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.  

The Breathing Lung of Hope

If ever I, myself, needed the understanding and support of those in the tribe of us, the recovering sex and porn addicts, it is now. Truly, if I can speak truth, this need largely escaped me until I joined the fellowship of SPAA. (Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous)

It's repeated all over the earth. Addicts in 12 Step programs cannot recover alone, on their own resources, but must need have community and fellowship with those who share the particular addiction disease. So, it is.

Particularly in SPAA. This disease murders hope. My hopes of abstinence, when I entertained such hope, dashed countless times over decade upon decade.

Perhaps I can find the words to explain. In my family of origin, a shadow of shame darkened the light in the house. A lock on authentic expression curtailed capacity to learn how to feel. From my perspective, an admonition in the household acted like a curtain in a  movie theater. If the curtain could have been opened, the movie would have been like a world of entertainment. Simple fun. Going fishing. Going to the sleep-over. Going to the sock hop in the 7th grade classroom. Going to see Natalie Wood in West Side Story. But the curtain, for the most part, never opened. 

But, and I am grateful for this, when I reached puberty, I did find a manner to enjoy an endless supply of fun by bringing myself to completion, while imagining having sex with the girls I lusted for in grade school. Sexually acting out rescued my life in those early years, and I am indebted. In later years, most emphatically, I say the interest on that debt drove my subsequent life into a kind of vaguely noticed, but perpetual bankruptcy.

The brothers and sisters with whom I daily meet in our international SPAA Zoom meetings understand. My sentiment is that this understanding breathes forth the hope that gives the finger to sex and porn addiction. We share a common lung breathing hope.

Now. So, it is. Hope, one day at a time. 

Upon the Door, Fear knocked.

 

I cut the rope. I don’t see where I came from. I go into the unknown.

What do I find? Change is my fear. Being different is my fear. Being queer. Being forever ruled not by purpose but by the emotive waves of stormy emotion buffeting me. Being a quitter. My fears tie me down to the way I used to be, to my past.  My fears comfort me. However, a broken record player repeats a truth I grasp, that... “Fear knocked on the door, and faith answered.”

Faith in Jesus Christ. Faith. Blind faith? It’s not blind, my faith. And all of everything lives inside the moment of now.

My job is to cultivate, water, hoe the ground of my faith so that it works, rain or shine.

I choose to feel. (Not to say that I also choose not to feel) The dragon is that I am a coward, a sissy, a fraud who does not have sufficient masculinity to win the heart of a woman.

This is where an Evil One enters the picture. This Liar well realizes my hatred mistakenly directed at God on account of my year after year, decade after decade of being a single man, and the resentment in me about it, and how hopeless and helpless I feel about it.

Faith supplies the reason to believe that my joy, my happiness depends not on any one human being, but on my relationship with He who granted to me His salvation. 

 

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.

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.