A Desperate Escape

WoundedSparrow

Active Member
I've relapsed for the millionth time. My mental state is near collapse. I almost made it to 90 days back in February. I felt like I was on top of the world. I felt amazing. My dream is to escape. So I'll start again. Here we go.

Day 1. My mental state hasn't been this poor in a long time. I feel like I'm losing my mind due to sexual OCD and anxiety. I just want to cleanse my mind and be ok. I want to escape, as I have for 9 long years. I need to do this. I've got porn blockers, allies, and God on my side. I have everything, now I just have to use it. I feel I'll break down if I relapse again. So let's go already.
 

grantis

Member
YES DUDE!! Stoked to see you here posting after a relapse. Takes initiative.

I relapsed myself last night worse than I have in MANY months. It wrecked me. Thats why im here. To engage with a community hellbent on growth.

Have patience with yourself brother. This is a terrible addiction. Take it as a lesson, not as a punishment.
 

WoundedSparrow

Active Member
YES DUDE!! Stoked to see you here posting after a relapse. Takes initiative.

I relapsed myself last night worse than I have in MANY months. It wrecked me. Thats why im here. To engage with a community hellbent on growth.

Have patience with yourself brother. This is a terrible addiction. Take it as a lesson, not as a punishment.
I've been an addict for over 8 years. I've slowly been losing my sanity and I feel like I'm at a breakpoint. Porn has messed up my mind horribly. I keep thinking horrible thoughts, sexual ones. I had OCD most of my life and porn made it 10x worse. I NEED to escape. I was almost at 90 days mid-February and I haven't been able to go 3 weeks since then. Either I kick porn or it's going to kill me. I rediscovered life's joy during those 87 days of sobriety. I will find joy again.
 

WoundedSparrow

Active Member
Day 3. I've been spared a mental breakdown for the time being, although my ordeal has left me shaken and disturbed. I am slowly trying to pick up the pieces and start anew. I've been thinking about the hopelessness I feel now, the same hopelessness I feel after all relapses. I need to remember this important advice to myself: You've done this before. You've gone 55 days, relapsed, and then gone 87 days more. It gets so much easier after the first few weeks and you CAN do it. Keep going. Don't stop no matter what. You WILL do this.
 

WoundedSparrow

Active Member
Day 5. Mind is still a bit shaky, but I've been recovering much better than I thought I would. I've been thinking about this past year and everything that's happened. My faith has an important role to play here. When I dedicated myself to becoming a better man and kicking porn, amazing things happened in my life. When I relapsed and fell of the wagon, things got worse. I found an amazing woman and subsequently lost her because porn made me into a man who wasn't worthy of her. The experience was a blessing in disguise, though. The pain of losing her finally drove me to tell people in my life about my struggles. With their help, I began to improve. I found a job I liked closer to home with people I genuinely enjoyed working with. I got a second job on weekends in my degree field I hope to move up in. I felt joy in life beyond anything I ever experienced in the last 8 years. The latter half of 2021 was amazing. Then, after doing so well for so long, I relapsed on Valentine's Day 2022. I haven't gone more than three weeks without a relapse since then and it's killing me once again. I lost faith and sight of myself and my goals, so I failed. God has been instrumental throughout my ordeal, but I have been lacking faith and that lack of faith has proven destructive. Porn addiction is the lynchpin in my misery. I've found that no matter what other problems I'm facing, porn outweighs them all and binds them together. When I am clean and sober, my life seems to get on track in extraordinary ways. So I have resolved to focus on kicking porn as my primary purpose in life right now and leaving the rest of my problems to God. When I act as I should, life goes as it should. I will hold to this faith moving forward and march out of the darkness into the light.
 

WoundedSparrow

Active Member
Day 7. I'll be a week sober after today is over. Still having some unwanted thoughts and my stress levels are aa bit high, but that may just be because my job is terrible. Anyway, my mind is going to take a while before I can hit my stride again. Went to the gym today and it was difficult to concentrate given what some of the girls were wearing. I always try to avert my gaze and put it out of my mind, but today I got more than an eyeful. I've got my sights set on 3 weeks of sobriety as a milestone. I haven't been able to achieve that since I fell off the wagon back in February. Then I'll go from there.
 

WoundedSparrow

Active Member
Day 9. Feeling better each day that I march onward. A curious event just happened. I was using my laptop and for some reason, the filter failed. I use CovenantEyes to fairly good effect, but I noticed that it wasn't working properly and decided to test it. I got porn. Straight Google search results of porn. Sites accessible. I browsed for a brief instant before closing out, and then the filter turned on again. I'm not sure if it's the prayers working, the determination to run from misery, or the fact that I'm dead tired, but I resisted. For now I'm safe and for that, I'm happy.
 

WoundedSparrow

Active Member
Day 11. That brush with porn last night woke up the addiction in my head. I didn't watch any videos, just glanced at the thumbnails for maybe a minute and then exited out until the filter came back up. Now I find myself wishing for the filter to go down again, even though I don't want it to. I had a porn-related dream last night, dry but still. My OCD has been elevated today and I think I'm in the middle of a flatline. I feel tired and sluggish, meanwhile I have the entire day off to do whatever I like and nothing seems to satisfy me. It's a pity this usually hits me on the weekend, but that's the price I pay for relapse. The good news is that I know it's only temporary. My mind should clear up within a day or two. Here's looking at tomorrow.
 

WoundedSparrow

Active Member
Day 13. My OCD is worse than usual, but I'm feeling much better after less than two weeks sober. It's amazing how quickly the balance can shift. One relapse can derail everything yet a little diligence can clean up the mind in short order. I have to always remember there's a fine line I walk and that the balance is delicate. All it takes is one slip and I'm back in my pit of misery. But even now, porn tempts me. I find that part of me wishing for the filter to fail again, meanwhile the better part of me knows that submitting to the addiction means nothing but terrible consequences. I must pray that I continue to be strong. I have to defeat this demon inside my head.
 

TryingHarder

Well-Known Member
I also struggle with an OCD, and when combined with a porn addiction, it's very bad news.

Sounds like you're struggling with old habits (still looking at porn sites and trusting in your filter to block the content). It's important that you mess up the trail of breadcrumbs that lead you back to porn. I speak from experience - my OCD doesn't like it if my life doesn't follow the same pattern every day. Do what you can to alter your usual routine - turn off the computer, go for a walk, clean house - whatever it takes.
 

WoundedSparrow

Active Member
Day 17. OCD is still in overdrive, but less so than when the week began. I have to continue to remain diligent. Porn wants me back and fell so much better without it. I need to remember that the vast majority of all of the misery in my life is caused by my addiction. It is without a doubt, as I've said previously, the lynchpin of my misery. If I continue to walk away, my life will continue to improve. But if I choose the opposite, the opposite will happen. There is nowhere to go but up in the absence of porn and nowhere to go but down in its presence. And you despise what it's done to you. You have a choice, you aren't a slave. Walk away with your head held high.
 

WoundedSparrow

Active Member
Day 1. Relapsed last night. It seems I was unable to walk away. I'm trying to go through my mind an retrace my steps to figure out what happened. I was doing well and now I'm back in the hole again. The trouble is going to be getting out of the hole. After a relapse, it's as though your willpower gets kneecapped. Shattered. Doesn't matter if it's been 3 days or 3 months. It's like building up a wall and then the enemy bursts through and you have to fight them off and painstakingly rebuild what you lost in the battle. But I'm getting too philosophical. I need to break down what happened:

-First mistake was redownloading a dating app. I don't use them for porn purposes, but the reaction my mind had to the idea of looking for girls was undeniably porn-driven. I felt it in my head at the time and had to double-take. I've since deleted it. I said I was done looking for girls through apps. I have to focus on self-improvement. I said I'd let God guide me to the right woman when He felt I was ready. Maybe I'm being overdramatic, but I feel like this may be my punishment for my arrogance. Either way, I'll never use a dating app again until long after I've kicked porn. And by then, I may have found someone. It doesn't matter. I'm off of them indefinitely.

-I can't forget that I was 17 days sober and my mind was wreaking havoc on me. I'm not sure how much of this can simply be boiled down to withdrawal driving me to it, but I can't discount the possibility, no matter how small. It certainly wasn't the main contributing factor, in my opinion. I was suffering sexual OCD, but no cravings.

-Snapchat. It's impossible to find porn on Snapchat (praise the Lord) but there's no shortage of half-naked girls, most of whom advertise an OnlyFans. It's all soft-core stuff, but it whets the mind's appetite for porn. Usually I have no issue with the app itself, although I may need to get rid of it now. It's proven too much of a problem. I didn't even glance at it until the after the dating app incident. Then I think it just fanned the flames.

-My PC is locked up pretty tight. I use CovenantEyes and for the most part, it works great. I've even blocked the option to Google search, so I can still access sites that I use regularly, but I can't browse for sites that might not be filtered. Make no mistake, I've learned the hard way that there is no 100% certainty in preventing porn access. The system works great, but it's not perfect. A few entries back, the filter failed entirely and I had access to all the porn I wanted. I rejected this and allowed the filter to reactivate. But last night I broke my rule about keeping my laptop out of my room. Tempted by the aforementioned issues, I began trying to break the filter. Using Wikipedia, I found a list of active search engines and began using them to search for porn sites that the filter didn't block. I found one. The rest is history. I've since added every single search engine to my block list. I can't use them anymore. I know this isn't a cure-all, there's no such thing. However, the least I can do is plug the holes in my wall when I discover them. The filter can still fail and there may be other methods of circumventing it I have yet to discover. I need to be ready when that time comes.

Right now I just feel numb, like after most relapses. I'm upset with myself and I'm definitely not looking forward to the week ahead. But, as I've written before, this is far from the first time I've been in this situation. I want to escape and I will come hell or high water. I will be free of this. And I've overcome relapse before, gone on streaks I never believed I could achieved. It's time to get back to that. I will continue to pray and journal. I've decided that I need to look at this journal of mine every single day, even if there's nothing I want to write. I need to beat all of the information into my head. The miseries of failure, the allure of success, and the knowledge and motivation provided to myself by myself in days past. If you're reading this, pray for me. Once again I go forth onto the road to redemption.
 

anubu0

Active Member
Hey man. I empathized with basically everything that you just said. After a relapse you just feel so shattered because despite trying to conjure up all your willpower to defeat P, you succumb, which has a crushing blow on your self esteem, self respect, and overall confidence. I too have been trying to recover for a while and I genuinely respect your honesty when handling a relapse. You acknowledged the problems that you faced that ultimately led to the relapse. Now you need to address them; I think Gabe (it may have been Noah Church actually) once said on a recovery podcast with Gary Wilson that you can't expect to repeat the same behaviors and have different outcomes. Change and address the problems that you identified, create a safer environment for you reboot, and keep trudging on.
 
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