I am that Dumb

So I named the blog the relapsing addict because that's what I am. I've been struggling to be free from porn for about 13 years now. The longest term of "sobriety" that I've had, if I'm honest is about 8 months.  The past 3 or so years, I regularly go about 8 months with out crossing the pornography line. The problem is that 8 months of sobriety is really only about 4 weeks without looking for images to lust after. Then that turns into looking for "not-porn" to try to satiate the monster inside me, which eventually leads to relapse.

I think that pornography addiction is interesting because while we say we have been "sober" from porn for such and such a time, if other addicts are like me, we are really hedging and minimizing until it can't be done anymore. I'd guess that the normal Christian male who looks at women to lust after them is doing the same thing.  I refer to these times that I look for "not-porn" as asterisks on my sobriety date. I added one last night.

There are a myriad of reasons that I could say caused that latest asterisk, but truthfully they happen so often lately that I don't really feel the need to justify a reason. I just need to quit. But how to quit?

Obviously I don't know or I would not have started this little blog. But in my time in recovery I have learned one thing. When I am truly sober without the asterisks, it is because of the Grace of Jesus Christ. That is the only thing that has kept me sober at all in these years, and for that I am grateful.

I'm an Addict

I have been thinking about starting a blog for a long time, I just never got around to it. The truth is that I have been busy, but the other truth is that I am not sure if I like blogs in general because they remind me of facebook and instagram, and other social media sites, and I don’t like social media that much. Maybe it’s because I am an old fuddy duddy, but maybe it’s because I can’t handle reading about other people’s life without comparing it to my own and I don’t like the comparison that I come up with. 

I realize it’s my problem, but there is a saying that our insides never matched what we saw on the outsides of others, and I think social media is a perfect example of the outsides of others. I am sure that I am not the first to decry the fact that people don’t post the whole picture on facebook. It wouldn’t make sense to do so. No one wants to know the bad stuff.  But here I am at night in my room trying to type so that I can sleep better and I think I’d rather tell the whole story.

I don’t like social media because I still can’t handle it. I can’t handle the internet. There’s too much porn on it, and I struggle with the desire to look at it. I find that facebook for me ends up being a link to pictures of people that I find attractive, and I can’t handle it. It makes me want to look at more.

I met an alcoholic who said that if his brain were a computer it would only have 2 buttons, “now” and “more”. I can relate. So in an effort to beat insomnia I am going to share the whole story on this blog. It is probably a bad idea.