Sex / Pornography Addiction Support Group
Sexual addiction, also sometimes called sexual compulsion, is a form of psychological addiction to sexual intercourse and other sexual behavior.
Hi all,
*****
Warning, wall of text
TL;DR: Hi. I'm 6 days sober. Thanks everybody.
*****
I've been lurking for the past week since I found this group. First and foremost, I wanted to say thank you to all the active posters for creating an environment where people can post their thoughts and progress free of judgement (minus the occasional impostor apparently). I've been sober for almost a week thanks to this group.
I'd rather classify my use of pornography as a habit or hobby, rather than an addiction, but only because it hasn't affected my life yet. And that's a big "yet." Reading a lot of your posts helped me realize that I was headed down a path that would be not so great for me in the long run, so I decided the best way to deal with this before it gets out of hand is to become an active member of a support group. I figure this forum will give me a place to share my thoughts and keep myself accountable. Without anyone to discuss this problem with, I didn't really have large enough motivation address a problem that no one else knew about.
I've noticed that a lot of people's addiction stems from trauma of some sort. I spent last week really thinking about my own triggers. Oddly enough, my usage developed out of boredom. I always have to be doing something. Usually, when I'm not working, I'm playing video games, thinking about Magic cards, or viewing porn. That's where this site has helped big time. Over the last week, whenever I had the urge to view porn, I fired of my incognito browser window, but instead of going to a porn site I would redirect myself to this forum and read through posts. It was a great way to really redirect my urge.
I'm also into collecting things, like movies and video games. I got a kick out of slowly building a pornography collection. I would check almost everyday to see what new videos had come out. Over the past few days that's really been the thing that I've been struggling with. There's this sense of "Oh no, there are videos that have come out that you need to add to your collection."
Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for being helpful (even if you didn't know you were being helpful) and to share a little bit about myself. I'm excited to say that tomorrow will be my seventh day sober and that this stretch has been the longest in a long time. (Grrrrrrr, I hate redundancy but I couldn't think of anything better.)
*****
Warning, wall of text
TL;DR: Hi. I'm 6 days sober. Thanks everybody.
*****
I've been lurking for the past week since I found this group. First and foremost, I wanted to say thank you to all the active posters for creating an environment where people can post their thoughts and progress free of judgement (minus the occasional impostor apparently). I've been sober for almost a week thanks to this group.
I'd rather classify my use of pornography as a habit or hobby, rather than an addiction, but only because it hasn't affected my life yet. And that's a big "yet." Reading a lot of your posts helped me realize that I was headed down a path that would be not so great for me in the long run, so I decided the best way to deal with this before it gets out of hand is to become an active member of a support group. I figure this forum will give me a place to share my thoughts and keep myself accountable. Without anyone to discuss this problem with, I didn't really have large enough motivation address a problem that no one else knew about.
I've noticed that a lot of people's addiction stems from trauma of some sort. I spent last week really thinking about my own triggers. Oddly enough, my usage developed out of boredom. I always have to be doing something. Usually, when I'm not working, I'm playing video games, thinking about Magic cards, or viewing porn. That's where this site has helped big time. Over the last week, whenever I had the urge to view porn, I fired of my incognito browser window, but instead of going to a porn site I would redirect myself to this forum and read through posts. It was a great way to really redirect my urge.
I'm also into collecting things, like movies and video games. I got a kick out of slowly building a pornography collection. I would check almost everyday to see what new videos had come out. Over the past few days that's really been the thing that I've been struggling with. There's this sense of "Oh no, there are videos that have come out that you need to add to your collection."
Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for being helpful (even if you didn't know you were being helpful) and to share a little bit about myself. I'm excited to say that tomorrow will be my seventh day sober and that this stretch has been the longest in a long time. (Grrrrrrr, I hate redundancy but I couldn't think of anything better.)
7 days sober is awesome! keep it up!
Getting drunk once a month doesn't make you an alcoholic. It makes you a college student. Now getting drunk at breakfast every morning, THAT makes you an alcoholic.
When you start calling in sick to work because you want to watch pornhub for 14 hours, THAT is an addiction. Watching it for 15 minutes a week? NOT an addiction. And there's a lot of space between the two.
Boredom is a very real trigger for addicts. The way to avoid becoming one is that when you're triggered have a LOT of ways to deal with it, not just one.
I don't want you to swear off porn, and then in a year realize you became addicted to MAGIC THE GATHERING collecting, and be 20 grand it debt on ebay for buying 12 mint condition copies of every card ever made. Make sense?
Get a lot of hobbies and spread your time evenly, is my advice.
Spreading out hobbies seems like a good idea. Luckily, I don't see spending myself into debt over MtG any time soon. Despite the amount of time that I spend thinking about it, I rarely go out and buy any cards. Things that I do know that I need to be aware of is being distracted during work. In the past, there had been days where I wasn't nearly 100% productive because I was thinking about MtG or video games. I also want to make sure those two hobbies don't completely take over my life (spending money or not). There was a period of time about two years ago where I had hit a low point, so every night I would just shut down emotionally and play video games for 2-3 hours straight.
In any case, still sober and feeling great.
2. i really liked a line in Richard reply which is
"Get a lot of hobbies and spread your time evenly"
it's really wonderful and it stuck in my head very much.
keep it up, stay strong, fight your brain, be more productive and get a lot of hobbies.
i am still staying sober, no signs of cravings didn't appear yet, but I AM READY FOR THEM AND I WILL FIGHT THIS WAR ON MY BRAIN TILL DEATH !!
THIS TIME I WILL STAY SOBER !!
Try this. Get a watch with a loud beeeeeeeep on the stopwatch. Any time you start ruminating on MtG, give yourself 20 minutes. When the beeeeeeep goes off, go do ANYTHING productive. Or think about chess just to mix it up.
When I was a teenager, since I couldn't use porn as much as I wanted (we had no internet), I also spent a lot of time and money buying records. It was as much of a compulsion as buying pornography, and not so much about the music itself but about the process of finding something new. It would have been far better if I'd spent more of that time reading, exercising, practicing a musical instrument or even socializing, but this was an easier fix.
One thing I'm working on now is forcing myself to do things that aren't necessarily quick, easy fixes for boredom, but which will somehow be beneficial to myself or others, or at least make me a more interesting person. It's more work than finding porn or buying music, but far more rewarding.
My biggest struggle is still the idea that I'm missing out on all the new porn that has come out since I stopped checking. The attitude I've been adopting has been: well, I've missed n days, what's the difference with n+1? During the times that really get bad, I just tell myself that if my girlfriend breaks up with me, I'll have a bunch of "new" porn to browse.
This forum has also helped. I mentioned how I can use this to keep myself accountable. But it's also giving me a space to kind of vent my frustration and struggles. I'm forcing myself to update my thread as a way tackle both aspects.
In any event, still sober, so things are looking good. I've gone n days, I'm shooting for n+1.
I've struggled since I've come on to this site to determine whether I need to stop completely or is there some moderation, at least of the porn, not the chatting, that I can keep. I have always enjoyed porn since an early age of hiding playboys in my room lol. I know the chatting must cease completely and that is my main focus.
This group has a lot of great people with great advice. My goal is to keep reading, listening, absorbing and putting what works for me to use to better my life.
Thank you for sharing!
The bad news is I can't say I'm completely sober. Over the past week I had a few instances where I ended up browsing still images (rather than playing movies) for a few minutes. It's tempting to pretend it never happened, but as I mentioned part joining this site was so that I could hold myself accountable. Although I'm disappointed in my relapse, I'm also happy to see that I didn't have to resort to full movie scenes. In addition, I only spent a few minutes of my time rather than hours.
The next step for me is to set a short term goal of some sort to work toward as well as to take some more time to figure out a replacement activity. I mentioned earlier that games are an OK replacement, but they are nowhere near as effective or efficient as porn and masturbation. Maybe I'll never find something as satisfying, but it worth the time and effort to search.