The Rotten Fruit of Mindless Scrolling

The Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous (SPAA) definition of acting out is: viewing pornography, masturbating, and having sex outside of a committed relationship. 

The major culprit that entices to acting out? Edging! (SPAA's Edging Definition) 

What's related to edging? Mindless scrolling. (I just got done doing an hour of it.) It's family to edging. It's why I've started counting my scroll free days. (0 days now) News stories, movie scenes, Ted talks etc....you, glad to have reader, if you're like me, know what happens when you go online and start scrolling without purpose. I go on and on and on in a type of rapture. Time vanishes. The mini-skirted girls appear walking in Manchester and I oh "so accidently" start watching the Bangkok street girls parading at night, at times for hours. My brain and body get injected with the dopamine that never supplies me with enough. All the while, being online itself pumps dopamine into my system. That's why I detoxify. I follow the following personal rule fairly well because doing so relaxes me. All cellphones and computers! Shut off after 9:15 pm daily!

It has been said that the medium is the message. The being online message says "feel good now, you need to be online now as now is all you've got." Like all stealthy lies, that's  partly true as now IS all we've got.

These unhealthy dopamine levels start begging me to watch porn and masturbate until either I do or don't. (I did four months ago, before that, nine months ago.)

When I started in SPAA a little over three years ago, if I did look at  porn, I reasoned, since I broke my abstinence definition anyway, I might as well go on and masturbate until ejaculation. When I did do that (because of lonliness, stress, boredom etc) the depression and despair afterwards were almost always so severe --- only another round of acting out would  momentarily relieve me of the depression and despair itself. Talk about a vicious circle!

So, in my book, the scrolling has got to stop as  much as does the edging.

Daily attendance at SPAA's meetings also are a virtually irrevocable personal rule. I am willing, although often not wanting, to go ---  to any length to keep myself unchained from the slavery of my addiction to sex and pornography.

 

The Trick of Last Night's Edge

The other day I considered. If I thought of God as much as I think about women, I'd be thinking about God all the time.

My thinking about women the way I habitually do IS edging, which in SPAA (Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous) conceptualization ---activates desire to act out, or, that is to say, "to go all the way." When I edge, I spur my porn addicted self to do just that. All I need do to feel my dopamine hormones rush to heat up my body to act out is to go onto Facebook. It's a major trigger for me. I go there on purpose to do what my Higher Self does not want to do. I want to escape the realities of my human condition, but I can't. I believe that's why I am chiefly a porn addict, a food addict, a drug addict, an alcoholic and a compulsive money spender.  

I plan to have my Facebook account permanently deactivated, after treasured photos have been saved into a flash drive, as for me it is a known acting out location.

Last night, in bed while trying to go to sleep, I fantasized and fantasized, repeatedly, about having sex with a woman who turns me on. I was doing what my addicted body was enjoying. 

At first, I fought the urge. Then, past personal experience reminded me that most every time I struggle against, what against I struggle increases in power. So, I accepted the fantasizing, and I prayed to my Higher Power to remove the desire. I didn't pray as if to pray to a stone wall. I prayed to a living, breathing Almighty God who loved me to death, pun intended, Who listens to me, while believing He would remove my desire to continue these edging imaginations. Soon after, I fell into sound sleep.

This is all I am going to write about this topic for now.

A Conversion of Promises Becoming

Call it osmosis. Transformation. Call it growing a new skin.

It's turning me inside out and upside down. Before, I actively sought to look at beautiful women. I yearned for the longing stares of mutual attraction. No matter religious faith nor sexual codes of conduct, women were statues of goddesses erected on pedestals in temples of idolatry. Their marble material didn't threaten. Flesh and blood women scared me to death.

Now, women are people to me, imperfect and sharing the equalities of imperfection. Now, not only women, but the whole world about me transforms into a present moment of living vitality. I see what before I didn't notice. Now, I do not seek to look, and when I do, I seek to not look lustfully. 

My lizard drive urges, almost compels my innermost self, the sex and porn addict, to objectify individuals onto the screen of my mind, to liken them as porn actresses in a sex video. I am urged to feed the demand that porn advances towards the enslavement of women in the prostitution trade.

In SPAA (Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous), we chip against this trade. And in SPAA, a cardinal belief is that we of necessity must fight this fight as a unit. Personally speaking, if I don't go to meetings daily, I am not reminded daily of the disease, and if not, I forget as this disease is incredibly cunning and wants nothing more than for me to forget my abnormality. Phone calls to fellow members belong in this together we stand category. Depression, especially morbid, dark  episodes trigger this writer to act out with porn: a sure-fire temporary remedy not worth the slip. Last depressed episode I had...a phone call to a SPAA brother lifted my spirit, offered sympathy, encouragement and provided perspective. I didn't act out. 

The honesty and vulnerability and wisdom these brothers and sisters share during meetings cultivate nutrients of high-end grade...a fundamental assistance, a lifebuoy to a drowning person.

Meditation and crappy writing practice daily morn and evening assists. Consistent meditation muscles up the pre frontal cortex of the brain,  which thus enables better impulse control, attentiveness and considerate response. Crappy writing helps sweep away pent up emotions of fear and resentment which obscure a clear view out the window of one's mind.

A 12 Step sponsor most considerably assists. My SPAA sponsor's latest project tasked onto me spurs me on to dig deep about my definition of what it means to be a man. The flip side of the coin of the task spurs me on to dig deep about what quality of woman I would seek in a mate. Armed with this intelligence, as a single man, I intend to prospect for a committed partnership not in a mound of garbage but in a mine where diamonds wait to be discovered.  

A No Named Cabin Cruiser

 It's chastening to post honestly. I don't want my sexual sobriety more than anything else. I say to myself I need wiggle room, and myself agrees. 

Rome wasn't built in a day is my argument. I argue the Capital of the Roman Empire had been fearfully and painfully growing during hundreds of years. 

And picture the mental constructs of French and English mindsets, perpetually contending. 

Believe not what I say --- that's not what truly counts; what does is whether I do what I say.

Today I kept one of my words and honestly, not just in the technical sense but in a whole hearted sense.

There is something going on. A sense of an orderly retreat in the face of an unstoppable force that releases a hundred different and interesting directions.

Imagine the freedom to be able to say what it is one feels no matter what fear of giving offense nor what fear of appearing foolish or intemperate.

I am struck by the depths of the  soul-searching honesty shared amongst those of us in the SPAA Zoom meetings, that  brother and sister fellowship. Not a speck of judgement.

I am half way, forty five days today in fact, into the ninety meetings in ninety days committment, with twenty days SPAA sobriety. 

Experiences of a Hopeful Nature

If I look at porn, I lose my SPAA sobriety, and recent times past, nothing, nothing on earth wanted I more than to look at pornagraphy. It's my bread and butter.

One goal: Go to 90 SPAA meetings in 90 days; today is 61 of those 90. Here's the stats. 41 days back-to-back sober, day 42 a slip. Next 10 days sober, day 53 a slip, day 55 a slip. 

These "slips", well, put it this way. I tell myself, damn, I slipped, so...all bets are off, I'm going to milk this cow for all its worth, and the slip on a day turns into 3 or 4 slips in one day. 

I intend to continue going to SPAA meetings daily, indefinitely. I now have a sponsor, and have started working the First Step of the 12 Steps contained in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, adapted for sex and porn addicts.

To repeat, according to the SPAA definition of sobriety, if I watch porn, even if I don't masturbate, I slip. If I have sex outside of a committed relationship, I slip. If I masturbate to completion without looking at porn, I slip. 

According to the testimony, also, that I hear said from almost every man and woman in the SPAA fellowship, what's called "edging" leads to slipping.

Edging is akin to taking small tastes of a drug.

During the past six decades, I have been an unadulterated edger, an unhinged girl watcher, a legally permitted whore house goer, a porn looker, and a chronic masturbator. About ten years ago, I charged $20,000 on American Express for a week-end of sex worker services at Mustang Ranch in Nevada. 

So, what's happening now that's different?

I go outside on the street downtown and I'm forcing myself to not look at the pretty women, and although fairly often this not successfully, that's the goal; if that's what it takes to prevent slippages, that's the goal.

Today I went grocery shopping at the Coral Supermarket on Calle Sucre. I knew there would be plenty of foxes walking around the aisles bending over and reaching up to grab. I knew there would be no chance in hell I could avert my eyes. I'd have had to wear a blindfold! So, I took the God Higher Power suggestion to heart, and prayed believing the H would do for me what I could not do for myself, and by golly it worked! The objects of desire, in my eyes, transformed into female people, some more attractive than others but that fact not a deal breaker. 

Do you know, dearest of all readers,  do you know what these and same such experiences spawn inside the core of my being?

Hope!!!

And what is hope??

"Hope is the only good thing that disillusion respects."

Marquis de Vauvenargues

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.

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.  

 

More Than One Way to Skin the Cat of Porn Addiction

Today is twelve days of porn sobriety. My body is lethargic, slow, medium depressed emotionally and also sensitive, which are manifestations of withdrawal from the dopamine hits of ejaculations.

I go to the Zoom Morning Brew SPAA (Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous) meetings daily, and listen to men and women share their stories in a language I understand. Note taking helps to reinforce particularly on target nuggets of wisdom. 

The ten-and twenty year lengths of sobriety from acting out that more than a few people in the Morning Brew meetings, that these people have accumulated, renders considerable hope to me that I myself can arrest this compulsion.

It is in the end more about quitting self-centered focus. I am totally and absolutely self-absorbed when I am acting out. I do not care about anyone or anything other than getting that relief that solves the momentary issue. And the sexual release of one pornography ejaculation leads automatically to the next, and for me, the reason is this: Not only am I an addict, I hate myself for being enslaved to the  condition. I do it again for a minute or two of "vacation" from the self-hatred, the despair and the despondency. 

My main focus now, readers, is to attend 90 SPAA meetings in 90 days.

While driving towards this end, I incorporate this incomplete list of tools into my life style.

Prayer in faith---to a Higher Power to remove urges to edge. (Edging is doing and thinking  motivated by desire to experience sexual arousal) Today on the street in Cuenca, Ecuador, I could not help but notice a beautiful young woman who was driving a motor scooter, stopped at a red light.

I immediately averted my eyes after that first look, and prayed to God to aid the person in the way that she most currently needed help.

Calling or texting a fellow porn addict in recovery---this tool grates against the guy in me that shudders to admit he needs help.

Imaginations---instead of an edge fantasy, an imagining of an eagle flying above a forest, a sunrise upon a beach or the movement of tree branches in a mild wind.

Getting distracted---cook up a meal, play darts or watch an edifying  movie.

The recurrent theme in the SPAA meeting is that edging eventually leads to acting out.

Readers, to bring this post to its conclusion, I exclaim that my whole  world is being turned upside down.

Almost all I desired for five decades of living this life on earth was to seek and to find womanly beauty and to suck on it like an infant sucking mom's nipple to the very last drop of its milk. I lived for that lingering,  longing stare of erotic suspension. Every mini-skirt, all hot pants, never mind if in a movie, a video or in a corner street bar were candy to my sugar addiction. My own power is insufficient to stop the staring, the looking and the wanting.

Other men I've worked with to solve this addiction have achieved one and two years of sex addict sobriety, so I realize that working the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous as adapted for porn addiction is not the sole and only way to recover.

That being said, there is that slang saying which rings true. "There is more than one way to skin a cat!"