Lust – More Freedom Blog

Why Recover?

Some big questions you probably have as you’ve spent time on this blog are:

“Why Recover?”

“Is pornography even that big of a deal?”
“Why am I reading this blog when I could be getting high on my lust drug?”

The big answers are: It is a big deal! It is a dangerous and harmful drug! It is an addiction, and this is why you should seek recovery. It is almost impossible to stop this destructive habit unless you get serious help.

Pornography is addictive. I know, I was there. I was so addicted that I would make up excuses to go on business trips just so I could act out. I committed to myself over and over and over again that I would quit watching that stuff, and I continued to break that commitment over and over and over again. I would lie and hide. Despite being active in my church, despite being a husband and a father, despite knowing it was bad for me—I could not quit on my own in secret.

Pornography is a lie. It’s 100% lust and 0% love. It’s as unhealthy as cocaine, arguably worse. It drives disconnection and ruins self-esteem. Clicking “views,” even on free sites, feeds a multi-billion-dollar industry that abuses women, victimizes children, and treats all humans like objects. It is a slave industry where sadly, many of the participants and purchasers are willing slaves. Pornography “kills” us. It nearly killed me, my wife, and my marriage.

Pornography is a trap. If you are reading this post, it is likely because you feel something, something way deep down that tells you, “Yes, this is right. I have a problem, I’m in a trap”. Perhaps you are thinking you only have a “small problem” and that at least you are not acting out with real people. I used to think that as well. From where you are, it’s hard to realize that you are in a deadly trap and that you DO have an addiction.

Pornography is evil, morally wrong, and degrading to society. When I would view pornography in my past, I remember looking for the “good stuff.” What that really meant is that I was looking for something that would take me beyond the bounds of what I had already seen and would stimulate my brain in a way that it hadn’t before. I was slowly sliding deeper and deeper, darker and darker. The “good stuff” was actually extremely dark, very unreal, and nothing else can describe it but “horribly bad stuff.” Pornography makes us think good is bad, and bad is good.

Please get help. Get help now! Continue reading more of the excellent posts in the More Freedom Blog. Scrape together even a spark of desire to break free from this trap, and you will find it, step by step. I PROMISE you will feel more fulfillment, true love, connection, peace, happiness, and joy in your life without pornography! Recovery is the answer! I know, I am experiencing it.

Search Mode

There’s a mode that I get into where I’m searching for something. I’m usually feeling bad or fearful or stressed and I begin to search for something to help me feel better or stop feeling these negative things. I could be searching for apps for my phone, games to play, news to read, food to eat, lustful content, images of people in public or media, or just about anything. I call this search mode.

Marriage Doesn’t Cure This

I once thought that lust was just a normal appetite and, therefore, once I got married, the addiction would be satisfied and go away. I learned, mainly through the experience of others I have met in the 12-Step groups, that this is a false assumption. Most addicts I have talked to end up returning to these addictions within a few weeks or months of getting married.

Healthy Connections

Before recovery, almost all my connections with women were lustful and dysfunctional. When I got into recovery, I started disconnecting in those lustful ways from women – largely through surrendering lust and through avoiding people and places. A few years later, I started to feel a sadness about being isolated away from half of the people around me because of my fears and triggers. A counselor I was seeing at the time suggested that I try connecting in a healthy way by saying “hi” and getting to know people just as I would a man or someone I wasn’t triggered by. It is important that I point out that I could not do this earlier in my recovery or these attempted connections would have gone back to being lust-based.

Amazingly, when I said “hi,” the lust disappeared and the anxiety left me as well. To those to whom I couldn’t say “hi” or that it wouldn’t be appropriate to say “hi”, I would think about going up to them in my mind and tell them “I just objectified you and I’m sorry for that, I hope you have a good day today” without them saying anything back (in my mind) and that helped me as well. That felt a little strange to do, but it kept me honest and helped me be aware of what I was doing.

Again, I could not do this before a few years into physical sobriety from the addiction, but now I see that through positive healthy simple connections, I can have freedom from the anxiety and temptations that up to that point I just had to wait around for and then let go of when they came along. It takes a lot of time and complete honesty. Again, this progression took years and had to be taken in the right order and at the right time, but with each step, I found more freedom and happiness. Years of addiction had really messed me up and it takes a while for God (with my help) to untangle that mess. I don’t know if I’ll ever run out of things for God to untangle, but that’s OK, because at each stage, from the first moment I stepped into a recovery group, I have had more and more freedom, hope, happiness, and motivation to keep going.

The “Lust Balloon”

When I entered the program, I acted out almost daily. As I progressed, I would act out weekly, every two weeks, every month, etc. It seems to me as though I have some sort of capacity to hold lust within me – I’ll call it a lust balloon. Once I have filled this balloon with lust, I feel compelled to resort to my addiction by acting out my addictions physically.

Continue reading “The “Lust Balloon””

Surrender Before Sleep

I have learned to take a few minutes before bedtime and think back on the day to see if any triggering memories from the day pop up. I have learned that if anything pops up, I didn’t really let go of it during the day and so I have to let go of the thought or visual again and again until it stops coming back to my mind. See the Step 3 and Surrender articles for more detail around how to let things go, or surrender them.

When I do this, I have a purer sobriety and am much more lust free, and the lustful dreams don’t happen. Again, I don’t know how this works but it does. I talked to someone who was at an earlier stage of recovery who had tried this and they said that unless they were in a good place spiritually, thinking back on the day would bring up things that they were unable to let go of and it ended up making things worse. Through that experience, I have learned that I must be in a good spiritual place and must be able and willing to surrender my lust before I can use this technique successfully.

Dreams

One other area that was troublesome to me was lustful dreams. I had heard that I am not responsible for my dreams and sometimes I would look forward to them just to relieve the pressure of my lust. I never felt good about that though.

Over time, I found that lustful dreams went away completely as I stopped stuffing myself with lust all day long. As I learned to let go of lust and stop letting it into me throughout the day, I could go for years without any sexual dreams at all – nor did I want them or need them for relief. The pressure went away once lust went away.

Continue reading “Dreams”

Denial and Gaslighting

In my addiction and in recovery, I had a lot of shame and isolation around what I was thinking and doing. This shame caused me to hide the truth about my thoughts and actions from others (wife, God, etc.) and, more importantly, from myself. I couldn’t stand the fact that I was engaging in my addictions, and so I started subtly lying to myself. This is where denial came in. Before we go any further, let’s define some terms:

Continue reading “Denial and Gaslighting”

Lust and Self-Awareness

I found that the sexual part of these addictions starts with lustful thoughts that I was completely unaware I was entertaining – hours, days, weeks, or even months before any physical manifestations of addiction. As I started going to the meetings and working the steps to start working on myself from the inside out, I then started becoming more aware of how much I was lusting after people each day. As I become more and more conscious of it (I never knew how much I was looking and lusting before I came into the program), I try to let go of it at the earliest stage possible – when it’s easier to let go of it. It’s kind of like the easiness of pulling out a new weed compared with the difficulty of pulling out a weed that has been growing all summer long. My capacity to turn away from the temptation to lust is directly proportional to the strength of the faith and self-awareness that I build in these 12-step meetings.

Continue reading “Lust and Self-Awareness”