Another story - probably the same as everyone else
- Thread starter GBS
- Start date
GBS
Respected Member
Cheers Freebie. This is bang onā¦..donāt expect, just carry on doing what we must do.
Ha haā¦.weāve been down this road before with our little teasing about mathematics! Remember you used to work on 30 days being a month and 60 being 2 etc, and I tried to point out the illogic! Thanks though, very much
1,251 days sober
13 days no MO
PrometheusUnbound
Active Member
Seconded. Hope all is well.
GBS
Respected Member
Thanks gents. Heās improving but itās not easy as he has to be monitored almost all day and night. Slight jet lag feeling!
Changing the subject, there has been much discussion elsewhere (see @Blondie string and @Phineas 808 discussion). Crux is that the constant mantra that weāre addicts, that we are powerless, we have a disease, and that porn has a hold over usā¦..donāt help. Being a fully paid up twelve step merchant myself, this discussion has been revelatory for me. I will not defend the twelve step method just because it worked for me. I am not a fool. Itās just harder being indoctrinated one way to then look the other way.
So I see it like thisā¦.itās psychological obviously. Allowing porn to be this big nasty beast gives it more power than it deserves. And if it is this huge beast then I am a beast too, because I am fighting it off. Exhausting to be a beast. I have realised this is where I will change. Porn is a pathetic whimpering low life con man. You donāt have to be a beast to defeat it. Just donāt hang around the street corners that he wanders past.
I did also read that if weāre not addicts, we are not diseased, and weāre not powerless then weāre not ārecoveringā because what are we recovering from? Now here I am less convinced about changing myself to that way of thinking. I am pretty sure I am in some form of rehabilitation. And as the site saysā¦.we are rebooting. I have liked that analogy from the start. Be clean, accept you were unclean before, but now just donāt do what you know makes you unclean.
Whether or not Gary Wilsonās work (Your Brain on Porn) is 100% right, I felt genuine physical changes in me when I stopped porn (and indeed MO). Pretty fucking obvious I suppose. I felt different when I changed, like someone who goes on a (well thought out) diet and feels better after a weekā¦.far from revelatory. Whatās my point? I think it is that very clearly all of us on here had something in our lives that was not good for us. How we address it is up to us, but taking the view that weāre out of control and powerless is sort of giving the other side a two goal start. While we fight onā¦err, do I mean fightā¦.not sureā¦.maybe carry on with our lives, letās be certain we know that we make the decisions and we are in control. Amen.
1,258 days sober
20 days no MO
Changing the subject, there has been much discussion elsewhere (see @Blondie string and @Phineas 808 discussion). Crux is that the constant mantra that weāre addicts, that we are powerless, we have a disease, and that porn has a hold over usā¦..donāt help. Being a fully paid up twelve step merchant myself, this discussion has been revelatory for me. I will not defend the twelve step method just because it worked for me. I am not a fool. Itās just harder being indoctrinated one way to then look the other way.
So I see it like thisā¦.itās psychological obviously. Allowing porn to be this big nasty beast gives it more power than it deserves. And if it is this huge beast then I am a beast too, because I am fighting it off. Exhausting to be a beast. I have realised this is where I will change. Porn is a pathetic whimpering low life con man. You donāt have to be a beast to defeat it. Just donāt hang around the street corners that he wanders past.
I did also read that if weāre not addicts, we are not diseased, and weāre not powerless then weāre not ārecoveringā because what are we recovering from? Now here I am less convinced about changing myself to that way of thinking. I am pretty sure I am in some form of rehabilitation. And as the site saysā¦.we are rebooting. I have liked that analogy from the start. Be clean, accept you were unclean before, but now just donāt do what you know makes you unclean.
Whether or not Gary Wilsonās work (Your Brain on Porn) is 100% right, I felt genuine physical changes in me when I stopped porn (and indeed MO). Pretty fucking obvious I suppose. I felt different when I changed, like someone who goes on a (well thought out) diet and feels better after a weekā¦.far from revelatory. Whatās my point? I think it is that very clearly all of us on here had something in our lives that was not good for us. How we address it is up to us, but taking the view that weāre out of control and powerless is sort of giving the other side a two goal start. While we fight onā¦err, do I mean fightā¦.not sureā¦.maybe carry on with our lives, letās be certain we know that we make the decisions and we are in control. Amen.
1,258 days sober
20 days no MO
Blondie
Respected Member
I love this, @GBS, and I agree. I think the most important matter in all of this, is to find whatever "method" works for each of us personally (as long as it's actually working) and go with that. At the end of the day, that's all that matters. I know that's all I care about when writing here at RN. If YOU think there is such a thing as recovery, and let's say I do not (I'm still not hundred precent sure myself) then who really cares if we both end up at the same destination? Because eventually some of this is semantics and nothing more. Hell, I still count days, but is that bad? Of course not. However, that's a part of "recovery" lingo and ideas, and someone who has read the Freedom Model might say, "Yo, Blondie, don't you see you're still using AA terms? You're still counting days, Bro. It's clear you still have "more work" to do!" Of course, this person would be ignored, and would be told to knock it off eventually, because each of us here are free to do what works best for us. However, now that I do understand where counting days comes from, it's nice to know that information and the history behind it. I might even one day change my mind and never do it again. But that would be MY CHOICE and no one else's. And that is what I love about the Freedom Model. The book doesn't necessarily tell anyone what to do, or judge them in any way, and that is a beautiful thing. There are no scare tactics.
When I read in its pages that AA only works for 5 to 10% of its attendees, that shocked me to my core and my first thought was, holy shit, what if that's also true for the 90% of "porn addicts"? What if the "sex addiction" diagnosis and dopamine narrative doesn't work for 90% of porn addicts? Because if true, that's a real and terrible problem that should addressed immediately. Not in a "we are right and you guys over there are wrong." No. But more in a, "if that model works for you, great, however, there's a whole other world of ways to think about this stuff, and everyone has a right to know and hear it so they can decide for themselves." My heart breaks for those who keep "trying" but have not (or they think they have not) reached the goal that they want when it comes to this shit habit. I know you know this, but I just wanted to clarify.
For myself, I've been unhappy and quite unsure of some of my beliefs over the years. My disjointed thread is a testament to that! This book, and the others I read over the last month, has given me some of the answers I needed. However, I have many more.
Let us all keep trucking and never give up looking for the answers we need.
Oh yeah, congrats on 1258 days clean.
Fucking hero.
When I read in its pages that AA only works for 5 to 10% of its attendees, that shocked me to my core and my first thought was, holy shit, what if that's also true for the 90% of "porn addicts"? What if the "sex addiction" diagnosis and dopamine narrative doesn't work for 90% of porn addicts? Because if true, that's a real and terrible problem that should addressed immediately. Not in a "we are right and you guys over there are wrong." No. But more in a, "if that model works for you, great, however, there's a whole other world of ways to think about this stuff, and everyone has a right to know and hear it so they can decide for themselves." My heart breaks for those who keep "trying" but have not (or they think they have not) reached the goal that they want when it comes to this shit habit. I know you know this, but I just wanted to clarify.
For myself, I've been unhappy and quite unsure of some of my beliefs over the years. My disjointed thread is a testament to that! This book, and the others I read over the last month, has given me some of the answers I needed. However, I have many more.
Let us all keep trucking and never give up looking for the answers we need.
Oh yeah, congrats on 1258 days clean.
Fucking hero.
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I wish to comment on this, GBS. Before I do, I want to qualify my statements by saying that I've not read, nor am familiar with the one or two books that Blondie mentions, so I'm not going to give them their credence. Obviously, I've heard some statements that I definitely disagree with.
That being said, the terms addict and addiction, I wouldn't say these are always semantical, but they definitely aren't always helpful. The core issue is identity and the sense of agency (freedom to choose).
We may ask ourselves a series of questions, which I would say apply to the majority of folk here, with the exception being some who, yes, had a habit, but lacked the emotional component.
If we define an addiction thus: Compulsive engagement in rewarding behavior despite negative consequences.
Did we act compulsively in our P, PMO or MO behaviors? Like, often times we told ourselves, 'No', even tried to stop, but found ourselves acting compulsively, with physiological signs of distress (sweats, shakes, shortness of breath, rapid heart rate).
Did we act on these compulsions despite potential negative, or even after negative consequences for our actions? Many have lost relationships, marriages, and careers- and often times even freedom- due to their compulsions.
Indeed, we weren't addicted to a substance, like drugs or alcohol, but we were addicted to a process, a process that can be mapped out and predicted (and still acted on, despite this!). Thus, for most of us, pornography and masturbation were in fact behavioral addictions- or process addictions.
While this wasn't a 'disease', and certainly not an incurable one, it was certainly a psychological maladaptive condition that we had to break out of, had to change and alter, had to stop and desist. And, for most of us here, we didn't overcome our behaviors by labeling ourselves, by denying that we had a problem, nor yet, by sheer willpower. We overcame, whether it all looked the same or not, or we even believed the same or not, by a shift in perspective. We somehow got our agency back, we became confident in our use of freewill again, we began to see ourselves different, to identify ourselves as healed, cured, recovered- or even, recovering.
This wasn't the endless recoveryism, where no one ever gets better (despite being sober), but we're healed from the dependency we had on a process that brought us both rewards and painful consequences.
Dopamine receptors are real, frying them through high-speed internet porn (via novelty) is real, PIED is real (though I've never suffered that), and so are the many approaches via mindfulness (rather than the disease-models of addiction) and habit change, by which millions have been helped.
GBS
Respected Member
Think you nailed it @Phineas 808 - and the simple truth is, certainly for me, that porn had a hold over me. It is highly regrettable and shameful when I consider the horrific damage this did to my wife, so I know there was a behaviour that I needed to change. Just how I did it was the question. My therapist talked about the addiction cycle and how we need to learn to get off it. This, along with the SAA various mantras, left me squawking that I had an addiction and I was an addict and even that I would be in recovery for the rest of my life. This is what I feel most freed from with yours and @Blondie ās analysis. And so I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
And to you, mate, thanks. I know that loads of my SAA pals keep relapsing, and I have been wondering why. I focussed on the fact that they didnāt address their actual causes, they just looked at the symptoms (porn), but I also now think that the sense of being labelled an addict is psychologically harmful to people who donāt really have a grasp on letting their free side come out. So I thank you so much as well.When I read in its pages that AA only works for 5 to 10% of its attendees, that shocked me to my core and my first thought was, holy shit, what if that's also true for the 90% of "porn addicts"? What if the "sex addiction" diagnosis and dopamine narrative doesn't work for 90% of porn addicts? Because if true, that's a real and terrible problem that should addressed immediately. Not in a "we are right and you guys over there are wrong." No. But more in a, "if that model works for you, great, however, there's a whole other world of ways to think about this stuff, and everyone has a right to know and hear it so they can decide for themselves." My heart breaks for those who keep "trying" but have not (or they think they have not) reached the goal that they want when it comes to this shit habit. I know you know this, but I just wanted to clarify.
For myself, I've been unhappy and quite unsure of some of my beliefs over the years. My disjointed thread is a testament to that! This book, and the others I read over the last month, has given me some of the answers I needed. However, I have many more.
And please understand that I have not taken your writings in any way to knock my previous theories. As John Maynard Keynes once wrote āwhen I am wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?ā. Thanks again, pal
GBS