Growing Pains

Understanding how far along the path to being the person I’d hope to be through making the decision to address my addiction is something that I’m thinking about at the moment. I don’t think there will ever be a moment when I think “That’s it, I’m fixed”, so in common with what a lot of former addicts have to do, I think the lesson for me is simply “one day at a time”.

I hadn’t really considered this thought until yesterday, when my therapist and I discussed it for a few minutes, and I said to him exactly what I’ve just expressed in the opening paragraph; I will probably have to do battle with the urge to seek out relief through porn every day, so perhaps setting myself a target of X number of days free of porn isn’t the way I ought to be thinking? Maybe I need to wear the title of ‘former addict’ properly and accept that I simply need to tick off one day after another, reminding myself at the end of each day without using porn that I have grown a little stronger and grown a little more as a person by making the right choices each day.

This isn’t something I ever imagined myself having to do. “I’m not an addict, right?” Wrong. I was addicted, and because of that addiction I will need to show change my perceptions of myself, as painful as that might be. I don’t know if I’m ready to wear the tag of ‘former addict’ too comfortably, but I hope that one day that’s possible. I’d like to be able to share my experiences in a more personal way, not hidden behind a pseudonym, albeit one I’m quite proud of and which I think is actually quite funny. I can write a blog entry every day, and may well do so, but I don’t believe anything possesses the power to affect change than being able to talk openly about the impact of a problem like addiction.

There are lots of former drug and alcohol addicts whose perspectives and insight into the problem of addiction are valued, so why shouldn’t the same apply to porn addiction? The answer is the stigma that still exists. We exist in a world where to address someone as a ‘wanker’ is thrown around with no-one batting an eyelid; it simply doesn’t register as an insult because of people’s perceptions of the act it refers to, masturbation. “It’s natural, everyone does it” tends to be the response, even if people don’t want to admit to it. Our modern world is one where discussion of sexual orientations and preferences is encouraged and we are urged to embrace our sexuality. For the record, I don’t think that’s the wrong path at all; sexual expression is an important part of who we are, but my instinct is that we need to be careful about differentiating sexual expression and preference from other, less healthy forms of sexual activity.

I would happily wager that there are people out there who spend hours each day viewing porn and masturbating who have fallen for the line that they are ‘exploring their sexuality’ in a safe way. That’s certainly something I told myself, that the things I was viewing and the ways in which I was interacting with people was simply me discovering what I liked, sexually. The more I think about it, the more I believe I was fooling myself massively. Rather than thinking about what I actually liked, I realise that porn was simply pushing the boundaries of what I would tolerate, just in order to get that shot of dopamine and oxytocin that soothes your anxiety, that quells the urge you had. Well, at least until the next time, when your tolerance has moved just that little more, and you need to tolerate something just a little more unpalatable or extreme to get the same result.

The danger of doing this ‘exploration of sexuality’ when you are sat in front of a screen, maybe even interacting with others, but not actually in the presence of others, is that you don’t truly know how you’d react if you were placed in that situation for real. Maybe you imagine that being presented with the scenario you see on screen would be perfectly acceptable, maybe even something you’d actively seek out, but you don’t truly know how you’d react unless you were placed in that situation for real. The idea of being fellated by another guy might seem fine when you just need to cum, but would that be something you’d really want or desire if he was there, in front of you, willing to perform the act? Try and put yourself in that situation and listen to what your body and your mind are telling you, and then tell me that it feels the same as it does when simply reacting to a stimulus on a computer or smartphone screen…

It is really easy to get lost in more and more extreme imagined scenarios when you just need to get that feeling, that release. The oxytocin your brain releases is nature’s bonding chemical, also released during breastfeeding. Oxytocin was meant to bond you to a person, whether that be your mother in your early life or in a sexual partner later in life, but what porn does is bond you to your screen and the images that appear as you click, and click, and click, looking for something just that little more exciting. I described this to my therapist; how you stay ‘edging’ for hours, seeking that perfect combination on screen that tells you “this is the moment you’ve been seeking”. Tragically, with addiction that moment becomes your focus, distracting you from whatever else in your life demands your attention, and it often takes you hitting the depths of a low to know that something is wrong, and that you are addicted.