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.
I failed in my 1st week at staying sober 90 days. How many times did you fail before making it 90 days? Oddly even though I did fail, I still feel some what better just for being here knowing there is hope, I know have goals and others have beaten this.
Can you think of some things that are positive and constructive that you'd like to do this week, and this weekend? This idea is similar to the method used in quitting smoking, to put the money in a piggy bank and spend it on something nice.
I am actually almost 3 years sober, before that I had many times where I would get past the 90 days, even 1 year (we are talking of an addiction that lasted 3 decades here) and then I would relapse, it was a yo yo for me.
What finally did it was joining a recovery program and following it to the letter, using the tools it offered but no one of it would have been useful or helpful were it not for my decision that it would be the last time I would ever be addicted to porn.
The program showed me that I could choose life affirming ways to deal with life and its sometimes frustrating twists and turns, so that now I simply feel frustrated and irritated, instead of going home and indulging as a way of coping with my unwanted emotions.
It also showed me that sex is not a need, it is an option and that I do not have to indulge just because i have an urge to do so. It also showed me that I was wasting most of my entire life on something that provided nothing but shame into my life.
Overall, I ended up going past the 90 days and extended it to close to 6 months because, at times, I still had those nasty movies playing in my head and the nasty thoughts still bothered me. So, once my mind got quiet and I was able to have quiet day, day after day, I resumed my sex life.
However, I will say that it's sporadic, I do not have urges and if I do have them, they are very short and fleeting. Like a sneeze, that short and since I do not pay them any mind, they get even shorter.
Once thing I did also learn was that the urge most often pointed to something else, so I would stop and ask myself what was it that it was pointing to, most often it was boredom, frustration, anger, hunger, loneliness. With that information, I would then seek healthy ways to address them which was to get myself a life.
Now for the most important part of sober life, I had to live it even as I was going through the recovery stage. Where I made it impossible for me to even look at porn, I purged all my porn collection, cleaned my PC of bookmarks, canceled my premium channels, installed a web guard and had a friend install the password and parameters, avoided the red light district, you get the gist, then lived the life of someone who never saw porn.
Day after day of that kind of life add up, by the time I was past the 90 days, it was already a habit, I had established a routine so tight that it was impossible for me to even dream of watching porn. This is very important because here is where our resolve is tested, it shows us clearly where our priorities are.
Are we truly committed to recovering or are we seriously believing the lies that porn recovery is impossible? For me, I already had kicked the nicotine addiction, so I applied the principles I learned from that and that experience led me to know I could beat this one too which I eventually did.
The best advice? Commit yourself to getting better, for you, no one else. Do this because you want to have a life you can look back on and be proud of. But most important, you are doing it because you no longer want porn to steal any more seconds than you have allowed to steal from you.
The choice is always yours,
Wolf