Being Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual Does Not Make You a Sex or Porn Addict

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All daily inspirations can be found in the book Sex and Porn Addiction Healing and Recovery. Used here with permission of the author.

Sex and porn addiction are unrelated to who or what it is that turns a person on.

There is a widely held perception that people with non-traditional (i.e., non-heterosexual) sexual orientations are, by nature, hypersexual—especially gay and bisexual men. This is not in fact the case. In reality, gay and bisexual men (and other members of the LGBT community) are no more or less sexual than their straight counterparts. Perhaps some of this ‘oversexed’ belief arises from the fact that topics like ‘gay sex’ are still attention-getters in both the media and private conversations, despite the many recent worldwide advances in the normalization of homosexuality and homosexual behaviors. Either way, a person’s sexual arousal template is not a factor in terms of identifying, diagnosing, and treating sex or porn addiction.

Task for Today
Try to separate the nature of your primary sexual and romantic attractions from your addiction.

Working Step 5

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All daily inspirations can be found in the book Sex and Porn Addiction Healing and Recovery. Used here with permission of the author.

When at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter. They are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you for so long.

After completing the fourth step, we suddenly find ourselves staring at Step 5—admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Though Step 5 is one of the simplest steps to work, many of us approach it with dread. And that is a perfectly understandable feeling to have given the nature of what we’re about to do—sharing our Step 4 inventories with another person. If you are dreading Step 5, you need to understand and accept that the majority of recovering sex and porn addicts find that they cannot successfully maintain sobriety and move forward in their recovery while keeping shameful secrets. You are likely no exception. Step 5 must be worked!

Task for Today
Share a shameful secret in a meeting, with your sponsor, or with your therapist.

What is a Sponsor?

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All daily inspirations can be found in the book Sex and Porn Addiction Healing and Recovery. Used here with permission of the author. Click the book cover image to purchase the book on Amazon.

Sponsors light the torches that lead others through the dark.

Sponsors are personal guides to healing and staying sexually sober, usually not friends to begin with and never lovers. Typically, a sponsor is someone of the same gender who has been in sexual recovery long enough to have achieved some success. He or she should be active in recovery and have worked his or her way through the 12 steps. In addition, a sponsor’s personal situation should somewhat match that of the sponsee, so that he or she can guide the newly recovering addict more individually. For example, if the newly recovering sex or porn addict is married with kids, a sponsor who is also married with kids might be preferable. If the newly recovering addict is HIV-positive, it might be helpful to have an HIV-positive sponsor. Etc.

Task for Today
Create a list of the people you know in recovery who ‘speak your language’ and ‘have what you want.’ Do this even if you already have a great sponsor.

Working Step 4

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All daily inspirations can be found in the book Sex and Porn Addiction Healing and Recovery. Used here with permission of the author. Click the book cover image to purchase the book on Amazon.

Don’t look for someone to solve your problems; look for someone who won’t let you go through them alone.

Because of the difficult and painful emotions that Step 4 tends to bring up, it is wise to increase your meeting attendance while working it. You might also want to increase the amount of time you spend with friends in recovery, the number of conversations you have with your sponsor, and the number of sessions you have with your therapist. If you are in a relationship, you should let your significant other know that you’re working on Step 4, and you’ll likely be feeling more vulnerable than usual while doing it. The more support you get, the better off you will be.

Task for Today
Reach out to others whenever you feel upset in any way.

The Spin Cycle of Addiction

All daily inspirations can be found in the book Sex and Porn Addiction Healing and Recovery. Used here with permission of the author. Click the book cover image to purchase the book on Amazon.

Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking of what we want to become. Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking about who we don’t ever want to be again.

All addictions are cyclical in nature, with no clear beginning or end and one stage leading to the next (and then the next, and the next, and the next). And the cycle intensifies with each repetition, requiring more of the same substance or behavior or a more intense substance or behavior to reach and maintain the desired neurochemical high. This transforms the cycle from a repetitive loop into a downward spiral that leads to relationship, work, health, financial, legal, and other crises. These crises then become the triggers that set the addictive cycle in motion yet again.

Task for Today
Think about ways you can interrupt the spin cycle of your addiction.

Combatting Shame

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All daily inspirations can be found in the book Sex and Porn Addiction Healing and Recovery. Used here with permission of the author. Click the book cover image to purchase the book on Amazon.

When we share our story, shame cannot survive.

Overcoming the deeply rooted shame that drives sex and porn addiction is a process of learning to recognize shame and its triggers, and then learning to ‘reality check’ the shame we feel by reaching out to supportive others and receiving empathy as they hear about and experience our shame with us. Needless to say, this is easier said than done. In fact, most of us would rather eat dirt than talk about our feelings of shame. That said, healing from shame requires vulnerability—the courage to reach out to supportive others and share our darkest secrets.

Task for Today
Either talk about your shame or eat a handful of dirt. One will leave you feeling better; the other will not.