Try not fall into the trap of getting down on yourself. I have found that it can perpetuate the unwanted behavior. Just take it one day at time.

Jim,

What happened to you is perhaps what often happens to those in recovery that have not done these two very important things:

1) Learn to feel their emotions so that they do not come and sneak up on them during recovery. This is a learned skill. The answer for that is learn to be self aware, that is to be conscious at all times, instead of using porn to deal with unwanted emotions.

Emotions just are, they do not mean anything in themselves, they are simply a tool to show us where we are in the emotional scale. However, emotions are almost always the bi product of thought.

Say you are driving your car and someone cuts you off, the first thing that happens is a thought which may be: "That jack wagon cut me off, how dare he! It must mean that I am pushover, I'll show him!" Then you react by honking the horn, giving him the finger which escalates to other thoughts, "Take that you idiot!" Then, you ride off with other thoughts which may fluctuate between guilt and rage yet the end result when you get home is that you need to something with all that crap you are feeling so you go home and indulge.

In other words, we need to learn to feel and not react so quickly. The way to do that is not to give any particular meaning to anything that happens. Rain outside does not mean a day will be ruined, it just means that it is raining outside, that's it! The way to learn to feel is to simply feel it and not fight it. Then learn to distinguish between the myriad of emotions that go through you during the course of one's life.

Eventually, it'll become like a habit. The thing to keep in mind is that just because you are feeling crappy, it does mean you have to indulge. I know that's what you know but that's not the answer, in fact, indulging makes it worse.

2) The other step that may have been missed is to create a contingency plan to address these very pitfalls. Air tight, so tight, not even the hair of a kitty can go through it. The reason for that is what I outlined above which is up until now our emotional life has been dealt with in a very unhealthy manner which is by using porn to cope with unwanted emotions.

So what can be done? Several things, when creating a contingency plan, you could ask yourself questions like: "what are the situations that bring up urges in me?" What are the emotions that I am having a hard time feeling and why? "What emotions am I avoiding and why? "What am I feeling right now? Do I know?" And once you get answers you can ask, "How am I going to address these issues in a life affirming way?" "What is the best way to deal with that which will leave me peace and not strife?"

By doing that, next time, you'll be prepared. But before you even do any of those things, you have got to forgive yourself, if not, you'll be stuck in an endless cycle. I have said it gazillions of times but it bears repeating: You'll fall many times before you learn to ride. So if you fall again, dust off and see where you went awry and correct it.

If one thing does not work, try another, and then another. I had to revise my recovery plan many times before it took. But here's the most important part of my post which is a question: "Why did you allow yourself to be wide open for temptation?" The first thing that should have taken place is to make it so that it will be very difficult for you to even find porn.

I did it that way, I erased all my bookmarks, told my friends to not give me porn, I even stopped seeing them because I knew that I'd be tempted to look at it while I visited them. I installed a porn blocker such as K-9 Webcoat and had someone set the password. I stopped going downtown because I knew I'd be tempted to go to the red light district to visit the the sex stores.

Seriously dude, not to make you feel guilty but to point at something very crucial, how committed are you to your recovery? I remember months into my recovery, my father died, and you'd better believe I was having more triggers than an xmas tree, yet it was impossible for me to indulge because I had already made it impossible to even see a salacious image, having also canceled premium channels and refused to watch shows with sexual content.

However, before you can even start feeling guilty, I'd like to point out that 8 weeks is not enough in the larger scheme of things, I would not announce failure that quickly, as I said, fall off, get back up again. Perhaps, this may be a good time to consider a recovery program to help you further such as Recovery Nation. It took me about a year and half to get back to my own self, so be easy on yourself, okay?

Remember it took a long time for the addiction to take, it'll take twice as long to leave you. All the same, "You do NOT need porn" keeping that in mind, saves a lot of grief.

Best of luck,
Wolf (sober almost 3 years)