Day 7 of recovery. I am recovering from an almost 20 year addiction to pornography. My active viewing of pornography has gone from times where it happens a batch of a couple times a month or less to times when I am active in it with. Batches of 2-4 times a week. I view pornography despite it being starkly in contrast with who I want to be or feel I should be. The fact that I do it regardless of a strong desire and determination not to makes it a problem I am unable to escape from on my own.

It’s critical though to know why it happens, and I have learned a lot there about myself. I have a long ways to go, but I am learning what triggers me in the sense that I have to be careful to note how I am feeling every day and ask why.

Today I have felt pretty motivated, not stressed, a little bit like I spun my wheels to some degree. I was not tempted in any moment I can remember but I was also sort of shopping all day for business related items – not the most stressful of activities. The only stress was wishing it was a quicker activity and feeling a bit unproductive. It was a good day overall though.

Going into tomorrow I am also going to try and remember to stay humble, remembering I have a lot of things I need to improve on. This way if moments come up where I would under normal circumstances respond poorly because of being stressed or uncomfortable I can fight it by remembering to be humble and work on avoiding responding that way. I am also going to do this reflection earlier in the day.

Day 6 of recovery. I get a little knot in my stomach remembering how short it has been. Feeling that knot is critical though. I need to feel the guilt, remember the reliance I have on powers outside of myself to recover.

An addiction like this is a lifelong recovery process. Even if I can avoid pornography until the day I die, I am still going to be at risk the rest of my life of being attracted to and allowing myself to have sexual interactions with other women. I have thoughts in this area right now, and that worries me. Part of this fight to recover is going to be to change my mindset and resolve entirely, not just change my behavior.

There is a long long way to go, and it’s tempting to only put some effort into writing this post. However, I know that if I don’t stretch my mind on every single day to remember where I am really at, that will contribute to potential weakness, and I can’t afford a day of weakness.

I have an addiction to pornography. It manifests in my life at times when I am stressed, bored, or otherwise not feeling my best. The reason I view pornography subconsciously is to escape from those feelings. There are so many other productive ways I can deal with feeling that way, but part of the problem is I am often unable to recognize why or how I am feeling.

One thing I am working on is trying to recognize when I am stressed or bored or am generally experiencing feelings of unpleasantness and using that as a signal to touch base with someone, or my journal, or address the stress with adequate planning.

I am moving early today, it’s good to not dwindle as much.

I call the time I spend writing here “Reflection”. I like this term because it means I take the time to reflect on my life, and how I am doing – which I tend to not do much of. There are a lot of things I could talk about right now, but I should settle on a subject that will most help me to reflect on how I am doing with my addiction and what to think about today.

I talked yesterday about honesty. I am not doing 100% honesty with everyone well. However, honesty is just the summary title of the step. The actual first step is “Admit that you, of yourself, are powerless to overcome your addiction and that your life has become unmanageable”. This is different than what I was talking about yesterday.

I can fully admit that by myself I probably won’t overcome this. What it means to include others’ help in the road to recovery is somewhat open ended I think though. It doesn’t mean everyone in my life has to know everything. How to include the right people and/or forces in my life is not a question that needs to be answered in step 1. Step 1 just means that I admit I can’t do it alone.

By writing these posts to nobody and not opening up to any human about the state of my addiction, am I “not following” step 1?

I have no reservations admitting that there is no way I will overcome my addiction with sheer willpower. There is no way I will overcome it without existential reflection. There is no way I will maintain any sort of sobriety without getting my brain outside of the day to day and looking at this from an external / higher perspective. I also think there is no way I will be able to overcome this if my only physical actions to work on it involve only myself. I think I need to attend recovery meetings and/or have someone to report to. I admit these things are necessary to overcome it.

In some ways my entries here are weak because they haven’t necessarily resulted in actionable takeaways. I will think about this some more.

I am on day 5 of recovery from my addiction to pornography.

Alright well I have been super distracted today. It is a Monday, so not a great start to my week. I have implemented some new things into my life that are going to help me at least remember where I ended up putting my time, so at least I wasn’t wasting time without accountability.

Either way, I am taking a moment out of my day despite my late start to recognize that I have a sexual addiction manifested in lustful thoughts and the viewing of pornography. I have lied to the people I love about how I am doing with it.

I don’t know where I stand on my lies. I have followed an “addiction recovery program” on and off in my life and a key point emphasized in the program is that honesty is the first and primary step to recovery. I have not been honest. I know what the program would say about my lies, I know what my loved ones would say about my lies. I know that lying counteracts any integrity I might have had left.

Yet, I am in these lies. My logic is that if I can handle this, that someday it won’t matter so much. I think mentally I can live with the lies. Maybe I am just really good at justifying or lying to myself but I can sit on things, not tell others and my life goes on. At least I have done a lot of this and my life has worked out OK so far.

But, then there is also the element where I know allowing the lies to sit and not outing myself makes it easy to tell the next lie and it just gets worse. Honesty is important and I am sort of saying screw that I am gonna do it anyway and I think I will be ok. This very well may backfire. But, I can’t out myself right now. I can’t go through the backlash and chain reaction of what will happen if certain people find out and then I have to tell other people.

So, this is my reality. What it comes down to for me is that I think there are some situations in life where “it’s better for the other person not to know the truth” is actually true.

Is that actually true? Possibly not.

What’s actually critical is for me to be honest with myself and part of that is going to be getting honest here in this blog every day. I haven’t done great with that ever, but it’s also never been so critical.

PS. Day 4 of sobriety

I am on my second day of not viewing Pornography. That means I have one day under my belt.

It’s critical to be intentional about this, to really remember that this is where I am at. I am good at just forgetting about things that are unpleasant. I can just think “ew, I don’t want to think about that, that is unpleasant” and I basically just put it off indefinitely. It works both against things that I don’t want to think about and things I know I “shouldn’t” think about.

The trouble is, I want to think about topics under the umbrella of my sexual addiction. So if I just say no now and put it off, who knows how I will react next time it comes around. Then, with topics that I just don’t want to think about, I can put those off until I explode in other areas of my life.

Say I am stressed out of my mind today. I don’t usually know I am stressed because my knee jerk reaction is to just get away from the unpleasantness. I will watch YouTube or just browse the internet aimlessly. Subconsciously my actions are my way of just saying “ew, I don’t want to think about that, it’s not pleasant” and instead not thinking about anything productive. Then, my subconscious stress spirals as a result. In that state when my wife says something that by all accounts would be considered normal conversation it might trigger me because of the built up stress and perhaps I respond with erratic and unjustified anger.

This is a central pattern in my life. What would break it?

Perhaps the best medicine for this sickness of avoidance is to exercise some form of self confrontation. When the moments come where I typically feel “ew” I need to think “Why do I feel ew?” and address it in some form or another.

Perhaps at the moment where I decide to watch YouTube instead of confronting my feelings it’s actually too late, and maybe I need to curb the problem earlier. If this is the case I will need to try generally to observe myself better and pick out potential problems over time, then report back.

Either way, one feeling I am having now is disgust. Despite how strongly I feel right now that I don’t want to view pornography, the fact that I have been deep into it recently is a good indicator that I will likely view it again relatively soon despite my good intentions. That makes me feel gross inside. I need to feel that feeling and not bury it. I need to let it drive me. I need to feel it again tomorrow, as really feeling these emotions and not burying them is the only way for me to change.

I have regularly been viewing pornography for months. My last report was in March, and before that I have been viewing it on and off for nearly 20 years. I viewed pornography today.

I grew up Christian, and I am still religious. I am not very active in my church, and I am starting to actually think about it for the first time in my life. What do I believe, what do I really want to take/not take? My pornography addiction is one of the things I have to reconcile against the background of my religion. How much of my aversion to pornography as a concept and my viewpoint of it being repulsive comes from upbringing vs my personal beliefs. Most of it is surely from religion. Regardless, I want to be free from pornography because it is an addiction in my life. Because I continue to view it despite my desire stop and it being in conflict with how I identify, to me it is an addiction.

I am a product of how I spend my time and mental capacity. Viewing pornography shapes me. It’s no different from the way avid readers become well read or athletic practice makes athletes. Every bit of our energy is applied to something whether it’s staring at a wall thinking about food, designing rockets, or running ultramarathons. When my time is spent viewing pornography it morphs me slowly into someone less capable of accomplishing things I want to accomplish in my life.

My definition of pornography includes anything sexual I do or think to escape from my reality, outside of the bounds of my marriage promises. The version of me I wish to become doesn’t expend wasted energy on sexual obsessions. Many effects on my personality come from viewing or reading pornography, and these pull me further away from the vision I have for myself.

It’s also a mechanism in my life. I use pornography and masterbation to avoid. Whether in the moment I am putting off emotions or stresses or discomfort — it’s all in an effort to escape from something. Avoiding makes me less capable to handle life. Life is full of the things that I am avoiding — and I want to learn to deal with them rather than run.

I don’t pray to God for the same reason I never talked to my mom (or my dad for that matter) when something difficult was going on in my life growing up — I already knew what they would say in any situation. I likely wasn’t right as they may have had some bits left to give, but that’s how I felt. The problem is, the harm done was double fold as I both lost the opportunity to get my feelings outside myself as well as coped in a different way by viewing more pornography.

Should I pray to God about these things? I don’t know. I was struck by an interesting thought today, which is “Ok, if I already know what Jesus would tell me if I were to ask him what I should do about my addiction, then what would he say?”

Maybe I don’t know as much as I thought. Or, maybe I am leaning too heavily on my religion. Or, maybe prayer is more about “getting my feelings outside of myself” than it is about expecting answers. Perhaps I should try. Will I? Probably not. Instead I want this blog to become my prayer and my therapy session. Wish me luck.

Day 10 of recovery. I had a moment of weakness in the last 4 days sometime, but I determined not to categorize my act as a slip-up. It was borderline though. I have not been good about doing routine items and focusing on each day improving. I jump right into working at the beginning of my days, and rarely take the time to reflect on my life or meditate or pray. Slowing down in the mornings a bit would help me a ton. That’s why I want to at least write in here at the start of every day, as it can help me center and kick off a habit chain if I line up activities behind it.

Other than that, I am going to get through today as the 10th day so I can move on to 11th. It’s a slow process of building up days, but I have to appreciate each one. I must remember that I am in recovery from an addiction to pornography, and that my addiction is a coping mechanism. I have to deal with my emotions in real ways, let them surface, and not push them down then try to escape from them. Writing here is one way I can help do that.

Yesterday was good. I am on day 5 of recovery. I am tempted today. But, I am going to replace my escaping mechanism desires with positive activities I enjoy, and recognize the feelings I am having so I can deal and overcome rather than escape. I am feeling a little overwhelmed right now I think, so I need to recognize that and deal with the feeling.

I have an addiction to pornography and every day I am working on recovering from it. Tomorrow I will be on day 6.

I am on day 4 of recovery from my addiction to pornography. I have a long ways to go. I will likely be tempted to act out today, but I am going to commit now to fighting it by replacing it with better things, such as watching youtube, or texting someone.

Ok, so there has been a several day gap in reports. I shouldn’t allow this to happen because my mind gets fuzzy about how I have done. I actually think I was very much on track for two weeks, and didn’t have any issues until day 12 (3 days ago) when I had a run-in with my addiction. I acted out 3 days ago, and had slight bounce-backs the last couple days. So, I am on day 3.

Acting out, viewing pornography isn’t who I want to be. I have a picture of who I want to be and it is very different. These reports are to try and hold some accountability. Obviously I have done poorly on both the accountability and the success in avoiding my addiction lately. I am trying to kickstart the accountability here, and for my addiction I need some extra focus today.

I have an addiction to pornography and many of the thoughts and desires in my head are the result of my addiction. I need to fundamentally change by putting effort in every day to recognize where my thoughts are coming from, and what is causing my emotions so I can deal with those things instead of coping.