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.

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.

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!" 

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. 

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.