we are heroes - my journal

[jackson]

ok well here goes it. my journal to recovery. i say yes to life, love and happiness. no more questions about 'why me?'. why not me? its time to accept who i am. no shame and no blame. i create the possibility of being honest, loving and totally self expressive.

No porn today.

[jackson]

ok, i am one day free of porn today. however this morning thoughts came into my head. and the questions are already flooding back into my head as how i got myself into this behaviour in the first place. a new relationship which i am embarking on is also bringing up feelings of uncertainty and doubt in my ability to love and be loved. watched 'sex and the city' last night but stopped myself short of watching a particular episode which i thought might be triggering for me. so my plan for today is too look after myself, good food, fresh air and find a yoga class, which incidently i haven't done for about 2 weeks. i will be ok. i will be ok. porn equals death.

[unbreakable]

If you 'think it might be triggering' to you, my experience is it IS and you're struggling to admit it to yourself. I had a really hard time with some of my favourite TV shows and books when I started on a recovery path and whilst it's not as bad today, there are things I still avoid if I can help it. Magazine racks in newsagents which my eye used to linger over, certain TV shows or at least moments within those shows which I stay safe by looking away from when they come up ... there was an odd moment, I think, when i realised I was happy to never have those things in my life ever again, which seemed an oddly insurmountable thing once (I remember thinking, 'but I can't NEVER watch The Sopranos again'. These days I think 'why not?' if it works, it works.)

Good luck jack, stay sober today too

[jackson]

today i have been so in my head its a wonder i have not gone insane. and its not surprising that i turn to porn to escape all that head activity. today i became present to the fact that when i'm looking at porn nothing else exists, i am completely in the here and now. i have no worry or stress about anything, not a care in the world as they say. why do i bother with yoga when i can reach that blank state of mind with porn? lol. this life is insane.

today is my second day without porn, and its been tough. those voices in my head are so clever in their attemp to draw me back in. one particular voice i hear alot is 'you're not really addicted, you're not like them, you can control this, go on, just have a little peek'..this voice is probably the loudest.... i guess one aspect of this 'condition' which im having trouble dealing with is the fact that i've been damaged for life, this thing is in me forever. you can take the boy out of the porn but you can't take the porn out of the boy....lol lol lol.

relationships. i am where i am. i am who i am. remember jack. no blame.

[jackson]

cheers unbreakable,

i am asking myself the question. 'if i never saw 'sex and the city' again would my life be any worse?? you are right. why take that risk of watching it...it's just not worth it.

[unbreakable]

Ohhh that loud voice that says "You're not like them ..." Yeah, I know him. Jeez it is tough and I have to offer this advice, don't get too fixated on it as a disease, addiction, etc. Focus on not doing it any more for the reasons YOU want to stop. Make it a personal battle and it's one you can win.

You know that blank state you talk about when you're watching porn? Is it really like what you can achieve through meditation, or is it closer to what happens when you're drunk? A meditative state is comfortable, safe and can be rewarding. It can settle your mind and relax your body. Whilst porn might feel like it does that temporarily ... well, it wasn't meditation or yoga that brought you here was it?

Keep on, the future is bright, thinking about it as something you have to live with for the rest of your life might not help you, or calling yourself damaged, it's very negative and stuff like that can be self fulfilling; you say it about yourself enough, then when you're vulnerable you justify slipping by saying, well this IS WHO I AM, spitefully and vindicatively.

Try instead to imagine what it WILL feel like to be free of this. THAT IS attainable. I guarantee if you make it a month clean you will feel better. You might not even be able to qauntify it now, because maybe you don't necessarily feel 'bad'. But you WILL feel better.

Good luck today.

[jackson]

no porn today!

cheers unbreakable! its just that sometimes the effort involved in jumping on a yoga mat seems too much. porn, like all drugs i guess, offers you that fast track. perhaps the real issue is laziness. but today i've not been lazy. today i did jump on my yoga mat. and today was a day without porn!

but it was a day full of lust. today i lusted after guys left, right and centre. even the bus driver, poor guy- if only he knew.lol. however today i took step back and tried a diffirent approach. i think i allowed myself to step outside of my body and just observe exactly what i was doing without being too harsh a judge on myself. now i know from the past that when i lust it is a precursor for porn activity. but i stood fast today and rather than worry about what i was doing - i asked myself. well why are you lusting? what's happened in the last 48 hours which has left an emotional scar which in turn has led you to lust. so today, again. i spent the whole day in my head. not as intense as yesterday..but nonetheless in my head. i thought about L, a guy whom i seeing (kinda), i thought about being gay, i thought about being lonely, and i thought about rejection. i also thought about triggers......

surely the real 'devil' is the emotion behind the trigger. not the trigger itself. right now i will not involve myself in the masturbation equals porn debate. why? because i think i know the answer or do i? surely if you take away my right to masturbate, then what else is there in life (lol), can one exist without it??? aaahhh i know...there is loving relationships!!! replace 'self love with with love to another person.... aahh...but being gay, surely we subscribe to a diffirent magazine, if you take away a gay mans sexuality then what is the poor guy left with? doesnt being gay equal sex?

(AND perhaps that where my problem began. no one ever sat me down when i was 13 and said 'NO. being gay equals love!) BEING GAY EQUALS LOVE!!!

. i think sometimes the trick to life is knowing how to live in the 'unknown' to live without knowing the answers......................

i am so glad i found this website and community. i thought for awhile that yoga would cure the porn. but it didn't. yoga is one man on his mat. sometimes you just need an army!

namaste

[unbreakable]

You know what, I see where you're coming from so clearly that I can't believe there is that much difference in you doing this as a gay man and my doing it as a straight man. I don't know when I equated porn with sex, sex with love, food with love, whatever. I shout loud and often about how someone should have sat me down and told me when I was younger (actually a woman I saw for therapy once took me through a process where I would offer advice to my younger self, offer comfort to him etc.) and then maybe I wouldn't be as screwed up as I am now.

I take your point in the way, that maybe for you your loving or sexual feelings have always been 'illicit' to a point and that might make the confusion easier to develop, I suppose.

The masturbation thing is hard to withdraw from. Feels much more like your RIGHT than porn doesn't it. And I still believe there's nothing wrong with it, even though my efforts at remaining sober involve me not masturbating as well. I don't know if that will ever change, I'm constantly scared that I'm turning myself into some kind of sexual anorexic by ignoring very natural impulses.

However, EVERY time I have turned to masturbation in sobriety, even when I hadn't looked at porn for nearly 100 days, the same images flick up in my mind, the same movies rerun and it's not long before I'm watching again.

I'm not saying it's like that for everyone, but it is for me.

I miss masturbating (what an odd thing to say), but I'm clear that if I want to beat this it's another thing it's necessary to leave behind. If I think about it, I'm shocked beyond belief how infrequently (even including all the slips) I've done it since I started recovery in comparison to how often I did before that.

I dont know if any of that helps.
One more day ok?
;D

[jackson]

i wonder how i would live my life today if i knew i was going to die tomorrow? i don't know where that question came from. i am so tired at the moment i can hardly type. it has been a long day. no porn but a significant amount of lust. usually with these feelings i would be planning my assualt on the gay scene but somehow i don't think i am going to find the answers in a shag or one night stand..........and low and behold who should just text me? mr L asking me if i want to hook up tomorrow night. .....to be continued ...right now i need sleep. no mr L and definately no mr P.

[jackson]

well congrats...another day porn free. and to top it all i had a cool conversation with Mr L. i just laid it on the line, apologised for my bull(expletive) and became really honest, told him i liked him and wanted to see him again....i mean what is the worst thing he could have said? 'no' '(expletive) off' as it turns out he said he really liked me but thought i wasnt into him..that surprised me.....but i came away thinking ...(expletive) you really cant trust what goes on in your head sometimes.....what's in your head is your perception not the truth.....

i am determined to become a better listener. i think the truth is not only out there but it is often right under our nose (or should that be ear)

[jackson]

wow...i feel iv'e been on a rollarcoaster ride the last few days...i've been so busy i've not had time to swing a cat! that coupled with those new pictures of david beckham in his underwear, has left me on shakey ground. its weird. and silly. i mean those pics are not even real, he's been airbrushed to death and i swear he has a sock down his pants but still the pics (or should that be pecs?) started to evoke feelings in me and i knew i just had to turn the page. sex is everywhere and i guess it always has been. but it seems even a journey to work has its hazards. who knows whats lurking on page 7 of the Metro.

[unbreakable]

Hey Jackson,

You know what, whilst I can't directly relate obviously, I know exactly what you mean. That pic would be killing me. Actually, similarly framed pictures of female celebrities are ALL OVER the place and earlier in recovery I found them a really hard think to confront. I mean, they're a very, very obvious part of our society, it makes it seem so natural, EVERYONE see's them, EVERYONE ELSE deals with it. I hated that. Because the answer is, yeah, but not everyone else see's it the way YOU SEE IT.

One of the early things I noticed about my behavior was about a shop I go into a lot to buy food. As with most newagents the shelves are peppered with magazines covered by scantily clad, curvaceous women, there are just hundreds of them. Anyway, I digress, what I noticed was this: The shelves in question are behind the counter, there's no reason for me to see them, here I was trying to quit porn and really quit thinking about women in terms of their curves, yet every time I left this shop I turned around and 'copped an eyeful' of as much as I could. When I realised I was doing it I was horrified.

I guess I'm just relating that to you as a 'yeah I know where you're coming from' story. Im not sure if it helps or not, it was always a relief to know I wasn't alone in the early days though.

Keep plugging away, your persistence is admirable, when I first tried I could barely manage a day without slipping. It always helped me to write down some of the reasons I wanted to remain sober and keep repeating them like a mantra. I LOVE the opening post in your journal, got anything more like that?

[jackson]

there's one thing that porn won't take away from me, and that's my sense of humour. but i have been foolish in the sense that over the last few days i've not taken this addiction seriously. last night i slipped. 5 hour binge. in fact it was right after i posted the above journal entry.

i am not perfect and this is what it means to be human. here's what was going on. i'd not taken enough time to relax and had been quite stressed yesterday and the days before. i felt again rejected by Mr L and again i think that rejection was mostly a story in my own head. i began to think that i was in the clear. although i knew the pics of DB where triggering i thought i could handle it. wrong.

i was in tears this morning over how foolish i'd been but actually the longer i punish myself the more likely i am to trigger another relapse. so the blaming myself stops here. thanks to Unbreakable for bringing my mantra back into focus.

i declare the possibility of being honest, loving and totally self expressive. not only to the world and others in my life but also to myself!

no porn today.

[backstabber]

Jackson, the important thing is to keep fighting. I've often thought that all the times I've slipped mean nothing, and that it was a waste of time, and that I am a weak pathetic nobody. Now, I think not. At least I fought! That sure means something. We will succeed sometime! We must!

[jackson]

i feel angry and sad right now. why cant i just log on and have 20 mins of porn, satisfaction, relief? life is so f****d up. i just want someone to hold me and tell me that it will all be ok. that i wont die alone... i will beat this f*****g thing. i will show porn that i can love AND be loved. i will show porn that i am not a failure.....no porn tonight!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!