Post by lifeforce on Dec 12, 2007 15:27:14 GMT -5
This is my first posting. I’ve been lurking for a few days. One of the things I like about this board is a general absence of overt religious content. I’m an atheist, although sometimes I wish I wasn’t because then I could have tried the 12-step thing. Anyway, I’m glad this board exists as it does and I feel for the first time on a discussion list of this issue that maybe I can contribute something that could be useful to other people.
I’m 39 and have a long history with P on the net, starting in 1995 (cue oldtimer’s voice) although I had been a world class self-abuser since age 13. I’m sure if the net had been there when I was that age I’d have been an addict from that time. The addiction gradually gained strength from ’95, when the visual net really arrived, and totally took off in ’98. I hit “rock bottom” in ’02, when I finally admitted to someone other than myself (my therapist) that I was completely off-the-wall out of control. For me "rock-bottom" was 4 or 5 hours a day, although I was never so far gone that I was spending lots of money on it; I've always had the discipline to not overspend money in any area of my life, which is lucky for me indeed.
It took moving in with a woman and having sex problems to drive it home that I had a problem (I had been in a dry patch with women from about ’95 until 2000). I admitted it to her too and for the first time really tried to tackle the issue. [As a side note, I had mixed the P addiction with extensive weed-smoking (I called it “turbocharging the reaction”), but it was MUCH easier to quit smoking dope than it was to stop the big internet P behavior.] Anyway, through a lot of time with my therapist (a social worker, life-coach kind of therapist, done a lot of substance-abuse and sex-abuse counseling), and help from my then-girlfriend (we eventually broke up for unrelated reasons), I managed to get a handle on the issue.
Here is where some on this board may take serious issue or offense, but so be it.
I say I “got a handle” on the P because it’s never completely vanished; I’ll still have a day of binge every 3 or 4 months, but I now do it consciously. One of the major things my therapist taught me is that if do have a breakdown it’s not the end of the world; to treat it as such and beat yourself up over it is really counterproductive. So what, you slipped. Look at it in perspective: you’re not destroying your liver with gin, you’re not fighting a $21 million dollar annual crack habit (as one of my therapist’s stockbroker clients was). You spent a few hours wacking off to P. Don’t blubber about it, just pick yourself up and keep on going. (A sense of humor about the whole situation is also important, I’ve found.) I've never again done it as often as I did during the time I was really having a problem.
The most important thing is that if I *DO* have a bout, it should a conscious decision, and not something I just “slip into” before I know it. Conscious meaning, “next week, on Saturday between noon and 3 pm I will be doing the P.” That’s enough for me to get my fill, remind me of how pointless it is, and, in the end, bore me silly. Because, of course, P *IS* boring, when you come right down to it. We all realize this, I would think, at some point in the midst of a 3 or 4-hour hour day of P, but the more you remember it, the easier it is to control the situation.
I’m now married, my wife knows I had a major problem in the past, and she also knows that we have a great sex life and that I keep perspective on myself and my issues. I keep a filter on my computer, just to be safe (Wisechoice.net, an excellent tool), but I don’t delude myself into thinking that I can completely, for all time, give up the P. But I *CAN* control when and how often it happens, and that’s good enough for me.
I definitely know how it feels to be totally at sea, though. Between ’98 and ’02 I was so completely in that place, enthralled by the big P. The single most important thing is to admit that you’re out of control, and get some help, somewhere, somehow. But at the same time, don’t be meaner than you have to be to yourself. The M part, when considered in isolation, is a normal, healthy behavior. It’s just this demented, magnified internet version of it that’s the abnormal part. I really pity the guys that started doing it from the start, at age 13 or 14. For them, the challenge is that much harder, I would think. At least I had memories of what it was like to be able to integrate M in a normal way in my life. Good luck, dudes. Hang in there.
I’m 39 and have a long history with P on the net, starting in 1995 (cue oldtimer’s voice) although I had been a world class self-abuser since age 13. I’m sure if the net had been there when I was that age I’d have been an addict from that time. The addiction gradually gained strength from ’95, when the visual net really arrived, and totally took off in ’98. I hit “rock bottom” in ’02, when I finally admitted to someone other than myself (my therapist) that I was completely off-the-wall out of control. For me "rock-bottom" was 4 or 5 hours a day, although I was never so far gone that I was spending lots of money on it; I've always had the discipline to not overspend money in any area of my life, which is lucky for me indeed.
It took moving in with a woman and having sex problems to drive it home that I had a problem (I had been in a dry patch with women from about ’95 until 2000). I admitted it to her too and for the first time really tried to tackle the issue. [As a side note, I had mixed the P addiction with extensive weed-smoking (I called it “turbocharging the reaction”), but it was MUCH easier to quit smoking dope than it was to stop the big internet P behavior.] Anyway, through a lot of time with my therapist (a social worker, life-coach kind of therapist, done a lot of substance-abuse and sex-abuse counseling), and help from my then-girlfriend (we eventually broke up for unrelated reasons), I managed to get a handle on the issue.
Here is where some on this board may take serious issue or offense, but so be it.
I say I “got a handle” on the P because it’s never completely vanished; I’ll still have a day of binge every 3 or 4 months, but I now do it consciously. One of the major things my therapist taught me is that if do have a breakdown it’s not the end of the world; to treat it as such and beat yourself up over it is really counterproductive. So what, you slipped. Look at it in perspective: you’re not destroying your liver with gin, you’re not fighting a $21 million dollar annual crack habit (as one of my therapist’s stockbroker clients was). You spent a few hours wacking off to P. Don’t blubber about it, just pick yourself up and keep on going. (A sense of humor about the whole situation is also important, I’ve found.) I've never again done it as often as I did during the time I was really having a problem.
The most important thing is that if I *DO* have a bout, it should a conscious decision, and not something I just “slip into” before I know it. Conscious meaning, “next week, on Saturday between noon and 3 pm I will be doing the P.” That’s enough for me to get my fill, remind me of how pointless it is, and, in the end, bore me silly. Because, of course, P *IS* boring, when you come right down to it. We all realize this, I would think, at some point in the midst of a 3 or 4-hour hour day of P, but the more you remember it, the easier it is to control the situation.
I’m now married, my wife knows I had a major problem in the past, and she also knows that we have a great sex life and that I keep perspective on myself and my issues. I keep a filter on my computer, just to be safe (Wisechoice.net, an excellent tool), but I don’t delude myself into thinking that I can completely, for all time, give up the P. But I *CAN* control when and how often it happens, and that’s good enough for me.
I definitely know how it feels to be totally at sea, though. Between ’98 and ’02 I was so completely in that place, enthralled by the big P. The single most important thing is to admit that you’re out of control, and get some help, somewhere, somehow. But at the same time, don’t be meaner than you have to be to yourself. The M part, when considered in isolation, is a normal, healthy behavior. It’s just this demented, magnified internet version of it that’s the abnormal part. I really pity the guys that started doing it from the start, at age 13 or 14. For them, the challenge is that much harder, I would think. At least I had memories of what it was like to be able to integrate M in a normal way in my life. Good luck, dudes. Hang in there.