Thursday, April 28, 2022

The Hope in a Power Greater than Myself

Well, I slipped again, three episodes of one time each. But I wanted the rushes. Cannot call a deliberate fall a slip, as if it was accidental! I can refine those lies to myself and say---"I'm an addict! Heh, what can you expect from an addict except to act out and to be what he or she is!?" Folks, I do not give a shit what or how I categorize my slips and relapses. I am a dyed in the wool porn addict!! 

In SPAA, the 12 Step porn recovery program, the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop acting out sexually. I do most of the time have this desire, but to be honest, not all the time.

An aside here. I have not ever, not once, felt negative judgement by other SPAA members based on the length of time of my sobriety. I have been attending and participating in SPAA meetings daily for forty-six days. I see guys and gals with two days sobriety being respected, being listened to, being genuine brothers and sisters with members who have five and seven and thirteen years sobriety.  

The sharing is dug deep soul and spirit sharing. A species of sharing separated from the species of sharing I experienced in the JK program group of men and men only. 

To me, it's interesting. When I confide, when I have said (to some in SPAA) ... that I see JK System people abstaining from acting out for one, two and three and  more years, I sense fear, blockage and close mindedness, as if the words explaining my experience were threatening. I say it (as if) I am God Almighty. People who believe the 12 Step way to recovery from porn addiction is the ONLY way to recover from porn addiction are mistaken. There is always, always more than one way to skin a cat. 

I implemented the JK System for over two and a half years, and the longest stretch of my sobriety has so far been four months. Considering the depth and weight of my addiction, four months astonishes me to this day. I abstained because of my implementations of the JK Program. From inside out, from top to bottom, from left to right day after day after day I mined my soul and worked every tool in the JK toolshed; I discovered parts and aspects never before unearthed inside the ground of my soul. I thank JK for this! His system was and is still integral to the path on which I now walk.

However, my intent now is to walk the path of the 12 Steps of SPAA. My intent now is to bond with a SPAA sponsor and work the SPAA steps with every bone, every cell, every fiber of hair on my body...just like I did with the JK System.

Sounds to me I am now at least wanting to want recovery all of the time.

Friday, April 15, 2022

Averting the Looking at the Unavoidables

Thirty-three days of no porn and masturbation sobriety  today.

But I sure wanted to act out, and not too long ago. I watched and listened to a man during a SPAA meeting (Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous), about my age, who had just lost his sobriety,  a man who had regressed back to day one, and sadness was written on his face and in his voice. I am at risk myself, and almost literally at any time of day or night. When the urge arrives, it seduces without remorse and can leave the man or woman so seduced in a pitiful state of affairs. The question becomes how, how could I do what it is I most do not want to do?

The conclusion I've reached is because I am powerless to prevent myself from indulging in pleasures that dress in the clothing of sheep, but are in fact rapacious animals clothed in the innocent appearing make up of "benign" addiction.

Do you relate, reader of these words?

The heart of my current strategy to incarcerate my porn addiction is named the "aversion technique."

When a fantasy of sex pops up, avert the imagination. Imagine instead an eagle flying over the vast expanse of a forest.

When a picture of a beautiful woman in an ad in the cell phone appears, she clothed in a bikini, avert the eyes and don't take a second look.

When a provocatively clad woman walks by on the street, avert the eyes and murmer a prayer for her well being.

When a period of emotional turmoil ensues, avert that area of the turbulence and go to a SPAA meeting and express your feelings to people who understand your language. 

When an unwanted thought troubles the spirit, I am learning, that thought is false, and that is the reason why it troubles the spirit. True thoughts settle and nurture the spirit.

I attempt to do my part in the work of progress that I am in the making, and a large part of that part is to surrender control, to let go and let God.

The hard lesson I am learning in this day and age of my journey is that, ultimately, I cannot "depend" on people, including myself. I have always had a needy, clingy aspect to my make up. This aspect is dissolving painfully as I grow to accept that every person on this earth is sick to one degree or another. I cannot attach my longings for joy, or peace onto people because of the human condition. I must, instead, attach these longings to my Higher Power, and cultivate and nurture my relationship with this Higher Power. 

In this manner, the power to forgive which I do not have comes to me through the grace of God.


Friday, April 8, 2022

Just Cannot Live Without It

Hope. Can't live without it. Especially when, after almost three years of concerted effort to cease and desist,  the practice of looking at pornography and masturbating continues practically unabated. I am seeing men and women in the SPAA (Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous) group with two, five, seven and thirteen years of sobriety. The view offers that vital ingredient of hope.

And the men and women who share their experiences on the road of recovery unanimously agree that one vital key to their success is to stop edging. I did not realize before participating in SPAA meetings that I have lived almost sex decades of my seventy-two years of life as an edger---my imaginings alive for the purpose of stimulating my inordinate drive to feel lust.

I spent $20,000 at the Mustang Ranch house of prostitution in one weekend. I spent my father's inheritance of $15,000 on happy ending massages in San Francisco, CA. Every beautiful woman I saw became an object upon which I fixated, in order to experience the rush of a rise of sex desire. I started at age thirteen and continued unabated, until about three years ago, when I discovered that my habituation to sex and pornography was my complete and total master, and I, its slave. But then, when I interrupted the practice, I could look men in the eye without over extending the look, and I could also quit smoking nicotine cigarettes. A fog in the mind of my thinking lifted. The cessation of the practice benefited, but the truth is that if I did it once, I would do it again. 

As of this writing, I have twenty-six days of SPAA sobriety, and my goal is to, at a minimum, to go to 90 Zoom SPAA meetings in 90 days.

The reasons why I am a pornography addict are not what matters. What matters is that I am, and that I accept that I am (a sex addict) and that I do not have the personal resources to overcome the condition. 

This is where the spiritual solution suggested in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous enters the picture.That solution is to turn my will and my life over to a Higher Power who does have the power I lack. For my food addiction and my drug and alcohol addictions, doing just this resulted in freedom from these scourges. I lost weight, and kept it off. I stopped drinking alcohol five years ago, and have not had a drop since, regardless of inner conflict or outside tension. So, I have resolution backed by prior experience. If I work the 12 Steps of AA,  in regard to sex and porn addiction, I can be freed of this most terribly self-destructive addiction as well.