The Wall

Just over three weeks in, I've hit the wall.

The going is suddenly much tougher than it has been since I started this blog.

Because I've been tougher on myself regarding MB and non-nude images, because there has been no outlet for my addiction in 24 days, it's hitting me harder than it did 3 weeks into my last 'clean' stint.

However, the freedoms I allowed myself then, the excursions to the bikini line and freedom to MB pretty much whenever the mood arose, were undoubtedly major factors in my Christmas fall.

Since yesterday, the problem has been in my mind. The scenes that led me here back in November are replaying subconsciously. They are a distraction, and a temptation. Maybe a peek would stop the distraction. Maybe it would lead to a binge. Is that a chance worth taking? I don't think so. The prize - freedom from porn and the satisfaction of not letting it beat me - will last longer than a brief orgasmic rush in front of a PC.

I will run on. I will complete this race.

Masturbation

Well, that’s a title that doesn’t mince words.

I’m not here to obsess about it, but to express some thoughts I’ve had lately.

In my last post, I’d had a tough day. In retrospect, I think that has something to do with the way it started. After 18 days porn-free, a week without MBing and about 5 days without sexual intimacy, I was pretty tense.

I can quite happily MB thinking about my wife, or just for the pure selfish pleasure of the act itself. On occasions that has been enough to kill the sexual tension and remove the urge to seek porn. As it is the porn I'm quitting, not the MB, I MB'd. I thought that would quench the urge, but later I began to really feel the need for porn.I resisted, but I am beginning to reconsider whether MB is bad (for me) or not. I'm not promising to stop entirely at this stage, but having set the precedent of going a week without, I will try to keep that as a maximum frequency.

Even so, I am viewing MB with caution from here on.

Ups and downs

It's been an up and down kind of day.

I've been feeling restless. The urges have been strong.

At one point I had to physically leave the house in order to remove the need to seek some internet porn.

As I walked, I prayed for God to remove the temptation.

And, almost before I had started the prayer, I heard God say to me: I've already done it.

I'm sure I finished my walk with a bit more of a spring in my step, because I realised that was absolutely true. I realised that one of the reasons I was feeling restless was that I couldn't use my work to take my mind off it. My broadband connection had gone on the blink.

God is still with me in this.

Thnak You.

Two weeks clean (reprise)

Yes, I know the posts haven't been that regular, but it's not because I've slipped again. In fact, I've come up with some new plans.

I've signed up to the support forum at no-porn.com, where I have found a couple of other guys at the 14 day stage... I think there may be a support group within a support group starting there.

And I'm rewarding myself a quid for every day I remain clean, until I can complete my Buffy DVD collection (which, if I can keep it up, will be sometime in mid-May). I am a little disappointed that it has taken me almost two months to get back to this point - if I hadn't fallen at Christmas I'd have season five by now, but here I am...

Onwards and upwards, eh?

A minority of one

As expected, I was indeed the only one who thought my unorthodox approach was a good idea. JetSetWonko was first to raise doubts, so I wandered off and found an internet support board for my addiction, where numerous other people told me it was a stupid idea. So thanks to them, too, and Little Tim, I just did it.

I was in two minds - I knew I should do it, got my final remaining CD of porn out of its hiding place ready to destroy, but couldn't quite bring myself to do it.

So I loaded it up instead. D'oh!

But at the first glimpse of a tiny thumbnail of one of the harder images, I realised what I was doing, shut everything down, erased the disk and now, once again, live in a porn free home. Which is good, although I do feel strangely empty; it took me ages to build up that collection of pictures. All I can do now is pray I can stay strong enough not to go and find them all again.

A Risky Game?

It's a good question:

are you sure it's genuine, that these are valid reasons and not just an attempt to justify keeping a porn stash?

I'm not sure of much at the moment, so far as this is concerned.
But one thing I am sure of, if I do slip back into the habit, there are certain websites I will go back to first. And when that happens, I will feel the need to go back and retrieve all the free pictures I know are available. The obsession with collecting the images will eat hours of my life, and do nothing but harm for my attempts to give up. I know this from experience.
I don't need to use porn, I know that much, and while I have a collection hidden away I don't need to look for it, so the whole situation is nicely controlled.
I know it's far from an ideal solution. Maybe part of me is convinced this is just a phase, that porn will, at some point, become an acceptable way to pass the time again.
I don't know what else to say without sounding like justifying a stash is exactly what I'm trying to do.
Yes, it's a risky game.
But I dealt this hand, and I'm going to play it.

Lessons from a fall

When I started looking at internet porn, it was just out of curiosity. After all, the web was infamous for it. And, the web being what it is, I found a free porn site, one link led to another, until following these I found a girl I particularly liked the look of.

Then the obsession kicked in. I’d find out what sites she modelled for, and pick up any free pictures I could find. I’d find the free teaser pages for those sites, and trawl them for her. When I found the likely source of pictures for the object of my lust, I checked for them repeatedly. I became some kind of cyber-stalker.

In the process of all this, of course, I’d stumble across something else that I liked, and trawl for two, three, four… however many of my little fetishes took my fancy at the time.

The alarming thing is, during my fall at the end of last year, I spent many happy hours downloading the same pictures I had deleted a month or two earlier. Looking back at this now, it appears that my obsession was with searching these pictures out, more than with using them to get my rocks off.

So – and I know this is a completely unorthodox solution which anyone dealing with addicts will want to condemn – I didn’t delete them. I have put them away where I can’t easily access them at any time, and I have reinstated all the measures I can to prevent access to any fresh images. I am resolved that I will fill my spare time (especially spare net time) with the things of God. And I will take one day at a time.

Obviously I don’t know whether this will work, but analysing my behaviour as a porn addict, I think it stands a chance.

Addiction or Obsession?

Which is my problem? Is there, indeed, a difference?

Stedman's Medical Dictionary defines addiciton as

Habitual psychological and physiological dependence on a substance or practice beyond one's voluntary control

and obsession as

Compulsive preoccupation with an idea or an unwanted feeling or emotion, often accompanied by symptoms of anxiety

Does the apparent ease with which I went without the practice for five weeks last year mean I am not addicited? Or does the ease with which I fell back into the habit mean I am?

It is/was certainly a compulsive preoccupation. It was certainly unwanted. I guess there was anxiety, but was that due to the obsession, or its effects? Does it matter?

Porn addiction is a known phenomenon, which is why I have so far considered myself an addict. I also know that I am a person who could easily become addicted; that's why I don't drink or smoke, although caffiene is a vice I have.

So, so far, so addicted. However, I think a closer look at obsession is called for.

This is what www.sane.org.uk has to say about obsession:

Obsessions are recurrent thoughts which are distressing and disturbing and which intrude forcibly against conscious resistance. The person experiencing them usually realises that they are irrational, but finds that fighting them only increases the anxiety.

I think I can tick the boxes there.

The obsessions are often accompanied by a compulsive desire to behave in a particular way which is almost impossible to resist.

So, an obsession leading to an addiction, perhaps?

Obsessions are often made more upsetting because they are associated with things that you find shameful. Thus, a religious person may be preoccupied with what he regards as unwholesome sexual ideas.

OK, I don't like to call myself religious, but I think they've got me there too.

I think that's plenty to think on for the moment, more thoughts on this subject will no doubt follow tomorrow.

A Bigger Wagon

Boredom was my downfall last month, the reason I fell off the wagon and had such difficulty getting back on. I think I’ve shown myself that I can stay off porn, as difficult as it is, but it’s boredom I need to avoid as much, if not more.

So, essentially, I need to find something to fill the gap this addiction has left.Several obvious options occur. Fancying myself as a writer, I could attempt to inject something of literary worth into this blog. Or I could get back to writing proper articles and selling them to magazines.

Alternatively, I could attempt to further my career; continue my professional education, that ought to focus any spare moments I happen to find.

Or I could study something really worthwhile, like, say, the Bible.

And is there any better way to waste a few minutes than just chatting with a friend? Yeah, I think spending some quality time with my best bud should be the first priority. He’s bound to have some great advice on which of the others would work.

I think I know what he’ll say though. I think he’ll point me to the bigger wagon that I need.

After all, is there any bigger wagon than God?

Resolution Baby

I’m not big on New Year’s Resolutions; they’re only made to be broken.

So, with that in mind, I’m not making it a resolution to avoid porn in 2005. (Just to prove my point, had I made such a resolution, I’d have broken it on day one. Ho hum.)

I am, however, making it a resolution to avoid it on 8th January, 2005.

Wish me luck.

Precis

Yes, it's been a while, and during that time I've fallen off the wagon, undergone an enforced de-tox by spending the holidays with the in-laws (it would be a braver man than me that goes within 50 yards of my ma-in-law with a mucky photo!), and then fallen off the damn wagon again.

I think I need a bigger wagon.