Friday, March 25, 2022

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!" 


Wednesday, March 16, 2022

We Brothers and Sisters Understand


Three days now I have both participated in and attended SPAA meetings. Got a question for you, reader? Did you believe I would write every other Friday, like I said I would? I did. I broke my own word to myself, and so what that I did? Actons count, not words. Not to say that words should not count, but my experience is the ideal of having concord between words and deeds is an ideal often mis-stepped.

The SPAA meetings are  pumping hope into my soul, I say. Guys have one year, three years, five and ten years of porn sobriety through the working of the 12 Steps of AA, modified to fit the porn addict condition.

I am just going to keep on talking about what comes to mind, brothers and sisters.

Just as a farmer cannot grow corn without getting dirt soiled hands, perhaps none of us, especially those of us with devastingly destructive addictions, can bear the burdens of existence without some or other manner of addiction or compulsion. However, my porn addiction, I am beginning to believe can be arrested with SPAA fellowship and the working of the 12 Steps.

By placing this post on the world wide web, my hope is this sunlight of transparency so shining onto this most secretive of addicttions will help to dry it out of my life.

It contaminates my relationship with Jesus Christ. Immediately, the Accuser asserts "You are a fake Christian." I reply as Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed, "The only thing to fear is fear itself!"

"Scared kid" is the name I call my part that seeks and pursues pornographic ejaculations. I grew up in a house ruled by shame and fear, and trace the roots of this addiction to that household. 
My responsability is to repair the wreckage of my car no matter who or what wrecked it.

I am going into an unknown world, folks. Pray for me, as I do for myself, to have the courage needed for the journey. 

Monday, February 28, 2022

The Reptile Gets Outsmarted

No second guessing here. I'm at the third stage of the porn addiction cycle. Last time I relapsed? Forty nine days ago. I spiked on four days of dopamine rush to the max.  Feeling despair after each hit, I repeated the acting out, to relieve the very despair I had created.

That was Stage One, and then next, Stage Two. Remorse, regret and lethargy. Lack of drive. Hopelessness. The big question resounds inside:  "How could I do what I want most of all not to do?!" Slowly, hope revives and with it return to exercise, meditation, prayer, evaluative thinking practice and the reading of uplifting books. Those ingredients that coagulate and synthesis the re-wiring of the brain biology.

However, dear reader, the lizard exists inside and it is reptilian. I can't reason with it, but I can outsmart it. Still, the beast is wanting to continue the cycle, and I am now at the Third Stage of that cycle. 

I find that sex connect passion in the eyes of beautiful women. I'm watching the snap dance videos with the young women in hot pants. I'm imagining getting that quasi- sexual massage from my woman friend who I lust after.

How in the name of God does a man restrain himself? I have sworn to not have sex with any woman with whom I am not in a committed relationship. The committment is integral to the SPAA (Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous) definition of porn abstinence. Truth be said, seems to me anyway, the longer the interval between ejaculation, the greater the building up of that desire. 

So, today I ask myself...What am I going to do to break the cycle, to snap it apart? The answer arrives. Accept the urge. Do not resist the urge because resisting only increases the urge. 

And harness that urge to create and to transform and to heal. Tap into the sexuality of being that rests at peace in the hands of the Creator. And feel love for the self, take kind care of the self, set boundaries to protect the self against contamination of the toxic. 

I'm going to slip again. The slip will be reported here. And I will analyze the event like a scientist, in order to learn from the mistake and arrive at remedies to apply while I rewire my brain's biology. 

I committ to doing, and to not doing what is in this blog post, in order to combine my enormous sexual drive with the limitless power of the Holy Spirit. 

I offer this link about transmutation, as well. 

Also, it needs be said, until I began to implement the procedures taught by this man and his assistants, the crucial hope, the absolutely essential sense of confidence that I am a winner and can liberate myself from pornography enslavement...I just did not have it.   

Friday, February 11, 2022

You and me make One

 

The mentor asserts that only uncommon men end their porn addictions.

I believe the assertion.

God knows. The depth, the weight, the integration of the addiction into my biology, decade after decade so much so that one could truthfully say that I lived to porn and masturbate. God knows how many porn quitting programs I have tried unsuccessfully. God understands why, at times, the feeling of despairing sentiment that this enslavement to the addiction is permanently glued onto my soul.

Yet, if others have escaped…if others are escaping…if others with dependencies no less grave than  mine are shaking themselves free, I can!

I not only can, I am. The acting out that three years ago was normally two times a day is these days normally two times every three months.

The red scars and painful disfigurements on the organ have almost all been healed.

I would not and still cannot have achieved these landmarks of hope giving accomplishment without the ongoing support and brotherhood of other men enlisted with me on the same team going forward on this journey.

It is a journey into an unknown, finding a new being that was always that being meant to be by the Creator of beings.

But onto details.

The structure is organized. The 2022-year goals are established.

The milestones towards these goals are printed out. I will be able to view and assess my progress.

During each day, I work towards the achievement of these goals. The money earning and saving goal, the Spanish language speaking goal and the publication of the third book of poetry goal are these three main goals.

But no sir and no mam, your writer does not work at these first!

He work first at the morning routine, first at the exercise, first at the visualization and meditation, first at the evaluative thinking practice. He works first at the reading of books meant to aid porn addicts end what is this unhealthy coping behavior.

Do you know what then happens? The energy and the drive and the passion that spawns forth from within as a result of putting first things first also engenders the drive to accomplishment of the secondary and material goals.

Experience is all the confirmation needed.                 

 

Friday, January 28, 2022

Akin to a Napoleonic Truth

 

Been finding that the System holds water. Been finding the brothers are dead serious about navigating the currents, the ebb and flow of the river that leads to regenerated life.

That I too can fly like an eagle, that the pain of the wound feeling unendurable I can endure. I did not go mad when the manic upheaval was prompting to that escape. I gripped the marble of the lars god and held tight for the dear and sweet savor of life.

I am a porn addict. My addiction thrives in the dark, and I am done with it.

In the writing of these posts, I cast the light that exposes what needs and wants the secrecy. Without the secrecy, the addiction cannot do what it lives to do.

Dear reader, please, read no further if your sensibilities might feel offended by the explicitness that adherence to honesty requires. I will slip. I will relapse and I will report in these posts when I have slipped and when I have relapsed.

I will analyze to the best ability what contributed, where I was taking mistaken steps, what weaknesses of character were aiding and abetting. And each time I fall, I will arise stronger than before, more educated, more savvy about the red flags and mirages in the desert that are just not real.

I am 72 years old. I have been habitually masturbating to pornography for 50 years.  I got to be frank about this to you.

I am not only a sex and porn addict. I am also a food addict, a drug addict, and an alcoholic. And this addiction to pornography has by hand over fist been fifty times the rascal to arrest and throw into jail than the other three.

I intend to keep on writing in this vein twice a month until the day comes when the monster of lies has evaporated into nothing. Until, to put it the way the mentor put it…. the child just no longer wets his bed.

I found out something fairly recently. Experienced its truth. The call of that huffing and puffing titillation of craving for the dopamine release of an ejaculation was front and center, and I was wavering. But this time, I did not resist its power. I welcomed its power. I directed its energy into drive to do something else. I don’t remember what that something else was right now, but you would make a good bet to wager it was into some manner of creativity.

No kidding, this whole deal is a mystical process. The gods are saying among themselves, as the author of the book about the “Law of Life” might write; ‘We see that man. Never does he quit his fight; we see the greatness of his need. We therefore decide to fill the potholes in the path upon which he is undertaking his journey.’

It wasn’t coincidence, I claim to you all reading these words now. The money that I did not have to publish my second poetry book arrived at about the same time as when the book itself was ready for publication!! (thanks to a USA government covid payment)

 

 

 

Friday, January 14, 2022

A live dog. Worth more than a dead lion.

 

Venture with me, dear reader…on a journey into the unknown. 

I am petrified. My fear shudders. I consoled myself this afternoon with a love letter to myself. And did what I have never done. I forgave myself for the wreckage I smashed upon my life.  

Have you ever believed you are a slave? I have. I am enslaved, truth be told.

At least, from a certain perspective, I am. From the perspective of the accuser, I am. From the perspective of the liar who seeks my death, I am exactly that.  A slave. I advance to this liar plenty of evidence to support the untruth that I am a slave. Who enslaved me? I did. I enslaved myself to survive, first off by eating sweet foods compulsively.  I still am a compulsive overeater. I have been since I was five years old, and now, at 71 years, I still falter and slip and eat to escape feeling. Feelings, my friend. Those feeling I most need to feel to know how best to care for myself.

This journey into the unknown of myself, I invite you to follow its path. I invite you to participate. I seek transformation, metamorphosis defined in insect terms as the transformation from an immature form to an adult form. The Oxford Languages definition elaborates. “a change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one, by natural or supernatural means.”

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Love Is...First

 

I hugged a tree today, heartily…needfully to draw upon the energy of its very sap. I acknowledged the sight of the tree in my eyes, and reflected. This tree was born years before my own birth, and will be alive years after my own death. I reflected upon my family tree. The storm thrashed winds of time in crisis toss wild the branches. The roots hold steadfast.



I grounded myself today. I acknowledged sights, a kite, a bench, a tree, a dog. I acknowledged the touch of the felt in my hat, the paper in my hand, the grass, the leather. The sounds of the distant tractor, the wind over my ear, the movement of tree branches, I acknowledged. The smell of the grass, I acknowledged.

I felt the sting of the pang of need in me, and welcomed its discomfort. I let it go, like dropping a ball. Repeatedly, I dropped the sting of the pang until it diminished. It did diminish.



Where the pang hurt in my stomach, I caressed there with my hand gently, whispering to myself  “I love you Michael. Without condition, I love you."

Today I loved myself in Parque Paraiso.

I became equal, no better, no worse.

I fulfilled a prerequisite; I MUST love myself first before I can truly love anybody else.