attempt at presenting sex to another person has to, by its very nature, depict it as something watched. Ok, I think this is a tangent to the main issue. But it's an interesting point.
So, yes, perhaps we should have better sex education to counteract the cultural problem we have got ourselves into. Everywhere we see sex, on bill-boards, in films, on TV soap-operas. Children cannot escape it, nor can adults. This is an unfortunate difficulty we now face in society, and you make a good point highlighting the dramatic problems prohibition resulted in.
You mentioned canal plus - perhaps I hold that channel responsible for the addiction I have come to have now. (although perhaps not so). However, I was on holiday in france when very young and we had that channel in the hotel room. I was very young but out of curiousity stayed up to watch one of the films you mentioned. That was the first time I witnessed any P film, and I think it may have scarred me in some sense for the rest of my life.
Well, that's all for now petitjean.
Best of luck in your recovery.
Mr. B.
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Post by petitjean on Nov 24, 2007 17:43:11 GMT -5
12 full days porn free ------ Unico and MrB - thank you for your continued support. I do look in on your journals now and then and my thoughts are with you too. Unico - I hope you don't mind I've pinched your slogan! As a penance I type it out in full each time. :-) MrB, funnily enough I've never seen 'those' films on Canal+ - not that I'm about to start! One of my saving graces is that I'm not a big TV-watcher (apart from football, cricket, films, Dr Who, Star Trek, the Sopranos, OK OK...) I want to stop because I can't control my own use of it. What I mean is, if I tell myself, for example, I'm going to spend 1.5 hours using porn, just as I might watch TV for that length of time, that 1.5 hours invariably turns into 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, or even 12 hours. I must've done about 20 'all-nighters' since 1997. By 'all-nighters' I mean nights when I haven't been to bed and I'm still using porn at the time when I would normally get up. To my eternal shame, the night my mother died was one of them - I'll talk about this in a future post. Plus maybe 40 to 50 times when I've stayed up till 4 or 5 am (plus once in 1982 on a single magazine alone). But, at times when I've had to 'go in' to work, I've only ever skipped one morning because of overnight porn (in 2002). Which means a hell of a lot of tired days at work. As well as the triggers that *send* me to porn, I think it's important to know the triggers that *keep* me there for hours on end (and also the triggers for *stopping* a session). MrB, you talk in your journal about "living in the moment", in a state of almost timelessness. I can see what you mean, but I don't think that's the whole story for me; I'm usually all too aware of the clock in the corner of the screen. What kept me there was mainly that I was very fastidious and demanding about the kinds of images and series I 'liked' - certain body types and bodily features, clothing, and the way it was removed. I would search endlessly for my 'ideal' types, clicking ever more quickly and furiously through the thumbnails, most of which were 'rejects'. Sometimes I would be 'lucky' and find what I 'wanted' quite quickly, and add it to my stash. Other times it just wasn't there, but maybe the next click would be the 'right' one, but of course it never was. Please someone else tell me you relate to this pattern. I've read a few people in different places on this board say that they are perfectionist in their general character. That's interesting. That description certainly fits me - I was very demanding in what I was seeking in porn, but I'm also very demanding in terms of the standards I expect from myself (also colleagues and students) at work. I wonder if people with this type of character are more likely to become porn addicts. (I can't see immediately why that should be.) petitjean ------ I WILL NEVER USE PORNOGRAPHIC MEDIA AGAIN AND I WILL NEVER CHANGE MY MIND
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Post by mrbister on Nov 25, 2007 6:14:49 GMT -5
Hi petitjean, just want to say that it's possible with the time you're approaching on your sobriety you'll soon be getting incredibly strong urges to use. Stay focussed and fight through it. It could be a matter of minutes or hours, it could be several days. Whatever the situation you must stay firm and keep going in spite of the powerful urges. I find such waves of urges come from time to time, more frequently and strongly in the early days of quitting especially. I just wanted to forewarn you of that. Good luck in fighting it.
In response to your awareness of the clock in relation to my journal post. I have to say, I find myself all too aware of it too. However, clearly this awareness does not extend beyond witnessing the clock, and possibly a momentary consideration that "it's getting very late". In my experience simply being aware of the clock doesn't change my state of mind much. I feel relatively unable to project into the future about why it's bad to be up so late. I am detached from the future so I can't make judgements relating to it.
Sometimes I grant that I see the time and think it's too late and I should be stopping soon. I may usually think to myself "ah give it 5 more minutes" or something of the like. However, this inevitably turns into many more hours. It seems that perhaps, for a second the brain reaches out of the moment and has an awareness of the future. But, then comes the problem: as I also discussed, the more we respond to our urge the more powerfully we become trapped in that moment, the harder it is to get out, the more quickly the brain slips into the moment, and the less aware we become of the future and past. So within seconds or minutes of becoming aware, of telling ourselves just 5 more minutes, we are already wrapped back up in the moment. Once again we find ourselves detached from the past and future, unable to have rational internal thoughts about why we should stop now and go to bed. I think that perhaps this explains how we seemingly are aware of the clock and yet continue to behave as though we had not. We cease to think about the clock as soon as our eyes are back on the P. We are again in the moment. The clock has disappeared from our mind already. Our awareness, whilst possibly frequent, is also brief and practically meaningless as we lack the mental capability to really react to its significance.
I too was very demanding about what I looked for in P. I can entirely relate to the pattern you described. And there was certainly the thought that the next click could be the click that would give me what I wanted. But I think that even if every single image available was exactly what we wanted, it would not satiate our desire. We simply desire more and more and more of our precise requirement. Find 1 image, or find 1000, we'll still keep looking. Binging for hours and hours as you said.
Perhaps what we see isn't what we really desire, and hence when we see it we don't feel satisfied. It in some way represents something that we do desire, but isn't in itself that thing. Perhaps the desire is for something ineffable and unattainable. To me this seems likely. The image isn't what we really want, it's just a poor imitation of it. What we really want we cannot describe, or perhaps do not know. However, we enlessly search in subconscious hope we will be led there.
Interestingly I too am something of a perfectionist. That might make one more susceptible to binging perhaps, ever in search of some perfection? I'm not sure whether it increases the likelihood of becoming an addict though. Interesting idea.
Good luck in recovery, keep fighting. Don't stop.
Mr. B.
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Post by petitjean on Nov 25, 2007 19:18:42 GMT -5
13 full days porn free ------ Hi petitjean, just want to say that it's possible with the time you're approaching on your sobriety you'll soon be getting incredibly strong urges to use. Stay focussed and fight through it. Thanks for the warning MrB but I knew I was coming up to a crucial point, both from experience - I cracked after 14 days on the Great Pornoff - and from Orroz, though he puts the emphasis on three weeks. I had another erotic dream last night (details hazy, something about an Arab woman, again a face I didn't recognize) which gave me an urge to masturbate first thing this morning. I didn't use porn images, I was thinking about a beautiful female work colleague, half-Japanese, from a few years ago. Not exactly flattering for my SO (she's equally beautiful though) but obviously as a red-blooded male I need to spread my seed as far and wide as possible (joke). I'm very glad you said this, that was exactly my experience. Or perhaps slightly different: finding what I wanted and storing it in my stash could sometimes bring my sessions to an end. The funny thing was, I didn't often look at my stash after I'd compiled it, except in 'emergencies', if I couldn't get on the net or something. But as you say, there was always this desire for new stuff, but of the same kind, that I hadn't seen before; one image was too many, 1000 not enough. I guess other users have a similar experience, otherwise there'd be no porn industry; everyone would make do with a single magazine, video, or image sequence. This is close to a pet theory I've had for a while, but which may only apply in my own case. It would take too long to explain now but it's something I'll return to. I won't. You too. And anyone else reading. petitjean ------ I WILL NEVER USE PORNOGRAPHIC MEDIA AGAIN AND I WILL NEVER CHANGE MY MIND
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Post by petitjean on Nov 26, 2007 14:49:41 GMT -5
14 full days porn free ------ I was even viewing P the night my mother died (though I had no way of knowing this at the time) and didn't answer the phone the first time it rang. I don't remember all the details but here we go, this is the biggie... It's August 8th 2005, I'm about to fly back to France tomorrow after a few days in England. I've been travelling all day down to my brother's place which is handy for the airport. It's about 6:30 pm and I'm tired; as I pass my mother's nursing home I think I could just drop in before they put her to bed. She hasn't recognized me for about 5 years now. Nah, I can drop in tomorrow morning - my flight isn't till the afternoon. I arrive at my brother's - he's on holiday in France with his family - have a beer then a bath and go out to get a takeaway curry. It's horrible, one of the worst I've ever had. I watch the TV for a while, news and stuff, then I turn my brother's computer on to check my email... You know what's coming next... I go onto the one 'teen' site (I'm effing 49 man) where I currently have a subscription and spend about 4 hours there, can't remember exactly what I looked at. Anyway, that's not enough for some reason. My next stop is a cam site which I've only recently discovered. I can chat for free with the models but a more 'personal' service costs money. I spend at least an hour choosing - I'm very fastidious like that - then alight on a girl called N... I've forgotten her name, which is made up anyway. Then I spend 25 effing dollars for 10 minutes of... well do I have to say? Anyway, this finally brings me off so I clean myself up, remove all the traces on the computer, and prepare the bed. It's coming up to 7:30 am. I reckon on 3 hours' sleep, a quick breakfast, a trip to see my mum, thence to the airport. I'll be able to get some more sleep on the plane. Then the phone rings, I ignore it, it couldn't possibly be for me. I'm just dozing off and it rings again. This time I answer - it's your mother, she ... didn't wake up this morning. What do you mean? She just ... didn't wake up. Then it dawns on me. I'm suddenly in hell but I have to act. Someone is using a key to come in the front door. It's the boy come to feed the cats and I'm in my underpants so I send him away. I tell the nursing home I'll be right over but in fact I have another bath and doze a little so it's more than an hour later. I let out the loudest wail when I see her. Everybody is so understanding and I don't have to do anything right away. I call in on some neighbours and they put my haggardness down to shock and sadness. More tea. It wasn't supposed to be like this; my brother was supposed to be here and me in France and he would phone me. I wasn't supposed to be w*nking off to an effing cam girl while my mother was dying. For the next few weeks I'm totally abstinent, but the kind of abstinence that would come from my d**k being cryogenically frozen. I have the perfect motivation to give up for good but I know it will come creeping back, and it does. There, that's my personal torture, that I can never erase, nor tell anyone close to me about. I have a lovely youthful full-face photo of my mum on the wall, not near the computer. She's still smiling, and (to borrow a phrase off this board) I'm still looking up. petitjean ------ MUM, I WILL NEVER USE THAT KIND OF STUFF AGAIN, THAT STUFF YOU FOUND UNDER MY BROTHER'S BED, AND I WILL NEVER CHANGE MY MIND
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Post by petitjean on Nov 27, 2007 18:03:42 GMT -5
15 full days porn free
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This is now my longest clean sequence since I started the Great Pornoff on October 5th. But I'm not in the mood for celebration. I felt quite upset after my post yesterday and ended up drinking most of a bottle of wine. No slip though, nothing close. I woke up in the middle of the night with a headache and took some pills, so I felt quite groggy this morning.
Tough day in store tomorrow so I need some sleep. SO arrives on Thursday to stay for a few days, so I'm looking forward to that. An extra seven days without porn are almost guaranteed.
petitjean
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I WILL NEVER USE PORNOGRAPHIC MEDIA AGAIN AND I WILL NEVER CHANGE MY MIND
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Post by petitjean on Nov 28, 2007 16:46:32 GMT -5
16 full days porn free ------ This is now my longest clean sequence since I started the Great Pornoff on October 5th. The two main reasons for my increased resolve, I think, are: a) Installing K9. I know it would be child's play to uninstall it but it would just add that extra layer of conscious thought between me and a slip. Not that I've even thought about uninstalling it. b) MrBister's post on Nov 13th, saying how disappointed he was my earlier series of slips. For the first time I feel I've had some real accountability. I spoke to a therapist about the problem in 2000-01 but I never felt he got quite the measure of it. I was reading elsewhere on this board someone's adage (arctic I think) that "Recovery = abstinence + personal change". I don't believe I've thought enough yet about "personal change", what that might mean. I still haven't made contact with a new therapist nor resolved to tell any of my friends about my addiction. Still a long way from confessing all to my SO. Who arrives tomorrow, so I may be absent from this board for a few days. petitjean ------ I WILL NEVER USE PORNOGRAPHIC MEDIA AGAIN AND I WILL NEVER CHANGE MY MIND
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william1000
Full Member
I can not do everything, but I can do something. I must not fail to do the something that I can do.
Posts: 110
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Post by william1000 on Nov 28, 2007 17:03:47 GMT -5
You have an interesting and honest journal PetitJean. What you say in it makes alot of sense. / Your story of your mother dying is particularily poignant. It just shows how stupid P and M makes us. I think many of us could have been in your shoes then and done something similar. I hope this is the changing point in your life. Best of luck in your journey William
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Post by mrbister on Dec 2, 2007 12:45:45 GMT -5
Keep fighting, don't slip. Just wanted to leave my wishes and best regards. I will visit with more to say soon.
All the best.
Mr. B.
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Post by petitjean on Dec 6, 2007 14:33:22 GMT -5
24 full days porn free
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I'm back! Many thanks to William and MrB for their posts, and I also received a nice supportive pm from a new member.
You were here when I needed you! Today has been an extremely rough day in terms of temptation to slip. Classic scenario - SO has gone home again (she has two homes, here and there) and I've just come to the end of a very busy work period. The hours immediately following SO's departure have traditionally been claimed by the Beast, and he did not like it one bit that I initially denied him (last night) so he fought back with increased vigour today. I fought off a first wave by masturbating but it was only a temporary respite. I tried to read a French news magazine, but it has a feature about a female politician I find very attractive, and at one point she compares a certain political relationship to a sexual one. So move on... to an article in the Culture section about an exhibition of vintage 'erotica', complete with explicit illustrations of course - welcome to France!
It was almost comical. Anyway, I got to the point where I was planning my slip, how to get round K9's defences, which of my favourite sites I would visit; only indecision saved me - until I logged in here.
SO and I made love only once during the week, and even then not to orgasm. It didn't help that I had a heavy cold but I don't think that was the whole story. During my initial 15-day recovery attempt, I masturbated 7 or 8 times, but only 4 times in the last 25 days. OK, the weather's turned colder in that time, but Orroz says something about how the body initially interprets the recovery message by damping down the sex drive in general, until the addict can build a whole new authentic sexual relationship with his partner. I think something like that is happening to me, but the sex drive occasionally reasserts itself in mad rushes.
Damn, this is going to be harder than I thought. I didn't really have any trouble at all in getting to 20 days.
petitjean
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I WILL NEVER USE PORNOGRAPHIC MEDIA AGAIN AND I WILL NEVER CHANGE MY MIND
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william1000
Full Member
I can not do everything, but I can do something. I must not fail to do the something that I can do.
Posts: 110
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Post by william1000 on Dec 6, 2007 15:48:03 GMT -5
Hi PetitJean, Keep your spirits up. If you politician is Segolene Royale at least she didn't get elected President. Then you would have had to watch her every day. I don't know who Orroz is but he seems to make some sense. I think my Sex drive has dropped. I am finding this positive as I don't feel like such a pest to my SO. If I was younger this may not have seemed so positive. It probably is that you are cleaning out your system a bit. I think you will reach a certain point where your drive will come back but in a better way. Better channeled to the one you love. I enjoy reading your journal I can almost smell the Croissants. Adieu William
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Post by petitjean on Dec 7, 2007 15:53:41 GMT -5
25 full days porn free, then I slipped today
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William and MrB, I fear your confidence has been misplaced, but I still very much value your support and the accountability factor. Do keep posting when you have a moment. William, I envy your 60+ days clean.
To take up the story from yesterday, logging into this board staved off the Beast long enough for me to get to bed and have a good night's sleep. Unfortunately he was there again in the morning waiting for his breakfast, so I masturbated again which kept him quiet for 2-3 hours. (Twice in two days is very unusual for me, at the grand old age of 51, and it's even 3 times if I include the desperate effort that brought the slip to an end.)
But a picture of a particular girl had got lodged in my brain, and I knew I could find her on a particular site. I tried everything, the Orroz clench, going for a walk round the block in the pouring rain, but it was just too strong... So I uninstalled K9 and off we go.
The silly thing was, I didn't even go back to the site with that girl. (It would have meant a 30-day subscription and that would have been total curtains for recovery.) Instead I bought a 3-day $2.95 trial subscription to a small 'teen' site (already now cancelled) and gorged myself on some new faces, well not just faces, for >5 hours. I also visited some free non-nude 'teen' sites, where the viewer is constantly close to the line of legality. The slip ended with a huge roar of anger to the screen from petitjean.
So what lessons can be learned from this? 1) that the departure of my SO is a really serious trigger; 2) beware of work days at home when I don't have that much work to do (and I didn't manage to complete the little I needed to do!); 3) I need at least one extra prop in my recovery, whether that be a psychotherapist or a live confidant - I've been putting this off; 4) that the hard work is not done after 20 days, no doubt not after 40 either, nor 60 - I have to be vigilant at all times.
Any positives? Well, all traces of the slip have been removed from the computer, the 3-day subscription is cancelled, and K9 is back in place. And I did not return to the hell that is usenet. Out of the last 61 days, I've used porn on only 5 of them, 26 hours in all, only 1.78 percent of the total, which is down on the percentage after my last slip.
So I'm getting there - it's just going to take a hell of a long time.
I'm hope I'm not imagining this, but when I was screaming at the screen I felt a sort of 'click', similar to the one I felt when I knew I'd finally cracked smoking for good (it's more than 7 years since my last cigarette). I'll talk about this in a future post.
But I know I shouldn't take anything for granted. The counter starts again at zero tomorrow. In the meantime...
I WILL NEVER USE PORNOGRAPHIC MEDIA AGAIN, AND I MEAN IT THIS TIME!
petitjean
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