Me Speaking

More About Why I Quit SPAA

2025-08-02T17:55:00.000-07:00

What comes to mind?

First, in SPAA, when I prayed, oftentimes I would fantasize having sex with a woman. These fantasies seemed to intrude into my mind of their own accord, but they were my thoughts. Now, after quitting SPAA, while praying, these imaginations no longer occur.

Second, in SPAA, while outside and seeing attractive women in stores or sidewalks or coffee shops, I often forced myself to not look at them. Women became, as it were, obstacles to my peace of mind. Beautiful women were threats and I was almost always on edge, nervous, and unable to appreciate God's female creations of physical beauty. This situation aggravated my tendencies to fantasize because when nervous, I fantasize more. Now, after quitting SPAA, I accept the pretty women walking about on God's earth with equanamity. It seems, they neither captivate nor repel. I am open now to the sharing of a smile of recognition. I am much, much more relaxed about the presence of women in my life.

Third, in SPAA, I attended meetings almost always on a daily basis. I listened to lament after lament by member after member of abuses and traumas. I rarely listened, as a whole, to stories of hope and courage. Members often shared their frustrations about their inability to stop sexual fantasizing. Rather than being a place of comfort and support, SPAA became a place where I experienced disappointment, frustration and regret. Now, after quitting SPAA, I participate with much more of an enhanced interest in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon. I feel as though a bag of unneeded junk I had been dragging behind me with a rope has been cut off. This frees me to give and get much more out of AA and Al-Anon meetings.

Being Done With the Three Years

2025-07-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

Cut off. No more. No explanations. No more Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous. (SPAA) Finished! No more counting the dirty thoughts.

I am not free of the addiction to sex and pornography. I realize what will happen to me if I indulge. I will descend into a tortured state. Go on a binge. I yearned for an ejaculation episode thirty minutes ago. Instead I bought a pack of cigarettes and smoked.

I didn't rely on my Higher Power to relieve the urge, neither to sex out or to smoke. I could have but I didn't. I want to justify this lack of faith, and I understand the why of that is because my ego is defending its turf. It's the original sin of pride.

But I will pray before going to bed, as I will pray in the morning upon wakening. And the transcendent love of my God in Three Persons will sustain me for another twenty four hours. No matter what I do, as long as that union with my Higher Power, as long as that relationship is developed, as long as I do not reject Him, He is with me teaching me that all I need is within reach through Him.

I am free now in a way never before felt on account of quitting SPAA. Doing so has put the addiction face to face inside my being.

For example, almost all actions of recovery I took in SPAA I took not for the doing so of the actions, but for recovery. Now I pray for the sake of praying. Now I do step work not for recovery but for the sake of self investigation. I do it because it's hard. I do it because I don't want to do it. I do it to become whole.

I regularly go to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting and Al-Anon meetings because I need connection with people who understand. I need to understand and be understood.

I'm stopping now. Take what you like and leave the rest.

An Addiction Connection

2025-06-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

This post follows in the wake of the previous post --- its prior lessons leading me to an epiphany of hope for recovery from my addiction to compulsive overeating.

The lesson emerges from the same Source. If the power of my Higher Power can, which He can and does, procure for me release from edging, then He can and will also release from me an urge to eat compulsively.

Me at ten years old at my Grandmother's house in San Francisco

A reflection on the matter. I had my food addiction when at five years old, eight years before puberty, at which time I began to seriously edge and masturbate. Here's an example of the over-eating severity. Picture it. I'm a ten year old kid in Los Angeles County about to go on a three week summer vacation at my grandmother's house. Prior to the eight hour bus ride to San Francisco, I buy twelve candy bars. I tell myself these are enough to last the entire Greyhound Bus ride. But before the bus even leaves L.A. County, within an hour I have eaten all twelve! Once I started, I could not stop!

Thirty years later, acting on the suggestion of my then wife, I attended my first meeting of Overeaters Anonymous (OA) --- the first introduction to me of the system of the 12 Steps of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I did not eat compulsively afterwards for one year.

A further reflection: I experienced through my first year in OA the power of the 12 Steps. However, by the time I had acquired this experience, I had become mired in my addiction to sex and pornography so much so that, one could say, my life depended on my sex addiction. I needed to do what I couldn't stop doing. I thought about women constantly. I fantasized about having sex constantly. Sex and porn became my master, and I a slave to both food and sex.

As written about in the last blog, for me, edging itself turns out to be the principal "culprit" leading to porn usage. I cannot NOT edge if left to my own devices. But if my HP can, which He can and does --- remove my desires to edge, then surely He can and will remove my desires to eat compulsively.

Disclaimer: I still over eat! Again and again. And I edge still --- again and again!

But I do continue to go to OA and SPAA meetings. And I continue to work on doing Step Work.

It simply matters less the clean time and more the giving and receiving to be had in the fellowship at the meetings.

The Rotten Fruit of Mindless Scrolling

2025-05-03T16:43:00.000-07:00

The Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous (SPAA) definition of acting out is: viewing pornography, masturbating, and having sex outside of a committed relationship.

The major culprit that entices to acting out? Edging! (SPAA's Edging Definition)

What's related to edging? Mindless scrolling. (I just got done doing an hour of it.) It's family to edging. It's why I've started counting my scroll free days. (0 days now) News stories, movie scenes, Ted talks etc....you, glad to have reader, if you're like me, know what happens when you go online and start scrolling without purpose. I go on and on and on in a type of rapture. Time vanishes. The mini-skirted girls appear walking in Manchester and I oh "so accidently" start watching the Bangkok street girls parading at night, at times for hours. My brain and body get injected with the dopamine that never supplies me with enough. All the while, being online itself pumps dopamine into my system. That's why I detoxify. I follow the following personal rule fairly well because doing so relaxes me. All cellphones and computers! Shut off after 9:15 pm daily!

It has been said that the medium is the message. The being online message says "feel good now, you need to be online now as now is all you've got." Like all stealthy lies, that's partly true as now IS all we've got.

These unhealthy dopamine levels start begging me to watch porn and masturbate until either I do or don't. (I did four months ago, before that, nine months ago.)

When I started in SPAA a little over three years ago, if I did look at porn, I reasoned, since I broke my abstinence definition anyway, I might as well go on and masturbate until ejaculation. When I did do that (because of lonliness, stress, boredom etc) the depression and despair afterwards were almost always so severe --- only another round of acting out would momentarily relieve me of the depression and despair itself. Talk about a vicious circle!

So, in my book, the scrolling has got to stop as much as does the edging.

Daily attendance at SPAA's meetings also are a virtually irrevocable personal rule. I am willing, although often not wanting, to go --- to any length to keep myself unchained from the slavery of my addiction to sex and pornography.

It's More about the Shame

2025-02-23T15:34:00.000-08:00

It's 3 a.m. at the railroad tracks in Palo Alto, California. I'm a security guard responsible for insuring no one stands on the tracks to commit suicide. (the wave of suicides of Dunn High School students)

An African American homeless woman walks on the sidewalk where I sit, and we start to talk. Suddenly, she said "You are so full of shame." Never have forgotten that night. How could she tell? How could she know what even I didn't know? How could my denied sense of shame be so blatant that she could feel it herself?

As I write, like a flood, personal memories encompass me of shameful acts which thanks be to God did not then nor do they now define who I am. Thanks be to God for the SPAA (Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous) member who reminded me of that during one of our ZOOM meetings. What I am is ... a child of God.

For me, shame is mostly about sexual shame. That pernicious influence upon me, like ink spilled onto white paper, is that sex is sinful, even my parents' married sex which inaugurated my life meant that I'm an incarnation of sin and shame.

I have felt and at times still do feel shame at the incontrovertible fact that I do not have the will power to keep myself from looking at pornography and masturbating. Shame because I am powerless to keep myself from objectifying women as sexual gadgets. Shame because my proclivity is to seek comfort by sexual fantasizing.

But my shame materializes into various other forms. Shame at being single for a decade. Shame at permitting fear to direct my behavior. Examples include shying away from sharing my faith, failures to finish a task once started, ignoring the voice of my conscience, and acting at the behest of my emotions.

What is the primary solvent to the pigmentation of my shame?

Experience teaches me that the most effective healing ingredient subsides in sharing the shame with others, aka, other SPAA members. They understand. They have felt the same. And the sharing itself dissipates the secrecy in which the shame festers.

Two Promises Proved to be True

2025-01-11T16:59:00.000-08:00

The Promises, as referred to in the AA book, in my experience, have never been broken promises.

However, patience, while working the Twelve Steps, was essential to obtain the promises. They didn't come true overnight. But after more than a year in the AA program, some promises did come true in the form of a pink cloud---a splendid beauty of a recognition of God's love accessed through the step work itself.

What a price I paid in struggle to be entirely honest about my character defects---my false ego fighting to maintain its sway. Simple but not easy? An apt AA saying aptly put.

That first pink cloud passed, as all clouds do, yet it put an indelible impression upon me. Where there was despair hope had blossomed forth in a tulip called a Faith that Works---a believing that stilled the agitations of doubt. Misgivings disappeared to be supplanted by confidence in my Higher Power, Jesus Christ.

I will write now about two ways in which the Promises have come true for me.

First, my self-conscious fear to speak in meetings has entirely dissipated. I extemporaneously share openly and honestly in meetings with twenty people participating. I speak from my heart while pondering the most apt words to express myself. Before, I cringed at the very thought of sharing. My blood raced and my heart pumped so much so that I shared only at meetings sparsely attended. I feared bored or objecting looks on faces. "Fear of people will disappear" is one promise The Promises guarantee. Now, after about thirty years in recovery, that promise has come true for me.

The second promise that came true branches off "fear of people will disappear."

Before, I would slip unwittingly into "catching the eyes" of men. I feared in a homophobic way. Gay men would hit on me and I had no consciousness of why. I plagued myself with doubts about my sexual orientation.

Now those symptoms have almost all completely disappeared. I no longer fear doing nor do I "catch the eyes of men." Although in the past homophobic, now good friends of mine live out of the proverbial closet and some in married relationships with their partners.

Although in the past I have had same sex encounters, I now realize I am predominately heterosexual. I didn't get any "conversion" therapy that brought about this change. The change took place from working the 12 Steps of the Big Book of Alcoholocs Anonymous, particularly inside the SPAA program.

Thus, that is the second of one of many, many other promises that have come true for me.

Step Six Oughts and Thoughts

2024-12-01T19:30:00.000-08:00

I felt this Step was gonna be a hop skip and a jump Step, a little Step, a relatively unimportant Step in the greater scheme of recovery. Feeling wise.

I've found each Step of the Twelve Steps fitted neatly one atop the prior in the right place at the right time for me the addict person working those Steps in order to recover---each served as preparation for the next.

Step Six:

"Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character."

I will write about the way taking Step Six best ought to be taken and the way I did it in actuality.

The former fist: Entirely, that's the main word, the hinge word. All the way ready, completely ready, no holds barred ready and ready in the entirety of readiness.

Conceptualize getting ready for a formal dinner; You're the man getting ready to go on a dinner date during which you plan to ask her the woman you love to marry you. You shave the entirety of the scrub off your face, you trim your nails, you shower for an hour then on goes a dash of Aqua Velva. You dress in a stylish tuxedo.

You're making yourself entirely ready!

Switch now to how might preparing to take Step Six ought to be.

Pray daily a half hour for a week. Fast one day, bread and water only. Double down on reading the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Meditate on what entirely ready means. Do a work of mercy and almsgiving.

I didn't do this, but if I had I would have been much more entirely ready for my encounter with my Higher Power, the Christ, in Step Six. The man had entirely prepared himself for his marriage proposal.

The Six Step Stepper was "entirely ready to ask God to remove all these defects of character."

Now onto the actual experience of my taking Step Six. Preparation? I don't recall much about preparation. However, I believe I did prepare because I am and was back then a seriously intent person when it comes to recovery, especially recovery from my addiction to sex and pornography.

I took the Sixth Step in concert with my sponsors in AA, OA and SPAA. Each time when taking that Step was sacred and imbued with reverence. I recall that. At no time did I ever take Step Six lightly.

Thank you for reading this.

My next blog post will be about how repeatedly working the Twelve Steps has made so many of The Promises come true for me.

The Judgement Blog

2024-11-16T19:37:00.000-08:00

The font of this post emerges from my readings of the book "Constantine's Sword, The Church and the Jews, A History." by James Carroll.

As such, Christians and Jews, I judge them as I do myself, who being both Christian by selection and Jew by blood, claim entitlement to do so.

To a higher standard towards those Chosen, as opposed to the lesser standard I use to judge the heathen. These pagans sin unwittingly as by their un-born again nature they miss the mark by the spiritually blind and deaf being of nature itself.

But as the religious Jew lives and breathes by adherence to the Law, and lives by its Talmudic interpretations, yet confused, yet transgressing that same, to him, to myself, I judge condemned to helpless need of a Messiah.

As the Christian Churches claims salvation through this same Messiah, yet still occurred millennia of pograms up until occurred the Nazi Holocaust besmirches the gospel books themselves. The Jews killed Jesus, are Gentiles not inculcated of this "fact" in the bones and veins of Western Civilization?

As this book contends, a thick rope of connection does exist between the way the Gospels are read and interpreted and have been, and still are, and the Final Solution. Yet, I, as a Roman Catholic, my soul breathes on the words in the Jewish Scriptures, the Psalms, Samuel, the stories of Jacob and Ruth.

Dear Reader, in the tone of my writing, do you sense compassion? Can I manufacture this compassion, No!

My family's unhidden Jew, Papa, refused more of the Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane painting to hang over his bed in his room. Loud the cries of anguish as his Catholic daughter lunged to force back the painting of a depiction of anguish itself.

It is my judgement against both the selves of my Jew blood and Christian Catholic election ---that harsh and unyeilding judgement---the defect of my character, the handmaiden of the pride sin I fear unforgivable.

But, I am not the Judge.

My portrayal of myself as judge upon people, upon those I have loved and admired, the enactment in practice of this lie as me a legititmate judge has wreaked devastation upon fields of rich personal relations.

But also, the practice of the Ninth Step in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous has repaired and restored most of these stricken relations to health.

Acceptance

2024-09-02T19:47:00.000-07:00

Written in my emergency write out journal some four hours ago.

I accept I am single and I accept that my single status is only going to change by a miracle.

Even though I do believe in miracles, as my recovering from my assortment of addictions so attests, miracles are extremely rare. I am 99 and 9/10 percent likely to remain single for the remainder of my life.

I accept these odds as part of the way life is for me and thus decide not to give a hoot about it. As I am a believer in Christ Jesus, I will carry this most heavy cross as did He carry His.

I also know I will choose to continue to torment myself about sex, love and marriage, etc, and my single status. I know I will never have peace about it as well. I accept this self tortured me that I am as well.

As a result, I now choose to cease any and all further searching to find a woman with whom to have a committed romantic relationship.

Postscript: After having written the above, the accepting, I find a peace within myself about my single status that is even now running deep within my soul.

In Accordance with the Taking of Step Five

2024-06-26T13:48:00.000-07:00

My last SPAA recovery themed post wrote about taking AA Big Book Steps One, Two, Three and Four. This post delves into experience taking the supremely confessional and purgative Step Five. (SPAA stands for Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous)

I consider it a sacred step; its process breathes with lungs of prayer and connection with God and man. After Step Five, I had no more hidden secrets, none in my awareness, and this released an enormous burden of weight I didn't realize I had been shouldering until after having taken the step.

Step Four's fact-finding mission of self-discovery revealed the faults of my character which I had hidden from myself. I had been too often reacting to faults in others, faults inside me which I had projected onto them--- an escape hatch out of avoiding responsibility for fixing my own self. Step Four opened the curtain. It allowed sunlight to shine upon what darkness had previously hidden.

When I took Step Five, I admitted to this newly discovered knowledge, to myself, to another person, my sponsor, and to my conception of a Higher Power. The result transformed me, I believe mostly because of the admission to my sponsor. Why is that? Yes, to myself, great, to God, great, wonderfully needfully great, yet...to someone who could rat me out? Reflect upon the trust I needed to have in that person. This IS God becoming human.

And that's the sense of relief that occurred in me. A lightness. A sense of freedom. The sense of the cleansing of the soul never before experienced. For the taker of the step, the final stage of the Step Five process is.....to be alone with God in reflection. In my process, I prayed my heart out with prayers of thanksgiving for the tool of Step Five. I was like in the bosom of gratitude, in the hands of a Lord and God whose love for me is without measure.

El Viaje, por Emily Gelvez

2024-06-01T19:02:00.000-07:00

Gracias Emily por tu obra al este blog. Emily es una immigrante desde Venezuela ahora viviendo en Ecuador. Pero el viaje de ella a Ecuador no solo era una transicion a un pais extranjero. Era una transicion del alma de ella, del espiritu de ella y el corazon de ella.

Nadie te dice por cuánto tiempo será, y nadie te dice que será tan difícil exponerte a un nuevo mundo, dónde eres vulnerable para todo. Caminas confundido entre la gente esperando que alguien te diga que todo va a estar bien.

Es una sensación de adrenalina, de ver lo desconocido para ti. Miles de preguntas pasan por tu cabeza y sin encontrar alguna respuesta, solo eres tú y tu maleta, que por cierto se vuelve tan pesada por todas esas espectativas, sueños, ideales que terminan convirtiéndose en miedo.

Pero la vida es así te presenta momentos donde debes tomar decisiones, las personas te dicen "debes arriesgar si no nunca sabrás si lo puedes lograr o no", pero en el fondo saben que será difícil. Pero aún así decidí hacer mi maleta y enfrentarme a lo desconocido.

Al salir de esa terminal respire aire fresco, en el viaje me sentía que no podía respirar y no era por la altura o el clima, pero ustedes ya saben tenía un nudo en la garganta por todas aquellas cosas que había dejado, familia y amigos y quizás algunos lugares que siempre frecuentaba, pero me dije en voz alta, es momento de avanzar...

Is Any or All of This for You?

2024-04-28T19:11:00.000-07:00

Been going to the SPAA meetings less, now only on Mondays and Thursdays.

I pushed myself away from attending daily meetings in order to distance myself from listening to litanies of depressing shares I often encounter in the meetings. But the two days of meetings capture my interest and convince me to share more often and more willingly.

Despite the above sentiment, I find a tiny glimmer of light in the pitch-black cavern of despair about addiction to pornography, because that glimmer is what SPAA offers to its members. Hope. As of this publication date, I have 200 days of back-to-back SPAA defined sobriety, a gift of this hope; That definition is no viewing of pornography, no masturbation and no sex outside of a committed relationship. Here is a Doctor's opinion about the SPAA program of recovery.

I offer two major highlights to stress what I find prospers my recovery from my sex and porn addiction.

One is to work the 12 Steps, this post about Steps One through Step Four.

Doing Step One as worked in the SPAA program dissolved any and all surviving notions in myself that I’m NOT a sex and porn addict. The evidences as I wrote out the Step One dissipated any and all lingering vestiges of doubt.

Step Two dovetailed with Step One in that it convinced me of the myriad forms and instances of my insane behaviors when it came to sexuality. It cautions me today to be aware of these proclivities which threaten where my sobriety lives in relative peace.

With Step Three I decided to turn my will and life over to the care of God as I understand God. When I first took Step Three in the OA program of recovery, God planted a tiny seed in the soil of my soul that has grown deep roots. These roots steady a harmonious relationship with Him even while tumult shakes the outside exteriors.

When I worked Step Four, and listed the people I had harmed, this prepared the path towards making amends to them. The amends freed me of guilt and in most cases restored health to infected relationships. Step Four also cautions me to be aware so as to avoid inadvertent future harms to those currently in my life.

Step Four sets up a template for work that when followed deepens understanding of my nature. It answers the questions of how that nature has been warped. It reveals patterns of self-concepts and thought processes which limit my personal freedom. Working the steps shines lights of truth about myself in a manner indispensable. For instance, I cannot forgive myself for the errors of my past behaviors unless they are recognized.

On to the next, number two is to be sponsored and be a sponsor.

My SPAA sponsor’s work as the guide through the working of the steps has been indispensable in the ongoing work of my recovery. I need his guidance and he supplies it with an understanding of my defects of character, especially those magnified by my addiction to porn. Not a defect in me has been foreign to him.

Disclosures between us of an intensely personal nature cement a bond between us, not only of friendship but also of comradeship in the common SPAA task of regenerating our souls. Working with my sponsee in SPAA also is integral to my recovery process. His recovery welfare is what most matters to me. I share the experiences I encountered while doing the step work, how I worked the steps and how that work benefits my own recovery journey.

I am finding it true the aphorism that the sponsor gets more out of sponsoring than does the sponsee.

Some Math about How It Works

2024-03-16T10:49:00.000-07:00

Women. Young and beautiful. I deep inside my gut sense the hurt I would feel if a woman in a relationship with me were to eye flirt at another man. I myself feel entitled to eye flirt, and that's one form of what SPAA terms "edging." It's a precursor to acting out. My main goal in life is to stop acting out, and today, I have 156 days of back to back SPAA sobriety. I am helpless, without the power needed to stop edging and acting out. However, I find and utilize the Higher Power of the SPAA fellowship, plus my personal "concept" of a Higher Power, which is Christ Jesus. I do sometimes in my bones share that gratitude expressed by members who voice a sense of peace and tranquility, despite their having two days of SPAA sobriety. I lived through decades of life completely incapable of stopping myself from masturbating for even two days in a row. Two days of SPAA sobriety IS a big deal.

Here are three reasons I value my membership in SPAA.

Through SPAA membership, I have stopped doing what I believed I could never stop and what I most wanted to stop. I most wanted to stop because this addiction to sex and porn is by leaps and bounds the most intractable of my other forms of addiction. It was my greatest master and I its most enslaved slave. However, a link to the chain of the shackle of this enslavement has been sundered. The paradox is that this remains true even though I am and will always be a sex and porn addict.

The second reason is that the Big Book promises have come and are coming true for me! Not in AA, nor in OA, have I EVER worked the 12 Steps with the intensity and fervor with which I have worked the steps in SPAA. Not to say I don't backslide, because I do. But I am single, and no longer seeking to objectivy women. I seek to get to know female persons as the individuals they are. Another gift is that I am far, far less conflicted about my sexual identity. Through having worked the steps, I am starting to realize I'm predominately heterosexual.

The third reason is we in the fellowship speak one another's language. We feel at home with one another. We also believe we cannot maintain SPAA defined sobriety without mutual support. As time passes, we become more and more comfortable with one another, develop friendships. We become like family. No matter the squabbles, deep down we love one another. We laugh. We cry sometimes. We men and women in the fellowship learn from one another. Wisdoms get clarified. And in my experience, hope renews itself inside every meeting.

The Jesus Concept of a Higher Power

2024-02-10T19:25:00.000-08:00

I am an addict in various programs of recovery. But the most problematic, the most egregious cast me by the fortunes of Divine Providence into the fellowship of SPAA, Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous.

Inside the bottomless pit of that abyss of hopeless enslavement to edging, when I admitted to myself my utter powerlessness over mastery of this disease...I took Step One. The first of the twelve steps of the ladder I climbed to freedom out of the abyss.

Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson co-founded the movement that constructed the manual of suggested instructions on how to work these twelve steps.

Simple, but not easy, but for those of us who had no choice but to live or die, die literally and figuratively, who chose life---the 12 step work incarcerated these addictions in a maximum security prison, an Alcatraz so to speak.

The continual working of the steps provided to me the security of that prison by a spiritual growth vibration of frequencies of alert living in the moment. The bad vibes rear their ugly heads not withstanding.

Onto another branch of the tree.

I cannot comprehend how, with a limited capacity to comprehend. The Higher Power for this man grows on a tree, it's a Pinecone. The Higher Power for this woman? The Universe itself. No Higher Power exists for this other man, an atheist who nonetheless has been clean and sober for decades.

Based on a variety of personal experiences, my conception of a Higher Power is a Risen Lord Jesus Christ. A man who thirsted grasps thirst. A man who grieved the death of a dear friend grasps grief. A man who suffered physical torment grasps physical torment. A man who grasps glad joy grasps the gladness of joy. In these manners, my Higher Power intimately grasps my humanity because, in my conception, He IS truly human, and truly God, and His Divinity empowers capacities in me of which I am not capable.

The working of the 12 Steps had granted access to this Power which has brought and is bringing a life to me "beyond my wildest dreams."

Counting One Day at a Time

2024-01-07T16:44:00.000-08:00

Last night, today, an awful damaged rotator cuff pain, and yes, as a seventy-three-year-old 12 Step recovering alcoholic, drug addict, food addict and sex and porn addict, I do my best to keep a clear head. But the level seven on the one to ten pain scale demanded relief measures. So, I swallowed the pain killer pills; got skyrocketed into a drug like high. And it drove me to a place of reflection about my body. Deprived of level headedness, I laid in bed, and my body embarked on its craving for a happy ending massage. Radical honesty. It’s emphasized repeatedly in the AA Big Book as an absolute prerequisite in order to recover from addiction. What’s my radical honesty now? I don’t care how much numbing myself with pain killers endangers my SPAA defined sobriety status ---no looking at pornography, no masturbation, and no sex outside of a committed relationship.

However, I lock and jail these addictions, a day at a time, and the counter statistics echo the handiwork of a Miracle Maker, the concept of my Higher Power--- The Triune God. No alcohol: 6 years, 11 months and 18 days. No marijuana: 209 days. No SPAA slips: 88 days. No compulsive eating: 88 days

This Power greater than myself abounds also in the following communities of recovery and their meetings in which I participate. Overeaters Anonymous, Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous. Although not often, but as well… Narcotics Anonymous.

If I had gone out to get the happy ending massage, if I had consented, since addictions are progressive, I would have been in deeper pits of black tar sex addiction than ever those pits of black had been in past decades. $25,000 on American Express during one week end at Mustang Ranch in Nevada. Pitiable and incomprehensible demoralization. The abyss. But by the grace of God, no. A grace unmerited and without which I would have probably overdosed myself to death or committed suicide. Instead, today, I listened to member shares at AA and SPAA meetings… and learned and empathized. I prayed for 15 minutes, I listened to an online Catholic Mass, I danced to exercise music for twenty minutes, and I practiced Spanish for 15 minutes. By the way, my body DID NOT want me to practice my audio daily Spanish lesson. My body rarely does. But I do sense the good type dopamine of feelings of self-fulfillment engendered when I find myself talking in Spanish with an Ecuadorian, mostly being understood and mostly understanding. (A Californian, I have lived in Ecuador a decade)

When I work the SPAA program, thus decreasing the frequency and intensities of my objectifying women…I then can experience whatever it’s like to getting to know a female human being as the human being she is.

The Journey Moves Moves Towards Recovery

2023-12-17T18:15:00.000-08:00

As of this writing, I have 60 days of back-to-back SPAA defined sobriety. The relapse excuses? There are no excuses. I went to my pre-programmed always-works-never-lets-me-down escape valve. I watched porn and masturbated. But indulge the writer as he writes about circumstances, compares, and offers estimations of progress despite the book cover of defeat. For about four months, I had had absolutely no access to my monthly pension money. I had been unsuccessfully, desperately seeking resolutions while my supply of savings dwindled to a one month capacity to meet minimum financial obligations. I felt like I was in a bed of quicksand in a night so black not a glimmer of light could be seen. At that point in time, I lost about seven and a half months of back-to-back sobriety. But I did not lose the progress of that change in mentality, what’s called the psychic change sufficient to bring about a radical change in attitude and outlook upon life. When I first started the porn free living journey, I would act out on account of, what now, but not then! Seem miniscule triggers---being lonely after the good vibration fellowship of an AA meeting. Or just because it was a Monday.

I go to SPAA meetings daily. That is a commitment to myself and to my Higher Power which I mandate to myself to respect.

Daily at our SPAA fellowship ZOOM meetings, I see and listen to shares from members of despairs, of hopes, of slips, of agonies, of reflections and new understandings. I hear laughter and laugh often, and sometimes crying. I see faces and know people who have become not only friends but teachers. I am reminded, daily, that I am a sex and porn addict. These daily reminders motivate me to work the 12 Step recovery program with earnest endeavor. I am reminded daily of my default tendencies are to lie, to rationalize, to find fault in others and to justify my behaviors. I worked the 12 Steps of Alcoholic Anonymous twice. But the fullest ranges of my brokenness as a human being and its depths, the consequences of their damages to myself and to others---these were not grasped until after I had worked the 12 Steps in the SPAA program.

I thank my sponsor in SPAA for his over-the-top support and guidance during the year long working of these 12 Steps.

The Proof is in the Pudding

2023-08-10T15:40:00.000-07:00

Examine, question motivations for doings? Making progress, but often I summarily barge into action.

What's this have to do with my sex and porn addiction? Man, it ALL has to do with it! My addictions drive me to counter by almost literally praying without ceasing, to tap into the Power I don't have to NOT indulge in edging.

Integration smacks of the appropriate word. To weave, to absorb opposite/same sex physical sensations---yet to synthesize, to amalmagate.

To abandon flights of escape from feelings. (although recently I retreated to sleep to escape a self inflicted maelstrom of turbulent emotion)

Living life on its own terms means accepting that the enticing young woman seated in the restaurant next to me is a person with a soul of incalculable worth to God. And that for the sake of my sexual sobriety, it behooves me to give thanks to God for her creation, to pray to God He bless and keep her.

The guys and gals with a day's SPAA sobriety teach to me perhaps the most valuable lesson. I am at risk! I best work this program One Day at a Time.

The word integration occurs again. Integration into the body of the SPAA fellowship, being transplanted onto the tree of life of this fellowship. To become a cell in the tissue of a being of healing nature. If SPAA is not my HP, which it is not, it is part and parcel of my HP.

My sexual sobriety is endangered if I do not carry this message to other sex and porn addicts. So if you suspect you have sex control issues, click on this https://www.sobertownpodcast.com/sobertown-by-drifter for help and information.

At the Mark of the Sixth Month

2023-07-09T13:41:00.003-07:00

Honesty. Not one lie, today, a day at a time, not even to myself. Work the 12 Steps of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Reader reading this post, a fellow SPAA member, chairing at a recent SPAA meeting, asked me to explain how I managed to gain six months of sobriety. SPAA sobriety defined as "No viewing of pornography, no sex outside of a committed relationship, and no masturbation."

Love did it was the gist of my answer, and to me, my Higher Power is Love. My sex and pornography addictions are biologically and neurologically integrated into my mind and body, and they are not calculable. But I'll do the math anyway. They are a thousand billion trillion times more powerful than the power of my will.

HOWEVER, my Higher Power broke the bond of death, which, admittedly, is an absolutely absurd proposition to make. Logic can't make sense of it. Logic can't make sense of how agnostics and atheists merit the reception of one, two, three, four and more years of SPAA defined sobriety. No matter. We sex and porn addicts in recovery and united in the working of the 12 Steps and united in frequent participation in SPAA meetings work miracles in ourselves through ourselves. I like the expression, God in skin.

My sick porn mind. I know the woman walking towards me is not a female acquaintance, but she looks very similar. So, I pretend to myself that I'm only just making sure she's not this acquaintance while I look to surreptitiously gawk at her. That's defined as edging. What is edging? A couple examples selected from the SPAA edging document. "Looking in public spaces for people we find attractive, then fantasizing about them, staring at their body parts, or following them around. We've done this on foot and from our cars."..."Fantasizing---often by replaying our past sexual escapades or pornographic images we've seen (sometimes while having sex with our committed partner)"

I go to Mass. Three young women seated across the aisle attract me. I struggle to not look at them, to not want to look at them. I'm not paying attention to the liturgy while I engage in this struggle. But I do not edge. It's worth the price of not having paid attention.

I go to SPAA meetings and don't hardly ever talk. I mostly listen. Time after time I hear stories by people being bare bones honest about their dishonesties and denial syndromes. I realize SPAA is where I belong.

How can I ever hope to be a faithful partner in a committed relationship if women are little more than sex objects to me? Women have to become people to me, more and more, just plain individual people. I'm staying single on purpose, until this transformation becomes more embedded in me.

My goal towards the achievement of this transformation? An additional six months of SPAA sobriety. I CAN stay sober for a day! If I can stay sober for a day, I can stay sober for another 182 days. My strategy. Cultivate my personal relationship with Christ. Water it. Till it. I best do this by continuous study and working of the 12 Steps. Continuous participation in SPAA meetings. Continuous outreach calls to fellow SPAA members. Physical exercise. Journaling. Healthy eating. No drugs and no alcohol because I am an alcoholic and a drug addict. No compulsive eating because I am addicted to certain foods. And loving MYSELF! Am I not to when my Higher Power does??

More Than the Sum of its Parts

2023-05-20T17:53:00.001-07:00

The recovery ride has been, especially of late, an emotional roller coaster.

Mired in a seemingly everlasting tar pit of depression, then---two hours later, not a cloud in the sky! That's porn addiction withdrawal symptoms, par for the course.

Today I celebrate, rejoice in having accumulated more consecutive days of SPAA (Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous) sobriety --- than ever before, 142 days. The definition of SPAA sobriety: "No sex with one's self, no sex outside of a committed relationship and no viewing of pornograpy."

Some context. I'm 73 years old. Since puberty, at age 13, my now most ingrained addiction began to develop --- to have orgasms. Nothing could stop me. Not conversion to Christianity. Not getting married. Not getting publicly embarrassed. No matter the shame or the cost. The $20,000 I charged to American Express for a weekend with prostitutes at Mustang Ranch in Nevada.

I lived for the unreality of not living genuinely. Women became to me mostly mere rated objects of beauty, the closer to the ten mark the better, rather than individual human beings. Nothing could stop me during decades of attempting, time after time and method after method, to bring cessation of this activity.

The castle. It is the bastion of my sobriety. But, I fight outside its walls. The enemy outside called edging. The edging takes place in my mind, its imaginings. Mental replay of past sexual encounter. It's where the true war lies, a war of battles lost and won. Prayer the principal weapon. "With faith in You Higher Power, I pray You remove from me this desire to edge." Seeking to not look rather than to look. See the SPAA Edging Document.

One hundred billion trillion times more powerful the disease is in comparison with the power of my will.

Solutions. (What is working for me)

A steady, growing relationship with Higher Power.

Vigourous and consistent working of the 12 Steps based on the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Daily or mostly daily attendance and participation in SPAA fellowship meetings.

Having a sponsor and a sponsee.

Growth in friendship with other SPAA members by means of outreach calls on a consistent basis.

By doing these actions, and similar, chances for successful recovery over five years augment by 85 percent. See task centered treatment by Patrick J. Carnes, PhD.

Fast forward to a final note: I deactivated my Facebook account because it is a significant source of temptation to SPAA sobriety slippage.

I temporarily re-activate the account to publish therein this post so FB friends far and near can read it.

This is one manner by which I can do 12th Step SPAA work.

"Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to sex and porn addicts and to practice these principals in all our affairs."

The Trick of Last Night's Edge

2023-01-02T18:08:00.005-08:00

The other day I considered. If I thought of God as much as I think about women, I'd be thinking about God all the time.

My thinking about women the way I habitually do IS edging, which in SPAA (Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous) conceptualization ---activates desire to act out, or, that is to say, "to go all the way." When I edge, I spur my porn addicted self to do just that. All I need do to feel my dopamine hormones rush to heat up my body to act out is to go onto Facebook. It's a major trigger for me. I go there on purpose to do what my Higher Self does not want to do. I want to escape the realities of my human condition, but I can't. I believe that's why I am chiefly a porn addict, a food addict, a drug addict, an alcoholic and a compulsive money spender.

I plan to have my Facebook account permanently deactivated, after treasured photos have been saved into a flash drive, as for me it is a known acting out location.

Last night, in bed while trying to go to sleep, I fantasized and fantasized, repeatedly, about having sex with a woman who turns me on. I was doing what my addicted body was enjoying.

At first, I fought the urge. Then, past personal experience reminded me that most every time I struggle against, what against I struggle increases in power. So, I accepted the fantasizing, and I prayed to my Higher Power to remove the desire. I didn't pray as if to pray to a stone wall. I prayed to a living, breathing Almighty God who loved me to death, pun intended, Who listens to me, while believing He would remove my desire to continue these edging imaginations. Soon after, I fell into sound sleep.

This is all I am going to write about this topic for now.

A Conversion of Promises Becoming

2022-09-25T18:10:00.001-07:00

Call it osmosis. Transformation. Call it growing a new skin.

It's turning me inside out and upside down. Before, I actively sought to look at beautiful women. I yearned for the longing stares of mutual attraction. No matter religious faith nor sexual codes of conduct, women were statues of goddesses erected on pedestals in temples of idolatry. Their marble material didn't threaten. Flesh and blood women scared me to death.

Now, women are people to me, imperfect and sharing the equalities of imperfection. Now, not only women, but the whole world about me transforms into a present moment of living vitality. I see what before I didn't notice. Now, I do not seek to look, and when I do, I seek to not look lustfully.

My lizard drive urges, almost compels my innermost self, the sex and porn addict, to objectify individuals onto the screen of my mind, to liken them as porn actresses in a sex video. I am urged to feed the demand that porn advances towards the enslavement of women in the prostitution trade.

In SPAA (Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous), we chip against this trade. And in SPAA, a cardinal belief is that we of necessity must fight this fight as a unit. Personally speaking, if I don't go to meetings daily, I am not reminded daily of the disease, and if not, I forget as this disease is incredibly cunning and wants nothing more than for me to forget my abnormality. Phone calls to fellow members belong in this together we stand category. Depression, especially morbid, dark episodes trigger this writer to act out with porn: a sure-fire temporary remedy not worth the slip. Last depressed episode I had...a phone call to a SPAA brother lifted my spirit, offered sympathy, encouragement and provided perspective. I didn't act out.

The honesty and vulnerability and wisdom these brothers and sisters share during meetings cultivate nutrients of high-end grade...a fundamental assistance, a lifebuoy to a drowning person.

Meditation and crappy writing practice daily morn and evening assists. Consistent meditation muscles up the pre frontal cortex of the brain, which thus enables better impulse control, attentiveness and considerate response. Crappy writing helps sweep away pent up emotions of fear and resentment which obscure a clear view out the window of one's mind.

A 12 Step sponsor most considerably assists. My SPAA sponsor's latest project tasked onto me spurs me on to dig deep about my definition of what it means to be a man. The flip side of the coin of the task spurs me on to dig deep about what quality of woman I would seek in a mate. Armed with this intelligence, as a single man, I intend to prospect for a committed partnership not in a mound of garbage but in a mine where diamonds wait to be discovered.

The Breathing Lung of Hope

2022-08-25T16:34:00.000-07:00

If ever I, myself, needed the understanding and support of those in the tribe of us, the recovering sex and porn addicts, it is now. Truly, if I can speak truth, this need largely escaped me until I joined the fellowship of SPAA. (Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous)

It's repeated all over the earth. Addicts in 12 Step programs cannot recover alone, on their own resources, but must need have community and fellowship with those who share the particular addiction disease. So, it is.

Particularly in SPAA. This disease murders hope. My hopes of abstinence, when I entertained such hope, dashed countless times over decade upon decade.

Perhaps I can find the words to explain. In my family of origin, a shadow of shame darkened the light in the house. A lock on authentic expression curtailed capacity to learn how to feel. From my perspective, an admonition in the household acted like a curtain in a movie theater. If the curtain could have been opened, the movie would have been like a world of entertainment. Simple fun. Going fishing. Going to the sleep-over. Going to the sock hop in the 7th grade classroom. Going to see Natalie Wood in West Side Story. But the curtain, for the most part, never opened.

But, and I am grateful for this, when I reached puberty, I did find a manner to enjoy an endless supply of fun by bringing myself to completion, while imagining having sex with the girls I lusted for in grade school. Sexually acting out rescued my life in those early years, and I am indebted. In later years, most emphatically, I say the interest on that debt drove my subsequent life into a kind of vaguely noticed, but perpetual bankruptcy.

The brothers and sisters with whom I daily meet in our international SPAA Zoom meetings understand. My sentiment is that this understanding breathes forth the hope that gives the finger to sex and porn addiction. We share a common lung breathing hope.

Now. So, it is. Hope, one day at a time.

Upon the Door, Fear knocked.

2022-08-09T19:37:00.000-07:00

I cut the rope. I don’t see where I came from. I go into the unknown.

What do I find? Change is my fear. Being different is my fear. Being queer. Being forever ruled not by purpose but by the emotive waves of stormy emotion buffeting me. Being a quitter. My fears tie me down to the way I used to be, to my past. My fears comfort me. However, a broken record player repeats a truth I grasp, that... “Fear knocked on the door, and faith answered.”

Faith in Jesus Christ. Faith. Blind faith? It’s not blind, my faith. And all of everything lives inside the moment of now.

My job is to cultivate, water, hoe the ground of my faith so that it works, rain or shine.

I choose to feel. (Not to say that I also choose not to feel) The dragon is that I am a coward, a sissy, a fraud who does not have sufficient masculinity to win the heart of a woman.

This is where an Evil One enters the picture. This Liar well realizes my hatred mistakenly directed at God on account of my year after year, decade after decade of being a single man, and the resentment in me about it, and how hopeless and helpless I feel about it.

Faith supplies the reason to believe that my joy, my happiness depends not on any one human being, but on my relationship with He who granted to me His salvation.

A No Named Cabin Cruiser

2022-05-27T21:14:00.003-07:00

It's chastening to post honestly. I don't want my sexual sobriety more than anything else. I say to myself I need wiggle room, and myself agrees.

Rome wasn't built in a day is my argument. I argue the Capital of the Roman Empire had been fearfully and painfully growing during hundreds of years.

And picture the mental constructs of French and English mindsets, perpetually contending.

Believe not what I say --- that's not what truly counts; what does is whether I do what I say.

Today I kept one of my words and honestly, not just in the technical sense but in a whole hearted sense.

There is something going on. A sense of an orderly retreat in the face of an unstoppable force that releases a hundred different and interesting directions.

Imagine the freedom to be able to say what it is one feels no matter what fear of giving offense nor what fear of appearing foolish or intemperate.

I am struck by the depths of the soul-searching honesty shared amongst those of us in the SPAA Zoom meetings, that brother and sister fellowship. Not a speck of judgement.

I am half way, forty five days today in fact, into the ninety meetings in ninety days committment, with twenty days SPAA sobriety.

Experiences of a Hopeful Nature

2022-05-13T16:24:00.003-07:00

If I look at porn, I lose my SPAA sobriety, and recent times past, nothing, nothing on earth wanted I more than to look at pornagraphy. It's my bread and butter.

One goal: Go to 90 SPAA meetings in 90 days; today is 61 of those 90. Here's the stats. 41 days back-to-back sober, day 42 a slip. Next 10 days sober, day 53 a slip, day 55 a slip.

These "slips", well, put it this way. I tell myself, damn, I slipped, so...all bets are off, I'm going to milk this cow for all its worth, and the slip on a day turns into 3 or 4 slips in one day.

I intend to continue going to SPAA meetings daily, indefinitely. I now have a sponsor, and have started working the First Step of the 12 Steps contained in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, adapted for sex and porn addicts.

To repeat, according to the SPAA definition of sobriety, if I watch porn, even if I don't masturbate, I slip. If I have sex outside of a committed relationship, I slip. If I masturbate to completion without looking at porn, I slip.

According to the testimony, also, that I hear said from almost every man and woman in the SPAA fellowship, what's called "edging" leads to slipping.

Edging is akin to taking small tastes of a drug.

During the past six decades, I have been an unadulterated edger, an unhinged girl watcher, a legally permitted whore house goer, a porn looker, and a chronic masturbator. About ten years ago, I charged $20,000 on American Express for a week-end of sex worker services at Mustang Ranch in Nevada.

So, what's happening now that's different?

I go outside on the street downtown and I'm forcing myself to not look at the pretty women, and although fairly often this not successfully, that's the goal; if that's what it takes to prevent slippages, that's the goal.

Today I went grocery shopping at the Coral Supermarket on Calle Sucre. I knew there would be plenty of foxes walking around the aisles bending over and reaching up to grab. I knew there would be no chance in hell I could avert my eyes. I'd have had to wear a blindfold! So, I took the God Higher Power suggestion to heart, and prayed believing the H would do for me what I could not do for myself, and by golly it worked! The objects of desire, in my eyes, transformed into female people, some more attractive than others but that fact not a deal breaker.

Do you know, dearest of all readers, do you know what these and same such experiences spawn inside the core of my being?

Hope!!!

And what is hope??

"Hope is the only good thing that disillusion respects."

Marquis de Vauvenargues