Bookending Keeps Us Sober

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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 I’m at the bottom looking up, the main question may not be, “How do I get out of this hole?” In reality, the main question might be, “How do I get rid of the shovel that I used to dig it?”

Sometimes, as recovering sex and porn addicts, we are triggered unexpectedly. Other times, triggers can be seen miles away. For example, attending a social engagement where people will be looking their best and drinking alcohol is an obvious potential trigger for most of us. Knowing this, we can arrange to ‘bookend’ such an event with phone calls to our therapist, our 12-step sponsor, our accountability partner, or any other supportive person in recovery. During the ‘before’ call, we commit to sobriety and we discuss plans to avoid relapse in this particular situation. The ‘after’ call provides an opportunity to discuss what happened, what feelings came up, and what we might need to do differently next time. More importantly, making this before and after commitment to sexual sobriety goes a long way toward preventing slips and relapse.

Task for Today
Look for a potential trigger in your future. Create a plan to bookend that trigger.

Porn Addiction Can Ruin Real-World Sex

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.

What’s the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?

Research shows that approximately 1 in 4 male sex addicts struggles with sexual performance—most often erectile dysfunction. This percentage is significantly higher for men who primarily act out with pornography. And this issue is not related to the frequency of masturbation or the need for a refractory period (a time in which males reload, so to speak). Instead, the issue is related to the fact that when a man spends the vast majority of his sexual life masturbating to online porn—endless images of sexy, exciting, constantly changing partners and experiences—he is, over time, likely to find his real-world partner(s) less sexually stimulating than the visuals parading through his mind. For these men, porn creates an emotional and psychological disconnection that manifests physically as sexual dysfunction with real-world partners.

Task for Today
Create a list of ways in which porn has negatively affected your real-world sex life. Share that list in therapy or a 12-step meeting.

Here’s Wishing You a Long, Slow Recovery

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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.

Sobriety is a long and winding path, and none of us ever really knows where it’s leading.

One long-recovering sex addict loves to tell the story of his 90th day of sobriety, when he went to a meeting to take a chip and had another addict say, “That’s really great. I wish you a long, slow recovery.” Well, the now old-timer did not like this one bit. He wanted to be well right now. But that’s just not how recovery works. Recovery is a journey. It is meant to be enjoyed. We should take our time and revel in each tiny success. We don’t have to be well by tomorrow. In fact, we don’t ever have to be completely well. The true goal of recovery is to do life better today than yesterday.

Task for Today
Take a few minutes to stop and enjoy what you’ve accomplished in your recovery.

Hooked on Porn?

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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.

The amount of porn on the internet is unmeasurable.

In their book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts, researchers Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam write: “In 1991, the year the World Wide Web went online, there were fewer than 90 different adult magazines published in America, and you’d have been hard-pressed to find a newsstand that carried more than a dozen. Just six years later, in 1997, there were about 900 pornography sites on the Web. Today, the filtering software CYBERsitter blocks 2.5 million adult Web sites.” Now think about the fact that Ogas and Gaddam publisher their research in 2012, well before the advent of sexy selfies and other forms of ‘user-generated porn.’

Task for Today
Think honestly about your porn use? Is porn part of your addiction? Is it a bottom-line behavior for you? Why or why not?

Working Step 3

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Don’t wait for the right conditions. All that you need for growth is available to you in this moment.

With Step 3, most sex and porn addicts prefer to think of ‘God as they understand God’ as something spiritual, even if it’s completely unrelated to the God of their childhood. If you want or need to reconceptualize your vision of God, the following exercise may help: Get a sheet of paper and draw a large circle in it. Inside the circle, write down attributes you would like in a friend or mentor—reliable, caring, non-judgmental, fun, smart, tactful, nice, etc. Outside the circle, write down attributes you would not like in a friend or mentor—angry, boring, vindictive, controlling, etc. Then grab a pair of scissors and cut away everything outside the circle, throwing that material into the trash or ceremonially burning it. The traits that are left, the items inside the circle, can then be used as your conception of God.

Task for Today
Think about your Higher Power as an understanding and supportive friend.

Standard Issue Denial

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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.

Addicts would rather deny a hard truth than face it.

The most common form of sex and porn addiction denial, used by almost every married or partnered addict, centers on the following lie: “What my significant other doesn’t know can’t hurt him/her.” Frankly, it’s amazing how many of us convince ourselves that this blatant lie is true. In reality, even though our partner may have no idea that we’re sleeping around or looking at porn or otherwise acting out, it is almost certain that he or she feels and experiences some degree of emotional and even physical distancing on our part. Sadly, our partner may internalize blame for this, wondering what he or she did to create this rift and to provoke our defensiveness and anger when he or she questioned us about this sense of emotional separation.

Task for Today
List ten ways your addiction has caused pain to a loved one. Share this list in therapy or a 12-step meeting.