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Post by BlackSpiral on Apr 16, 2006 3:06:08 GMT -5
This is pretty much just a tradition for me now; every time I've crossed a six-month mark, I've posted something out on the board to note it. A few days ago, I crossed a new mark - I'm now 30 months sober - and so, here I am, posting again.
30 months sober! Hoorah! For me, I know that when I joined the board, at around 40 days sober, seeing that other people had managed to be sober for longer than me was encouraging; and at the same time, almost daunting. I was still struggling to come to terms with the idea of being sober for a long time; the idea that I'd never return to my addiction was alien. It had become such a large part of my life, so ingrained, that it was actually impossible for me to imagine that I'd never return to it. It seemed impossible; a fake dream. It didn't seem pleasant, either; I'd developed a dependency on it, and it seemed comforting.
Further, sobriety from porn was something that I'd actually associated with negatives; people who didn't like this stuff were dull conservatives. Boring, closed-minded people who I wouldn't like. Victorian, stiff, cold. I'd built up these negatives that fit the group, and to be trying to join that group was very weird indeed for me. Those first two or three months were the hardest time for me; I had the worst emotional withdrawals, I felt the worst cravings, and I had the most doubts about what I was doing - whether it was right, whether I could succeed, whether I even wanted to succeed.
Step forward to four or five months sober, and everything had changed.
It's strange to look back and realise how many of my perceptions were purely driven by my desire to stay within my addiction; excuses that empowered my own behaviour, and justifications that allowed me to feel okay about it. Others were born out of naive concepts, perceptions of the behaviour that were either incomplete or - just as often - deliberate constructs of the industry, which had encouraged me to believe in a certain way. After a few months spent sober, a few months spent looking back at my own life, my own experiences and really examining what had happened, my beliefs had turned around. I no longer thought that sobriety for life was the impossible dream, and the idea of being without it for the rest of my life no longer seemed so strange. I no longer felt the urge to return to the addiction, and I was no longer constantly fighting, constantly struggling.
Emotionally, too, I felt calmer and more settled than I had in as long as I could remember. I was living, thinking and behaving all in line with what I believed; and in that, there was a great amount of peace. I could look in the mirror in the morning and like the man looking back; I could go to work each day and not worry that I would do something I would regret; I could go to bed at night, and feel comfortable with who I was.
It wasn't battle over, of course; I still watched myself, watched my thinking, watched my behaviour, and still considered what I needed to do to keep moving forward, healing the scars and damage of my addiction, to keep taking steps toward being who I really wanted to be. And I still had struggles from time to time. But the struggles were less often than they had been. They were far easier to deal with than they had been in those first months. And I no longer had any doubts that I was doing what I wanted to do, what I should do, or that I could do it. And every day, as I kept moving forward, my struggles and doubts grew less, and my conviction and confidence grew stronger.
Today, I don't doubt that I can stay sober. At the same time, I know enough to understand that the burden of sobriety still rests on my shoulders; and that at any time, I have the capacity to throw it away. But even the idea of that doesn't have any appeal to me anymore. There's too much to lose, too much pain to go through and too little to gain by going that way. Sobriety and recovery have become the well-trodden paths for me, the easy way; just as the addiction was, back when I began the journey.
Two and a half years down, a lifetime to go. And with the path now so well walked, it doesn't seem daunting at all.
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Post by tayder on Apr 16, 2006 7:34:59 GMT -5
BlackSpiral - thank you for what I interpret as this tremendous message of hope!
I'm following! Far behind, but following...
One day at a time
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rex7
Junior Member
Posts: 76
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Post by rex7 on Apr 16, 2006 10:43:26 GMT -5
Thanks-
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Post by ScaredamI on Apr 16, 2006 15:07:35 GMT -5
blackSpiral...thanks for your inspirational post. You are proof that this addiction is beatable... we can trudge through this... and we will!
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bacchus
Full Member
Clean since October 4, 2006
Posts: 105
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Post by bacchus on Apr 16, 2006 15:50:58 GMT -5
Many thanks, blackspiral, for your witness. I am in the earliest stages of recovery and need to hear what it can be like far down the road, and I hear it in your message. An incredible inspiration and goal. Warm wishes for your continued sobriety.
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Post by abel on Apr 16, 2006 17:15:42 GMT -5
Toasting your sobriety (with peach tea). Keep spiraling out.
Abel
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alex_is
New Member
I'm sorry for my unperfect English - it's not my native language.
Posts: 16
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Post by alex_is on Apr 16, 2006 17:47:10 GMT -5
In your post I have found answers for so many questions. Thank you for sharing us with your thoughts.
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Post by zimminy on Apr 16, 2006 17:55:50 GMT -5
Blackspiral,
Excellent post. Definitely something that I will print and read every time I need inspiration. It's funny, on the occasions where I have fallen I just kick myself when I realize that again for the hundredth time it was so NOT WORTH IT! The feeling and the peace you get by staying away from p@rn is a thousand times better than the empty, NEVER satisfying feeling that you have when you give in to it.
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cbgator
New Member
Not yeserday, not today.
Posts: 30
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Post by cbgator on Apr 16, 2006 20:38:28 GMT -5
Lots of new folks thinking the same thing as me-- what an inspiration. Thanks for the time it took to write that.
See you again in six months. Hopefully I will be joining you then!
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Post by BlackSpiral on Apr 17, 2006 0:42:59 GMT -5
Tayder - far behind, maybe, but clearly moving in the right direction to judge by the date you have marked! And don't make the mistake of judging recovery in days. The first six months of my recovery, and the first three of those especially, were the toughest and longest journey I made within myself. You're already past the first month, so just keep walking!
And Abel - peach tea, of all things? :-) I've never tried fruit tea. Maybe I'll try it someday...
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Post by witness on Apr 17, 2006 9:13:31 GMT -5
I wish that more of the veterans would pop in here and tell us of their long term success and how satisfying it is. There is too much bad news on this board. We could all stand a good cup of HOPE!
I am far behind you as well, but have experienced some of the same things. I can see the light and believe that this ugly beast will be conquered. I believe the worst is behind me and that day by day I am plodding the path to freedom.
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Post by suedehead on Apr 17, 2006 12:00:02 GMT -5
Yes, a toast: To a recovery path well trodden! Thank you, Blackspiral.
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Post by Someguy on Apr 17, 2006 16:00:19 GMT -5
What I want to know is what happens after the withdrawals leave? What are your struggles now? Beating this is not just about getting away from the porn...it is about healing the incomplete parts inside which were the motivating factors for the addiction in the first place.
I am not try to crap on your sobriety by the way. You know that I look up to you. This has always been on my mind though. When does the real pain start to heal? Will walking this path ever make me feel whole, or will it just heal this problem? How was it for you? Did you have deeper wounds inside? When did those start to heal? Did healing those change you? Can those types of wounds be healed? Once those wounds are mended does the addiction become even weaker? Does life get "normal?" That's the big one for me....will life ever be like it is for the "normal" people?
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Post by abel on Apr 17, 2006 18:24:09 GMT -5
And Abel - peach tea, of all things? :-) I've never tried fruit tea. Maybe I'll try it someday... OK, but if you get addicted to it, don't blame me! Seriously, I am so glad to hear of your success. It gives me a lot of hope. Abel
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Post by BlackSpiral on Apr 17, 2006 19:15:37 GMT -5
I suppose that depends partly on what you mean by "normal" people. I'm largely inclined to believe that the concept itself is actually a myth. Usually, when you really get to know people, you discover all the struggles and problems they have, the ones that they keep concealed and that most people don't know. Because people don't generally reveal all the struggles and issues they have, it's easy to fall into the belief that they don't have them. And sometimes, people will have problems and issues and don't even realise it; they'll waste their lives away in pointless or wasteful behaviour, and never even realise they're doing it.
Normal is a myth; and as I've said before, I also believe it to be overrated. Not one single person I ever looked up to in my life is someone I'd choose to describe as normal, and so I take a small amount of pride in not fitting the perceived model of what that should be. I am myself, and that is enough.
As I've written before, recovery is the vital end to this process. Without it, sobriety ends up being just a process of white knuckling, or sliding from addiction to addiction. If the motives to act out aren't addressed, if the reasons why we acted out aren't dealt with, then we'll end up either tumbling back in, sliding into another addiction, or just as badly, end up sober and dysfunctional - the AA's term for that is the "dry drunk", someone who's gotten sober, but who still has all the emotional dysfunction that they had before they did.
Like the addiction, the pain underneath needs to be picked out deliberately, and healed deliberately. It's not something that will heal itself; but sobriety is important to it. As CV's written before, you have to feel it to heal it; and part of that is that if you keep burying the pain, you deny yourself the chance to examine it, to understand it. Pain is a greatly misunderstood animal, especially by those of us who run from it and bury it. Rather than being the great downside to life, it's like a beacon or a compass; a guide, a map that can help show us what we need to do in order to become happy within our lives. It highlights the parts of our life that are lacking or damaged, and through doing so, shows us what we need to tackle.
Working out how to tackle it isn't always so easy, of course. For some, the pains that drive their addiction may be simple to address; or some of them may be, at least. Others may be more complex, with deeper or stronger roots; and others still may have roots that are buried so deep that it's hard to see them at all. What those pains are will ultimately determine how they need to be addressed; for me, most of the pains that I needed to deal with were essentially a mixture of issues, beliefs and doubts I held, which had suspect or flawed roots. They had crippled my perception of myself, of the world, and of many other things too; and coming to terms with them was very important for me. I had to take each one in turn, break it down, examine it, turn it on its head and rebuild myself from the bottom up.
One thing I realised as I progressed was that, once I had established sobriety, the addiction was simply the symptom of what was underneath; and as I worked through, I found that what I had discovered wasn't just a means to rid myself of the addiction, but also a means to help myself to change in other ways, to deal with the other issues I'd had in my life that had caused me to fall short of what I wanted to achieve or be. It was about growth, in far more ways than I had anticipated when I first set out to simply rid myself of the addiction.
That's why, in some ways, I'm almost glad to have gone through this. While I might wish I hadn't gone through some of the things I did, it was through them that I really discovered myself and found what I needed to do to achieve what I want to achieve in my life; to become who I want to be. My past may contain things that I regret, dislike or despise, but ultimately, all of that led me to be where I am now; and I am very glad to be there. Some of the worst things that have happened in my life have ended up giving me the most strength, wisdom and insight into myself.
With your other questions - what are my struggles now? Well, the struggles have always changed, I think. At one month, it was to stay sober. At two, it was to change behaviour that I regarded as related to my addiction; at three, it was to healthily handle the things that most often had caused me to struggle and fail, and which had created the most turmoil and upset in my life even beyond the addiction. Most of those were old beliefs about myself and the world, doubts in myself, and things I had learned from people who I naively trusted at the time, but now recognised as untrustworthy, deceitful or otherwise unsound. By four or five, it was to start to build myself into someone else; and at six, it was to cope with complacency and accept that I still had work to do.
Beyond that, I had other things to heal. Scars, mostly; old thoughts, old memories and old beliefs that I had forgotten would sometimes suddenly come up, and I would have to sit down, examine them, turn them upside down and rebuild just as I had before. Sometimes, I would find myself dealing with resentments or pains I hadn't acknowledged, and that some of those were rolling over into other areas of my life; causing damage to my relationship. When that would happen, my challenge then was to find how to best address those resentments and pains, and to reverse it so that I could strengthen and heal my relationship, rather than damaging or weakening it.
In the end, the struggles I have are not so much to do with the addiction as life in general; my recovery has become about leading a happy, healthy life, and so my struggles tend to be far more related to achieving that than anything that would necessarily fit in neatly on the board. One of the struggles, for example, was to do with missing people I used to live near, my friends and family; and I had to think about that for a while to come to terms with many things that had changed, and the realities of my life and situation - rather than the exaggerated version that had sometimes crossed my mind, riddled with negative absolutes - in order to become comfortable and happy about where I was in regard to that. It's not related to the addiction; but it is a part of what I'd consider to be my recovery. By now, I suppose, my recovery would be better described as a journey of emotional growth and development.
In the end...I feel whole today, and I know I'm moving in a direction that makes me feel good about myself, my life and my future. Inside, the deeper wounds have healed; not by magic, but because I took each wound in turn, examined it, and dealt with whatever was preventing the wound from being able to close. With the addiction...yes, it does definitely get weaker with the healing of these wounds, or at least it did for me. The healing of the wounds meant that I had addressed the cause for the acting out in the first place, which meant that I rarely felt any kind of compulsion to return to my old behaviour.
I still find new wounds from time to time; some from recent events, others I simply hadn't recalled; but they are fewer and further between as time goes by. And just as importantly, because I have worked to respond to the wounds by trying to heal them, rather than trying to bury them, even the new wounds don't make me feel like I want to return to my addiction. My natural, instinctive response is to find a way to heal the pain instead. I'm no longer trying to run and hide; insetad, I'm trying to heal, to be healthy.
Will life ever be like it is for "normal" people? Well, truth to tell, I believe it can be better. We can find peace, certainly; and I think that by going through this, we may be able to gain an insight into ourselves that many people never have. By dealing with what lies at the heart of our problems, we have a chance to move beyond them; and while many people may not have to face the same intensity of an addiction, they have their own hurts and problems in the past that may impact or limit their lives in ways that they never understand. Because we have come to this place, and suffered so much because of it, in a way we are offered a chance to reach higher than that; to climb to a place in life that in a world dominated by superficiality and commercialism, most people simply never reach.
Life can be very, very good indeed. Perhaps not normal - but certainly better than.
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