Post by eljefemaz on Dec 27, 2006 14:49:10 GMT -5
Greets, Everyone:
In an effort to give myself more tools in my fight, I start this journal.
My recovery started on June 12th, and I came to this board June 14th. Here we are, at December 27th, which means I have been at this over six months now.
Where to start, where to start...I am 38 years old, a husband, a father, a Christian Witness of Jehovah. What has truly struck me about his board is how many different faiths/beliefs are afflicted by this scourge. Mine is no different.
How I came to this recovery starts back when I was a little boy maybe five years old, sneaking peeks into the Playboy stash of a neighborhood kid's dad. Through my ostensibly innocent youth, this fascination with those images would come up when the opportunity presented itself. Maybe it was the friend's grandfather that had a stash we could get into, maybe it was stealing a mag from the local drugstore.
With the teenage years, then MB came into the picture. I would periodically have my own stash of P mags for fuel, and other times I would have just the memories. I must have MB'd every day.
Even back then, my faith did have information about how MB and P were things unclean and to be avoided. That information urged confiding in someone trusted for help in overcoming the habit, but my shame meant I kept it secret. I was caught my my Mom one time, but she and my Dad didn't really check up on me, so I my habit continued. I always felt guilty about doing it, but I still did it.
As I grew into my late teens and twenties, I stopped having a stash, but by then you had P channels on cable. Of course, we didn't subscribe, but you could still see stuff. Or there was the trip to the video store for a movie. I now think about just how pathetic that was.
At times, I would be clear for a month or two, maybe even three, but then I would be back at it. I confided in my best friend, but I was back at it. I confided in my dad, but he didn't follow up with me, and I was back at it.
At 25, I moved out of my parent's house. My first roommate was a good guy, and I was clean for a bit - another three month period - but then he brought home a PC. The world of 36.6K internet opened up. I could only indulge if he was on a trip, and the content, though on the soft side, was enough.
When he got married, I got my own place with a roommate. At first, I didn't have have a computer - I knew what the internet did to me, and I wanted to avoid it. Hurray, a clean period. But then I got my own PC, and I was using Juno for e-mail. DSL came on the market, and I was hooked up. The P flowed. Finally, I got a filter, and I had someone else set the password. Of course, I could still get some stuff through.
I bought my current place, and I was living alone for the first year. A new PC meant no filter, and I got sucked into the world of live-cams. I must have spent a grand on that site. One incident finally moved me to talk to my elders. Due to the nature of what I was doing, I faced some discipline, but they gave me good council. I got a new filter, and had a trusted friend set the password on the computer and my dish receiver. I e-mailed that site requesting a permanent block, and they honored my request.
Yet, again, I got sucked back in. I made my first attempt to unplug by getting rid of DSL and tossing any modem I had. Hurray, another P free period, but MB would sneak in at times. I had a couple of cycles of buying a modem and getting hooked up only to cancel access and throw away the modem.
Well, after my engagement to my wife four years ago, I was laid off. I once again got a modem so I could use the web for job searching. Once again, I could get some P through. Once we were married, DSL came back into the house. Another new PC build and another period with no filter.
Three months into our marriage, I was once again locked into P and MB. My conscience screamed, and I had my first talk with her about my problem. Shocked as she was, she worked with me. We got a filter, and she set the filter. Of course, this filter had it's holes, and I could still find sites. But I didn't tell her of my slips; rather, when she would open up the filter for me to get onto, say, an airline's site, I would clandestinely put a URL into the block list.
However, since there is always another site, I would be able to find something, which brings us up to me coming to this site and my post of today.
Sorry for the long initial post - it is just the first time I have ever put this all down, and it has poured out of me like a flash flood.
In an effort to give myself more tools in my fight, I start this journal.
My recovery started on June 12th, and I came to this board June 14th. Here we are, at December 27th, which means I have been at this over six months now.
Where to start, where to start...I am 38 years old, a husband, a father, a Christian Witness of Jehovah. What has truly struck me about his board is how many different faiths/beliefs are afflicted by this scourge. Mine is no different.
How I came to this recovery starts back when I was a little boy maybe five years old, sneaking peeks into the Playboy stash of a neighborhood kid's dad. Through my ostensibly innocent youth, this fascination with those images would come up when the opportunity presented itself. Maybe it was the friend's grandfather that had a stash we could get into, maybe it was stealing a mag from the local drugstore.
With the teenage years, then MB came into the picture. I would periodically have my own stash of P mags for fuel, and other times I would have just the memories. I must have MB'd every day.
Even back then, my faith did have information about how MB and P were things unclean and to be avoided. That information urged confiding in someone trusted for help in overcoming the habit, but my shame meant I kept it secret. I was caught my my Mom one time, but she and my Dad didn't really check up on me, so I my habit continued. I always felt guilty about doing it, but I still did it.
As I grew into my late teens and twenties, I stopped having a stash, but by then you had P channels on cable. Of course, we didn't subscribe, but you could still see stuff. Or there was the trip to the video store for a movie. I now think about just how pathetic that was.
At times, I would be clear for a month or two, maybe even three, but then I would be back at it. I confided in my best friend, but I was back at it. I confided in my dad, but he didn't follow up with me, and I was back at it.
At 25, I moved out of my parent's house. My first roommate was a good guy, and I was clean for a bit - another three month period - but then he brought home a PC. The world of 36.6K internet opened up. I could only indulge if he was on a trip, and the content, though on the soft side, was enough.
When he got married, I got my own place with a roommate. At first, I didn't have have a computer - I knew what the internet did to me, and I wanted to avoid it. Hurray, a clean period. But then I got my own PC, and I was using Juno for e-mail. DSL came on the market, and I was hooked up. The P flowed. Finally, I got a filter, and I had someone else set the password. Of course, I could still get some stuff through.
I bought my current place, and I was living alone for the first year. A new PC meant no filter, and I got sucked into the world of live-cams. I must have spent a grand on that site. One incident finally moved me to talk to my elders. Due to the nature of what I was doing, I faced some discipline, but they gave me good council. I got a new filter, and had a trusted friend set the password on the computer and my dish receiver. I e-mailed that site requesting a permanent block, and they honored my request.
Yet, again, I got sucked back in. I made my first attempt to unplug by getting rid of DSL and tossing any modem I had. Hurray, another P free period, but MB would sneak in at times. I had a couple of cycles of buying a modem and getting hooked up only to cancel access and throw away the modem.
Well, after my engagement to my wife four years ago, I was laid off. I once again got a modem so I could use the web for job searching. Once again, I could get some P through. Once we were married, DSL came back into the house. Another new PC build and another period with no filter.
Three months into our marriage, I was once again locked into P and MB. My conscience screamed, and I had my first talk with her about my problem. Shocked as she was, she worked with me. We got a filter, and she set the filter. Of course, this filter had it's holes, and I could still find sites. But I didn't tell her of my slips; rather, when she would open up the filter for me to get onto, say, an airline's site, I would clandestinely put a URL into the block list.
However, since there is always another site, I would be able to find something, which brings us up to me coming to this site and my post of today.
Sorry for the long initial post - it is just the first time I have ever put this all down, and it has poured out of me like a flash flood.
