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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2009 4:23:37 GMT -7
Hi. I am a porn addict. Porn is and has been a major part of my life. I am 54 years old and started looking at porn when I was 16. I am a member of a dysfunctional family. My mother had a bipolar mood disorder (she died in 1995) and I am diagnosed as having a variation of bipolar called cyclothymic disorder. My parents divorced when I was 11 or 12 years old and we (I have a brother and sister) had an abusive stepfather. My father is always mentally ill (disassociative disorder). My father remarried and I also have a half-brother and a half-sister. I no longer see my family for a variety of reasons which would take to long to explain. I have been married for 23 years and my wife knows I use porn. She understands why I use it and tolerates it but I am now having problems functioning sexually. I have hit rock bottom. I get sick when I think about wasting so much of my life using porn. Porn is a drug. I need to stop. I can't do it myself. I call myself a christian but I don't feel like one. Why does God allow me to keep using porn? I think my prayers must not be sincere. I need to depend on God but I don't know how.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2009 9:40:12 GMT -7
Welcome! You and I are about the same age, and we started using at similar times in our lives.
I think part of learning really to trust God is learning really to trust other people. As your account makes clear, we not only have a vertical problem with God; we also have a horizontal problem with our fellow humans. To get free, we have to address both those problems.
For me, that's a continuing day at a time process, but it started 4 1/2 years ago when I accepted that what I had been doing for so many years had not worked and would never work, and that I needed to get help. For me, that help took the form of professional counseling and of working the 12-step program - going to meetings, getting a sponsor, working the steps. In the 12-step fellowship, I found a whole community of people who were trusting God, turning their temptations over to God, really relying on God for everything of importance in their lives, and getting and staying sober as a result.
I learned (and am learning each day) how to depend upon God from my fellow addicts who were doing just that and who were finding both sobriety and serenity in the process.
I'm also learning a lot in counseling, about myself and about how, slowly, to reach for a more selfless existence.
The bottom line, in my opinion, is that we ought to treat our addiction just like any other addiction. We ought to look at what helps other addicts and to try to do those same things for ourselves. That's a daunting prospect. Who wants to start seeing a therapist and going to 12-step meetings and whatnot? But those things offer us and other addicts a chance to begin to learn to live a whole new life.
My recovery is still a work in progress, but the blessings of the path I endeavor to follow are beyond my wildest imagination. It's not about staying who we are, only without the porn. It's about developing new relationships of honesty and trust and faith and serenity, new relationships with God, with the people around us, and with ourselves. All those things can change, and all those things have to change if we are to find a way of life in which porn becomes unnecessary.
Welcome to that adventure!
Tim M.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2009 22:11:05 GMT -7
Thanks for your reply Tim. I'm going to call my insurance company today and get a referral to a psychologist. I also found a 12 step sex addiction group located in Philadelphia and am going to call and get information as to times and locations of meetings. I have kidded myself for a long time that I could do this alone through a combination of prayer and will power. I read somewhere that part of my problem is that I need to ask God to help me with my porn addiction for God's glory, not my own. I also need to understand that porn is a symptom, not the underlying cause or root of the problem.
Marshman
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