Post by Nick on Sept 21, 2006 0:18:21 GMT -5
100 days clean
As of today, 21 September 2006, I am 100 days free of porn and masturbation. I never thought that I would get to this point. More accurately, I should say that prior to beginning my recovery in early June of this year I never thought that I would feel the need to get to this point. But I did then, and do now, feel strongly the need to recover from porn, sex, masturbation, and fantasy addiction. I am proud, happy, and very grateful to be observing this milestone, and can honestly say that I look forward to pursuing the road of recovery ahead.
I began recovery, as I say, in early June. 11 June was the first day I signed up for this board, though I believe that I visited it as a guest for a few days prior to registering. At that point, on the evening of the 11th, I had gone one week without porn and masturbation. Yet that very night, I "slipped" -- sought comfort again in those bad old habits that I had created for myself over the whole course of my sexual life (I'm 35 years old).
Maybe I felt overwhelmed at the time reading the confessions and testimonials from addicts and their partners. Maybe I had a hard time relating to the struggles, failures, and qualified expressions of hope that are recorded here every day, day after day. Maybe I didn't want to relate to these things, as at the time I still had not entirely gotten my head around the idea that I was not only a child of addicts -- an alcoholic father, a mother with a compulsive shopping addiction -- but an addict in my own right. I know for a fact that I was positively miserable on that day, and for many days and weeks before and (especially) after. Maybe my feelings of desperation and hopelessness contributed to my "slip," as they had so many times in the past. For whatever reason, though, and most likely for all of these reasons and more, I fell back again into those old habits of fantasizing, hunting for porn, watching videos, and masturbating.
The next day, 12 June, I went back on the wagon, so to speak, and lasted only a day before I resorted again to the crutch of porn and masturbation. I remember this night clearly: I masturbated twice in rapid succession, as if nothing could satisfy or console me. In truth, nothing could. During those days, in the moments that I was not entirely numb emotionally, I wanted nothing more than to anesthetize myself with alcohol, with porn. I did not want to feel because I was only capable at the time of feeling pain, grief, and loss. I was a textbook addict, jonesing for that fix, any fix, that would take away my pain.
I think that at this point the nature of my addiction was so plain to me that I simply could not avoid confronting it any longer. I felt as if I could not live without the crutches that I had relied on for so long, but I knew that I could not live with these crutches any longer -- such living would not be life, would be the shadow of a life. I could not, and knew I would not, go on.
So, I stopped. 14 June marked my first full day of sexual sobriety, and I have been sober ever since, making it 100 days today.
How did I do this? What contributed to my success from that point that I was able to resist doing something that I had done almost daily, for years and years, almost without thinking and certainly without hesitation? -- something I believed I could never give up, and indeed didn't even want to give up?
I wish I could say that I stopped because I was strong, because I rose to the noble challenge I had set for myself, because I was in pursuit of some lofty ideal of a better life. I wish I could say that I chose and strode head-long into recovery so as to make myself a better man, a better husband, a better human being.
But I didn't. My reasons for being committed to recovery now are not the same as the reasons I entered into recovery in the first place. Only in hindsight, really, can I see more clearly my motivation for wishing to recover from my addiction.
So what was it? What gave me the strength to abstain from porn and masturbation for the last hundred days and, I hope, for many days and hundreds of days to come?
Fear.
It was fear that motivated my decision to pursue sobriety, and fear that made me commit, however haltingly then and now, to beginning the work of putting my life back in order.
By the time I decided to free myself from an addiction to porn and masturbation, I had been separated from my wife for two weeks. We were (and still are) a newly-married couple. But despite my being madly in love with her -- despite the fact that she is the most beautiful woman I have ever known, let alone been in a relationship with -- I had betrayed her countless times in the course of a very short relationship. I had used porn and masturbated almost daily behind her back -- in the house, in the office, wherever -- and had lied to her face about it. I had called phone chat-lines in her absence, just hoping to masturbate to the sound of another woman's voice. I had participated in a fetish party with men and women I had met on the internet. And I had a drunk bridesmaid at a good friend's wedding spend the night in my hotel room during a period when I was away from my wife for one week. I had told mountains of lies to cover all of this up, had kept secrets from the woman who was supposed to be my best friend and closest confidante, and did my damnedest to ensure that this double-life I was living never saw the light of day. When it did finally emerge into the light -- and it did emerge, over the course of several agonizing months -- I behaved hatefully, cruelly, violently, and at the end indeed criminally toward the woman I loved more than anyone else in the world.
How could I not see that all of this added up to the behaviors of a full-blown addict? Well, I did not, at least not until the day I committed fully and whole-heartedly to recovery. Call it ignorance, blindness, selfishness, heartlessness. Call it a weakness, an illness, the residue of all the shame I had been dragging around my whole life. Call it, I guess, whatever you like. It was, and I was, thoroughly despicable.
Alone, feeling disoriented and in pain, wracked by self-pity, self-reproach, and self-hatred, I realized that I could not go on. I had done irrevocable damage to the person, and the relationship, that meant more to me than anything. I had endangered my wife, made myself as vile a creature as it is possible for a human being to become, and felt all the pain and fear at the prospect of having sacrificed not only her, but myself in the bargain, to a miserable addiction. I had thrown everything away and was terrified of losing still more.
So, as I say, I stopped, and I have been walking -- crawling at first, really, but then walking -- the road of recovery ever since.
I have reconciled with my wife, and we still work on making our relationship as strong as it can possibly be. This process is ongoing, and is not easy, but as hard as it is for me to confront and seek to repair the damage I have done to our relationship it is exponentially more difficult for her. I know that I have much to make up for still. I will need to work harder than I ever thought possible to regain even a fraction of the trust she had in me before. But I am committed wholly to that work, and to maintaining my sobriety today. I can honestly say that I am as committed to doing that work on this, my 100th day clean, as I was on my first, and I feel fairly certain that on my 1000th day clean I will feel exactly the same as I do now: happy to be alive, extraordinarily grateful for the love and support of my wife, grateful for the support of the SLAA fellowship and for that of the men and women of this board.
Recovery, as the 12-step groups remind us, is not a destination, but a process. Because this process is ongoing it follows that recovery is something that must be worked at and re-affirmed daily. "It works if you work it," they say. I look forward to the work ahead.
Nick
As of today, 21 September 2006, I am 100 days free of porn and masturbation. I never thought that I would get to this point. More accurately, I should say that prior to beginning my recovery in early June of this year I never thought that I would feel the need to get to this point. But I did then, and do now, feel strongly the need to recover from porn, sex, masturbation, and fantasy addiction. I am proud, happy, and very grateful to be observing this milestone, and can honestly say that I look forward to pursuing the road of recovery ahead.
I began recovery, as I say, in early June. 11 June was the first day I signed up for this board, though I believe that I visited it as a guest for a few days prior to registering. At that point, on the evening of the 11th, I had gone one week without porn and masturbation. Yet that very night, I "slipped" -- sought comfort again in those bad old habits that I had created for myself over the whole course of my sexual life (I'm 35 years old).
Maybe I felt overwhelmed at the time reading the confessions and testimonials from addicts and their partners. Maybe I had a hard time relating to the struggles, failures, and qualified expressions of hope that are recorded here every day, day after day. Maybe I didn't want to relate to these things, as at the time I still had not entirely gotten my head around the idea that I was not only a child of addicts -- an alcoholic father, a mother with a compulsive shopping addiction -- but an addict in my own right. I know for a fact that I was positively miserable on that day, and for many days and weeks before and (especially) after. Maybe my feelings of desperation and hopelessness contributed to my "slip," as they had so many times in the past. For whatever reason, though, and most likely for all of these reasons and more, I fell back again into those old habits of fantasizing, hunting for porn, watching videos, and masturbating.
The next day, 12 June, I went back on the wagon, so to speak, and lasted only a day before I resorted again to the crutch of porn and masturbation. I remember this night clearly: I masturbated twice in rapid succession, as if nothing could satisfy or console me. In truth, nothing could. During those days, in the moments that I was not entirely numb emotionally, I wanted nothing more than to anesthetize myself with alcohol, with porn. I did not want to feel because I was only capable at the time of feeling pain, grief, and loss. I was a textbook addict, jonesing for that fix, any fix, that would take away my pain.
I think that at this point the nature of my addiction was so plain to me that I simply could not avoid confronting it any longer. I felt as if I could not live without the crutches that I had relied on for so long, but I knew that I could not live with these crutches any longer -- such living would not be life, would be the shadow of a life. I could not, and knew I would not, go on.
So, I stopped. 14 June marked my first full day of sexual sobriety, and I have been sober ever since, making it 100 days today.
How did I do this? What contributed to my success from that point that I was able to resist doing something that I had done almost daily, for years and years, almost without thinking and certainly without hesitation? -- something I believed I could never give up, and indeed didn't even want to give up?
I wish I could say that I stopped because I was strong, because I rose to the noble challenge I had set for myself, because I was in pursuit of some lofty ideal of a better life. I wish I could say that I chose and strode head-long into recovery so as to make myself a better man, a better husband, a better human being.
But I didn't. My reasons for being committed to recovery now are not the same as the reasons I entered into recovery in the first place. Only in hindsight, really, can I see more clearly my motivation for wishing to recover from my addiction.
So what was it? What gave me the strength to abstain from porn and masturbation for the last hundred days and, I hope, for many days and hundreds of days to come?
Fear.
It was fear that motivated my decision to pursue sobriety, and fear that made me commit, however haltingly then and now, to beginning the work of putting my life back in order.
By the time I decided to free myself from an addiction to porn and masturbation, I had been separated from my wife for two weeks. We were (and still are) a newly-married couple. But despite my being madly in love with her -- despite the fact that she is the most beautiful woman I have ever known, let alone been in a relationship with -- I had betrayed her countless times in the course of a very short relationship. I had used porn and masturbated almost daily behind her back -- in the house, in the office, wherever -- and had lied to her face about it. I had called phone chat-lines in her absence, just hoping to masturbate to the sound of another woman's voice. I had participated in a fetish party with men and women I had met on the internet. And I had a drunk bridesmaid at a good friend's wedding spend the night in my hotel room during a period when I was away from my wife for one week. I had told mountains of lies to cover all of this up, had kept secrets from the woman who was supposed to be my best friend and closest confidante, and did my damnedest to ensure that this double-life I was living never saw the light of day. When it did finally emerge into the light -- and it did emerge, over the course of several agonizing months -- I behaved hatefully, cruelly, violently, and at the end indeed criminally toward the woman I loved more than anyone else in the world.
How could I not see that all of this added up to the behaviors of a full-blown addict? Well, I did not, at least not until the day I committed fully and whole-heartedly to recovery. Call it ignorance, blindness, selfishness, heartlessness. Call it a weakness, an illness, the residue of all the shame I had been dragging around my whole life. Call it, I guess, whatever you like. It was, and I was, thoroughly despicable.
Alone, feeling disoriented and in pain, wracked by self-pity, self-reproach, and self-hatred, I realized that I could not go on. I had done irrevocable damage to the person, and the relationship, that meant more to me than anything. I had endangered my wife, made myself as vile a creature as it is possible for a human being to become, and felt all the pain and fear at the prospect of having sacrificed not only her, but myself in the bargain, to a miserable addiction. I had thrown everything away and was terrified of losing still more.
So, as I say, I stopped, and I have been walking -- crawling at first, really, but then walking -- the road of recovery ever since.
I have reconciled with my wife, and we still work on making our relationship as strong as it can possibly be. This process is ongoing, and is not easy, but as hard as it is for me to confront and seek to repair the damage I have done to our relationship it is exponentially more difficult for her. I know that I have much to make up for still. I will need to work harder than I ever thought possible to regain even a fraction of the trust she had in me before. But I am committed wholly to that work, and to maintaining my sobriety today. I can honestly say that I am as committed to doing that work on this, my 100th day clean, as I was on my first, and I feel fairly certain that on my 1000th day clean I will feel exactly the same as I do now: happy to be alive, extraordinarily grateful for the love and support of my wife, grateful for the support of the SLAA fellowship and for that of the men and women of this board.
Recovery, as the 12-step groups remind us, is not a destination, but a process. Because this process is ongoing it follows that recovery is something that must be worked at and re-affirmed daily. "It works if you work it," they say. I look forward to the work ahead.
Nick
