JD,

Well you've got a great attitude and I'm sure the process will surround you with whomever you need to continue in recovery.

I will say this is more of a discussion site, not everyone subscribes to the same formula of recovery, for instance I'm a 12 step guy and another influential person in this group hasn't even read them but has been sexually sober for a long time.

My suggestion is consistency, even if you relapse or aren't doing well, pay attention to this illness daily, and just keep participating even when struggling.

The constant application of need and desire to be rid of sexually crippling problems, that pull life away from genuine sexual rewards and real freedom.

Persistence, perseverance, tons of humility, lots of self searching and going against the grain, sometimes complete disregard of societies quo or influence, complete focus on the possibilities of God, it all is great to get a handle on. Another hurdle I see most struggle with is they feel they have "heard that before", but what the illness wants you to think is that you know it all, so we can never hear the solution enough, when the problem is relentless and unmerciful so many hours of the day.

Patience will be required if you do participate on this site, for instance this particular group is a mix of porn and sex addicts and then spouses of porn or sex addicts, who both comment in topic posts, and that can cause conflict and misunderstanding, so it is wise to regard those affected by our illness if they are offended or angered by our posts, and never include retaliation if a spouse of a porn or sex addict has a difference with you.

For instance a got a suggestion from a spouse who was not an addict once that I acted on and it was the complete opposite of what God wanted me to do. I saw with God's help and understanding, I angered her with something I said and her own harm from her spouses acting out was really the base of the suggestion.

Take some time to build up a routine, and have a purpose here. My purpose is to vent and express often, because I rarely am able to do so in my daily routine, actually there is no room for complaining or venting in my daily deeds. So I take advantage of DS, with the understanding of their policy I be as "nice as possible" (which can be difficult for me when venting or expressing) as a place to channel frustration with the hope I get some good correspondence in return, that sometimes isn't what I wanted to hear, but what I absolutely needed to hear to grow and treat others better.

Have a great day.

Jd,

As someone who has been sober for five years, I can tell you that this particular addiction is difficult to overcome but not impossible.

I could tell give you gazillion of things you can do but I would rather give you the root of your addictive cycle, in a nutshell it has everything to do with your thought life and how you perceive yourself and the world around you.

So given those variables, I will leave you with these quotes to get you on your way, trust me if I had had these pointers I would have eradicated it a long time ago:

1) If you become what you think about, and you are thinking about what is wrong with the world, how angry, ashamed and fearful you are, it stands to reason that you will act on those thoughts and become what you are thinking about - Wayne Dyer

2) When you change the way you think about things, the things you think about change - Wayne Dyer

3) My own: There is nothing that you need to complete you, you are already whole and complete. Once you understand this principle, the addictive voice will have nothing to say to you because you already know nothing out there can possible fill a part of you that has always been filled. The only issue was that you did not know that because the addictive voice kept lying to you about it.

I found that we make life harder than it has to be, we enter a recovery program and find it overwhelming because we now have to deal with emotions that we kept avoiding out of fear which is 21 things and they are :

FEAR: Face Everything and Recover
FEAR: Failure Expected And Received
FEAR: False Emotions Appearing Real
FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real
FEAR: False Evidence Appears Real
FEAR: False Expectations Appearing Real
FEAR: Feeling Everything's Awful Real
FEAR: Feelings Every Addict Rejects
FEAR: Feelings Expressed Allows Relief
FEAR: Fighting Ego Against Reality
FEAR: Forever Escaping And Retreating
FEAR: Forgetting Everything's All Right
FEAR: Frantic Effort to Appear Real
FEAR: Frantic Efforts to Appear Recovered
FEAR: Frustration, Ego, Anxiety, Resentment

As we can see all of these responses not only are unhealthy but also prolong suffering during recovery I discovered that while pain is real, suffering is optional. That insight alone helped me find healthy ways to deal with triggers, stress and the occasional crisis. Why because if I did not need to suffer, why would I engage in behaviors that would cause suffering and acting out was one of them. Sure, at first glance acting out was the solution but the aftermath was not worth the endless torture and not to mention that it would have thrown me back and undo all the work I had already done to get better.

The goal here is not only to recover but to be better than we used to be, to grow and learn about ourselves. But most important, to seek healthy ways to live our lives.

Once we taste freedom for a while, say for 6 months, going back to unhealthy behaviors would be insane. And if we do, we need to ask ourselves if we still consider the addictive behavior more important than healing from it. We would need to examine ourselves completely and find what it is that is keeping us stuck and I would bet dollars to donuts that is has been our own distorted thought life that is keeping us there and our unwillingness to change because as we know, "Better the devil you know, than the one you do not know" even if that devil is stealing our lives from us and we are allowing it to happen.

Hope this helps,
Wolf

welcome i hope you can get the support you need to continue on your recovery journey...my advice is to take what is helpful, leave the rest behind, listen with an open heart to those that have sobriety within their recovery and be careful of the advice from those that do not. I hope you can find what you need..

JD,

If you're committed to recovery and willing to have God guide the process no amount of information will misinform us, the positive aspect of recovery is even bad information or those "who don't have" recovery can still provide helpful information to learn from.

Some times your biggest assets are the biggest liabilities. Just be as real and honest as possible, it not only will set you free but it will weed out the haters and the manipulators in the process.

If you want it, you'll get it, and it might not be how you imagined, but it will come, if you honestly need it.

One thing also is in recovery we admit our defects and faults, and it has been suggested to me in the past that I use I or we statements instead of "you" statements, so sorry about that and I'll focus on continuing that change if future provisions are necessary.

JD, Welcome. Just wondering, why are you no longer in therapy? Do you not need it, was it not working, was it too expensive or time consuming, etc.? Also, are you still struggling after 2-1/2 years, or is it pretty manageable at this point?

Thank you everyone for the welcomes and comments. I am currently in control of my addiction. However, I know that slipping back into that world would be easy.

When porn consumed my life, I eventually started acting out and doing more and more high risk things. I eventually landed myself in jail, then on probation. The therapy was court ordered. I was resistant to the therapy at first, but eventually accepted that it was needed. Once I completed the requirements of the therapy, I was released. Now that I have learned more about my past and my personal triggers and how to address them, I know that a support group is one of the many things I need in my life to stay sober. I personally also need to keep God at the forefront of my life, attend church regularly, and have a trusted accountability partner to help keep me in line.

The last thing I want to do is become complacent and start thinking the addiction is gone and I can forget about it. If I did that, I know thats when I would allow myself to slip. The addiction will never go away. Like an alcohol addiction, I cannot allow myself to think that it will be ok if I just have "one drink". I have to remind myself daily if where I was and where I am now. And where I am now is definitely a better place to be.