Starting over and trying something new

[Struggle Within]

Today is my first day trying a new approach and beginning this journal.  I am grateful that I have found this forum as I believe making my addiction public is exactly what I need to do to have success. 

I?m 33 years old and I have been addicted to porn for 20 years.  I?ve tried to quit countless times during those 20 years.  I?ve deleted my entire stash many, many times and I?ve gone as long as 6 months porn free on multiple occasions.

In most cases, I fail after just two weeks of effort.  But I?ve never kept a journal before, and I?ve never used a forum before.  I?ve always fought this on my own in complete secrecy. 
I have a wife and two children.  My main trigger to use porn is when I am home alone.  I get a huge rush of adrenaline when I am home alone and feel a very strong urge to begin using.  This has become a major issue recently because I work from home.  This change caused me to majorly binge in my usage and I am no longer being productive at work at all.  My career has been growing rapidly and I have been given every opportunity to be successful and I have been sabotaging myself with this addiction. 

If I refocus my energy away from porn and back to my career I am going to be a very good provider for my family.  If I refocus my energy away from porn and back to my wife and children, I am going to be a much better more attentive, more loving husband and father. 

I have so much to gain my quitting. 

Since I usually fail after two weeks, my first goal is simply to go 30 days.

 

[hateporn21]

Hi SW:

Rightly said. It is good to know that you are aware and looking forward to leave porn. Best of luck to you dude.

 

[Jackuk121]

Welcome to the Forum & best of Luck...I never thought I could go for a month but I have....so will you

 

[benhj]

Welcome to the forum. Keep coming back and checking in

 

[CrateDane]

Welcome aboard the train. It is good that you already know the most obvious dangers for you, namely being home alone. Is there any chance you can come into work instead of working from home ?
Also, have you considered telling your wife ?

 

[Struggle Within]

Day 2!

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome.  I feel great today!  I spent the day yesterday making sure all porn was completely cleaned out.  I?ve checked everything and I confident that it is all cleared out and deleted. 

Whenever I do this, it is funny how peaceful I become with the concept of death.  One of my biggest fears is that I will die with a porn collection in my possession.  It would be a real tragedy if I wasn?t able to defeat this in my lifetime.  I am so happy with my life, I?m so happy with my accomplishments.  I?ve been a good person, I?ve helped others in need, volunteer regularly, and I don?t have any enemies.  Porn is the only dark cloud in my life that I am ashamed of, and I don?t want it to be there anymore. 

I want to do this for my son, he is very young right now and I have several years before he will begin struggling with this.  When he is old enough and ready to hear the message, I want to tell him honestly about my struggles and what I did to overcome them.  I want to be someone he can talk to about his struggles, because that is something that I never had with my parents. 
I also want to help other men out there, when opportunities present themselves.  A few years ago a man confessed to his porn addiction as something he was struggling with.  I wasn?t ready to quite then, so I didn?t say anything to him about my problem.  I want to correct that in the future the next time an opportunity presents itself.  I?m working on getting rid of the shame of something that nearly every man struggles with, so that I can talk about it next time. 

Humans were made to be loved, not used, so I will NOT look at porn today.     

 

[Struggle Within]

Welcome aboard the train. It is good that you already know the most obvious dangers for you, namely being home alone. Is there any chance you can come into work instead of working from home ?
Also, have you considered telling your wife ?

No, I have to work from home.  My company realized it was much cheaper to stop paying for an office building and have us all work from home, so there is no office building any more.  That's fine though, because this presents me with the opportunity to strengthen my will power.  There will always be situations in the future where I am home alone.  I simply must get stronger in my will power and train my brain new behaviors of what I do when I am home alone.  Working at home gives me great opportunities for positive behaviors like regular exercise.  I need to train my brain to default to these positive behaviors in the future.  I'm creating a list of all my triggers and what behaviors I want to replace them with.

I have thought about telling my wife.  In the past she has seen images that I forgot to delete.  And one time she saw a file name that was clearly porn and she read it out loud but then just said okay and left the room.  She has made comments in the past stating that I can do whatever I want as long as she doesn't know about it.  She has had family secrets come out in the past where she has said that she wish she didn't know the secret and she doesn't want to know my secrets.  As I work on eliminating the shame, I will grow to a place where I can talk about it with her.  Fighting with her and upsetting her is one of my triggers, and I'm just not strong enough right now in my recovery to talk with her about it. 

 

[benhj]

I think its good that you want to get honest with people. God knows I struggle with it.. But I also need to cautious. I have to ask myself the reasons for my honesty (on such rare occasions). Do I just want to alleviate my own guilt by bearing my soul? Or would I truly be benefitting the people I'm being honest with? Somebody once told me that, yes, part of recovery is saying sorry to people, but only if it doesn't hurt those people in the process.

Keep coming back man! The road is long, but God willing, we can do this!

 

[Struggle Within]

I had a nice weekend.  I was able to get through it fairly easily.  I?m not usually alone on the weekend, so I don?t usually look at porn on the weekend. 

However, I did have a stressful morning this morning from work.  Because of all the stress I was feeling, I wanted to look at porn as soon as I was alone, and I knew that if I began looking at it, all of today would be lost.  I heard that eating carbs helps relieve stress.  So I took a 30 minute break, ate some waffles and watched ESPN.  I feel better now.  I don?t feel the need to look at porn anymore. 

I?m approaching a full week porn free, and I?m happy about that.  The second week has historically proven to be more difficult to get through.  I need to keep updating my action plan for what I do when things like stress happen and make sure I have all my triggers covered.  Then hopefully it will just come down to practice, practice, practice, until I ingrain these new behaviors and they become second nature.

 

[Struggle Within]

I think its good that you want to get honest with people. God knows I struggle with it.. But I also need to cautious. I have to ask myself the reasons for my honesty (on such rare occasions). Do I just want to alleviate my own guilt by bearing my soul? Or would I truly be benefitting the people I'm being honest with? Somebody once told me that, yes, part of recovery is saying sorry to people, but only if it doesn't hurt those people in the process.

Keep coming back man! The road is long, but God willing, we can do this!

I think I came across as overly eager to be honest with people and talk about my problem.  Believe me, I have no plans to do that anytime soon. 

Right now, I?m no position to tell anyone anything.  I?ve only been porn free for 5 days.  I have no idea if I?ve figured out how to fix this problem yet. 

I guess in my previous post I was being overly optimistic about the future and envisioning a scenario where I may be able to help someone else who is struggling.  I feel like, since I didn?t speak up the last time, and I acted like I didn?t have that problem; I left that guy all alone to fight the problem on his own.  I don?t know if he knows about this forum, where I already feel so supportive and I feel very hopeful about the future because of this support.  I even like the little goal tracker at the bottom too because I?m a very goal oriented person.  If this works and if in the future if I have found a system that works for me, I would like to share my success story if and only if the situation presents itself.   

 

[neon tiger]

Congrats on embarking on this journey bud. You certainly have a lot of good reasons to commit to your freedom from porn. I relate to your ideas about death and what is left behind- it often crosses my mind when i am changing directions on this matter.

Can you go work at a coffee shop or the local library? Pack a bag of workout clothes and hit the gym before or after. Create a new routine that gets you out of home. You may need to print or mail, but you can organize yourself so all that is done at once upon your return home.  Just a thought.

Best of luck, and welcome!

 

[beren]

Hey SW;

I just wanted to stop in and cheer you on. I work from home, too; I've been doing it for almost 7 years now, so I know how much of a hindrance it can be with this addiction. In my experience the times when I'm particularly stressed or dealing with something negative at work have been the hardest; so it's great that you're already coming up with tactics to address that.

I know several folks have offered advice to try to get you out of your home office. I don't know what kind of work you do, but maybe you could bring some of your coworkers to you, so to speak? There are a lot of tools like Sqwiggle or even something simpler like Skype or Google Hangouts. I sometimes like to have my coworkers "in the room" with me that way to help me from feeling too isolated, and I'm thinking it might be helpful to cut down on the sense that I'm alone, which can obviously be a big trigger. Don't know if that's helpful to you or not but I thought I'd mention it.

I think the fact that you've gone six months (!) before is commendable, and the fact that you've done it basically on your own should I think give you great hope for what you can do with some support

 

[Struggle Within]

Yesterday sucked!  Although I was in a good mood when I wrote yesterday?s journal, I quickly became stressed again.  I felt tormented, I really wanted to give in and look at porn to soothe the stress. 

I couldn?t focus on my work, so I just took my work laptop and left my home office and just went into the living room and watched tv all day.  I was responding to e-mails and I was working, but I wasn?t working hard and I wasn?t as productive as I would like to be.  Watching TV is not my ideal solution, but it did prevent me from PMO?ing. 

I got through my first day of being heavily tempted, and that is what matters most.  I tested my will power and my weak will power just got a little stronger.  Now I?m only one day away from getting through my first week!  I?m proud of myself and I feel much better about today. 

Being a goal oriented person, I?ve written down my work goals for today which should keep me busy for most of the day. 

 

[Struggle Within]

Congrats on embarking on this journey bud. You certainly have a lot of good reasons to commit to your freedom from porn. I relate to your ideas about death and what is left behind- it often crosses my mind when i am changing directions on this matter.

Can you go work at a coffee shop or the local library? Pack a bag of workout clothes and hit the gym before or after. Create a new routine that gets you out of home. You may need to print or mail, but you can organize yourself so all that is done at once upon your return home.  Just a thought.

Best of luck, and welcome!

Yes, I am planning on doing things to get out of the house more.  I would like to go and work from a coffee shop every now and then, although that is more of a challenge when I have conference calls. 

I'd like to join a gym or some kind of fitness location that offers mid-day workout sessions.  I think that will really help. 

 

[Struggle Within]

Hey SW;

I just wanted to stop in and cheer you on. I work from home, too; I've been doing it for almost 7 years now, so I know how much of a hindrance it can be with this addiction. In my experience the times when I'm particularly stressed or dealing with something negative at work have been the hardest; so it's great that you're already coming up with tactics to address that.

I know several folks have offered advice to try to get you out of your home office. I don't know what kind of work you do, but maybe you could bring some of your coworkers to you, so to speak? There are a lot of tools like Sqwiggle or even something simpler like Skype or Google Hangouts. I sometimes like to have my coworkers "in the room" with me that way to help me from feeling too isolated, and I'm thinking it might be helpful to cut down on the sense that I'm alone, which can obviously be a big trigger. Don't know if that's helpful to you or not but I thought I'd mention it.

I think the fact that you've gone six months (!) before is commendable, and the fact that you've done it basically on your own should I think give you great hope for what you can do with some support

Thanks, man!  I really appreciate that!    We do use Skype at work, but the problem is that we all work very independently on the needs of our own assigned clients.  No one shares clients and as a result we don't do much collaboration.  This has both negative and positive benefits, but as an independent person it works out well for me.  I do agree with a lot of the advice that I have been given and I need to get out of the house more.  Getting out of the house more and going to coffee shops or gyms will also help me not feel isolated.

 

[benhj]

Congrats on the six days man! Keep coming back!

 

[Struggle Within]

One Week Complete!  Awesome!

I?m still feeling great!  I had a major TRIGGER show up in my mail yesterday.  SI?s annual February publication arrived in my mail box.  For me, accidentally seeing a non-porn bikini image of an attractive woman can immediately make me relapse and binge and PMO.  This trigger usually happens on the tv, but this time it happened in my mail box.  Thankfully my will power was strong yesterday and I threw the magazine away and I did not relapse.  I will not be renewing my subscription to SI, so that will prevent this from happening again in the future.  I can get all the sports info I need online, there really is no need for the magazine. 

I really believe that the key to my success yesterday was this support group.  This journal, and this support group are really keeping my battle on the forefront of my mind.  It forces me to think about it each and every morning as I write; and writing this journal is even becoming a new and healthy habit for me.  I can feel that I am stronger because of it and I have a lot of optimism about kicking this addiction for good this time.

Thanks for helping me get through my first week everyone!

 

[CrateDane]

Good on you for staying strong and not succumbing to the SI triggers!
It does help to know that there are people here reading our journals, feeling with us and the thought of having to reset that counter is also a strong motivator

 

[Struggle Within]

I had a very productive day at work yesterday. 

I made an excellent suggestion for improving our product.  I completed a couple of time consuming tasks.  I was also able to exercise yesterday.

That is exactly why I?m doing this.  I?m rebooting my brain, and then retraining my brain to be highly effective which will unlock my true potential. 

I will not look at porn today! 

 

[benhj]

gotta love those natural highs. None of the artificial stimulation crap. Keep updating us with your progress!