Re-wiring

How porn can re-wire your brain… short term and long term.

In the short term I noticed one day after an afternoon of watching porn, some good some crappy, that I went into the world with a skewed view of things. I went to the Home Depot and when checking out with a rather attractive woman checker I found these thoughts running through my mind… Wow I wonder what she looks like naked. Is that a pucker in her shirt or are those her way large hard nipples. Are her nipples hard because she thinks I am hot? Is she going to ask me if she can suck me or me to suck her. And the thoughts all raced through my mind with appropriate video accompaniment of the imagined possible scenes. I kept waiting while she was ringing me out… then the credits… "Have a nice day and thank you for shopping the Home Depot"… Nothing… what a letdown.

Long term: it can give you a twisted view of what sex and lovemaking can or should be like. On occasion Hot steamy sex can be this way but in general it is not. These are paid professionals with proper lighting, direction, make up, proper shot angles and most of all editing. It can also fill your head with a lot of things that don't translate into reality very well. All those slick exotic positions look new and exciting on camera but a steady diet of that sort of thing… you had better be a yoga practitioner. Most of these women are more limber than most because that is their job Most of these guys look great because they are paid to. When you are paid to sit at a desk and file reports or some such you have to make time to go to the gym and PAY to look like that. Similarly these situations while sexy and fantasy stuff are not likely to be what you really want. No woman wants to be raped… but the notion of being so attractive to a man that he "loses control" and must have you now is an attractive one. And the idea of a recently unemployed 20 something building contractor stud showing up at a Cougar party with "pizza delivery" is interesting but I don't see Cougars sitting around eating pizza. They hang out in Martini bars.

There is a scene in one of my ALL time favorite movies, "BrainStorm" where a lab assistant has made a loop of an orgasm scene and apparently has been locked in his basement playing this looped bit of 'tape' for what sounds like three days. When he has the 'helmet' removed he is crushed by the return to reality. The subsequent difficulties have him being discharged and put in disability of "…inderterminent duration". In effect he had some sort of psychotic episode in connection with this event. At a certain level I believe that this is possible watching porn movies for some people. They get hooked their minds get re-wired to desire the notions and the ideas and the sex in porn but it is just not reality. I believe that it can become difficult thing to keep the two separate for some people. Perhaps not keeping them separated but keeping an understanding about what a real sex life is about and what porn is and wanting that level of a sex life with no consideration for work or chores or children or the desires of my partner or this or that or the other. I think I am one of these people.

I have said this many many times and I still believe it; if you and your partner are equally interested in porn then it can possibly work, but if one is and the other is not I believe porn will become a source of friction that will be difficult to overcome in a relationship. Similarly if you don't have some psychological braking mechanism in your head about porn, it can take you down the path that cocaine and meth and crack can take you down. If you keep watching and keep watching it desensitizes you to what comes next, the next big thrill. But I know that there are some people who can watch porn and not be "hooked". Just like there are peop-le who can have A glass of wine in the evening without drinking the whole bottle then moving to the Vodka. This is why I label myself as a sex addict. I have often wondered what goes on in the heads of people who start using coke and then windup snorting their possessions and their families, their health and their lives away. Didn't they see any of this coming at them? At some point didn't they say Damn that boat I just sold, to pay for my coke habit, was the last straw… NO MORE!

wow...

I had not looked at my blog for a long time. I said some time ago that I am naturally a lazy person but this is ridiculous. Until just very recently I have not been screaming busy... (I am now though and might even get paid for it... accent on might). I read a great book watched a LOT of TV. For those who ware commenting and following I apologize for falling off the face of the planet. I didn't even know I had commentary. I would certainly have been writing more had I known that. Commentary makes this more worth doing... more interactive sort of. I got some very nice comments, Thank yo very much for those... and a spam, never seen that before. Gobs of spam in email but never have I seen it on my unknown blog.

I had a fight with a bout of back sliding... I found my self obsessed with a porn video I saw a Long time ago... some time last summer. I made it a quest to find it again and for a time tried to find a way to down load it. After a few days of that I got bored with that and fell back in line with my sobriety. I have determined, as much as any one can determine what constitutes sobriety for them selves, that my sobriety is not having contact with a woman I had the red hots for for a very long time. I denied it to every one and my self. I "claimed" that I wanted to be "just friends". I had a MOUNTAIN of reasons and rationalizations for the "friendship" but in the end it was not good for me. I hate that I ended it the way I did but now that it has been almost a year and a half or more I cant call and explain myself that would be counter productive and well I don't think I would stay sober after that... better this way sort of. As for Porn... I find my self drawn to it on lonely nights but its boring to me now. There is a draw but its boring and its a time sink. I did find the porn video and I book marked a link to it. I look at the link and sort of now it has become a symbol of what I need to NOT do on the internet.

This week…

This has been a tough week.

My sweety is gone for the week. One of my addiction triggers has something to do with abandonment. I have a very difficult time alone. I tend to 'act out' in my addiction when I am stressed this way. I started out the beginning of the week pretty much ok. By midweek I was trolling a blog that could be considered porn. Not porn strictly speaking; just a blog that I know to be sexy and thinking. Thinking about sex but thinking none the less.

Today I am not trolling those blogs very much, mostly writing and working around the house and trying to stay warm. Man there is a lot of work to get done around here. But it so cold outside that I find it very difficult to be out there very long. I think I have nearly frost bitten my fingers and toes riding my motorcycle in the cold and now they seem overly sensitive to cold, that or I am just a wimp.

I was looking up the sex rehab show and found that some of the rehabbers have blogs. Two of them are very well done and relative to their new lives, the others surprisingly not. I read some of their posts regarding their experience on the rehab show. The two good blogs are definitely worth reading.

Sex Rehab

So recently I was watching a recorded Mythbusters. After the Mythbusters was over there was a bit of the next show recorded. It was a show about Pompeii. We have all heard about Pompeii and Vesuvius and how the town was buried in an instant preserving a snap shot of the life and times of an ancient Roman city. A horribly terrifying snapshot but a snapshot none the less. I say that because the people are all couched and hiding from the Dragons and Tigers oh my… (Crouching tiger hidden dragon reference) No no no never mind that… the pyroclastic flow that buried the city. They none of them looked any sort of happy about it except possibly those who were at that very moment about to commit suicide. So any way I have seen and heard the story about Pompeii a million times and had no interest in the million and first time. But just as the recording was about to end there came a bit of extreme interest… Did you know that Pompeii was a seething hot bed of lust, sex and debauchery? I did not know this. It seems that in order to get funding for the excavation of the city they had to keep this aspect of the citizen's lives and times off the record so as not to offend the… somebodys who I don't know but seem easily offended by such things. So… but I saw this little leading bit and wanted to see more. So while I was looking up shows using keywords "sex" and "Pompeii" I came across the "Celebrity Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew Lipinski" show on VH1. I came across a lot of other interesting titles too but. It's a series. And apparently Dr. Drew has done several "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew Lipinski shows"; Drugs, Alcohol and the like. The 'celebrity's' are not so very celebrated though. A more apt descriptor would be celebrityesque. But their problems look and sound real. I identified with much of what they are going through. It seems that this is the first time a Sex Rehab show has been done. I naturally thought maybe I better watch this; in the nick of case there are nuggets of good usable information that could help me with my issues. I know that sounds like the old line… "I am just buying 'it' for the articles dear", but I am seriously interested and not for the titillation factor. Though, I have to say for a show about sex addiction I think the choices of editing and advertising are a bit lacking in sound judgment. There was a KY Intense commercial and some of the inmates/patients dress VERY provocatively. I imagine this to be out of habit more than anything else and perhaps that is their only wardrobe. There was a "chapter" about the women's makeup and the "mask" they put on, so perhaps the clothing thing will be addressed also. But I have to say that full breasted women wondering the hallways without braziers and wearing only a thin fabric muumuu in what must be a refrigerated treatment facility is counterproductive to those who watch for the "right" reasons. There have been a couple comments from the male inmates about this sort of attire. But I don't think they are going to scream foul too loud of too long. Perhaps as the show goes on the women will come to see the effect they are having and become more modest about such things and change to more appropriate attire for such a co-ed treatment. Perhaps the Dr.'s will sort that kind of thing out. And if the guys truly have any integrity about getting better they will say something. I will watch for that to determine if this is for real "reality" or scripted "reality".

There was a show on daytime TV some years ago called "Starting Over". I found that show interesting and somewhat helpful. Principally for bringing up things to think about in ways I had not before. It also gave Us, my Lovely fiancé' and I, things to talk about regarding who we are as people and who we are in our relationship. This Dr. Drew show seems to follow that model. And I am hopeful that I will learn something and that my lovely fiancé' will learn and understand more about my issue as well. That last thing is something I am very much hope for.

I have to say the line below is the way I was going to open this post… which in my estimation sort of hides the true nature of how I came to be watching this show which I think would be a lie and a deception on my part about this issue for me. I think that hiding even little details that preserve an appearance of non-addictedness on my part is counterproductive in my effort to understand and deal with and ultimately control this in me.

So recently I am trolling the TV for stuff to watch and as I am surfing up the dial I stumble across the Celebrity Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew Lipinski. Oh my, says I, what sort of crap is this going to be…

… so to explain

My last post was some what goofy and out of left field. Not that it was in any way not an accurate depiction of my day or my feelings as a whole lately. What I have sloooowly been getting to in my head is that I am a sex addict. I have seen a show on the Discovery Channel titled Hypersexual Behavior several times. It is the story/documentary of three "officially / medically" diagnosed Sex addicts and some people who are flirting with the notion of what that is and maybe they aught to take notice of their behavior a little more closely. I have seen the show before several time because well seeing the title what was I supposed to do… Hello sex addict! The first time I saw it I thought that is not me… I have not gone out and paid prostitutes, picked up runaway girls or any other extreme behaviors that were being shown… BUT I did spend an inordinate amount of time online 'trolling' for sex chats and porn sites. I am the master of rationalization and so I rationalized that away as that I was a guy and guys are into sex. Not letting the idea that no other guy that I knew was doing any of the things that I was. At that time I was the "Shop Pervert". By that I mean that in the group of guys I know I was the Way Out there and admitted and proud of it pervert of the group. I was participating in a Wide range of "interesting" activities… Dungeon Play parties, Swinging, poly-amorous relationships, BDSM play, Slave auctions, making sex toys Lots of toys and the list goes on and on. All that to say this; this time I watched it and heard very different things than I had in the past. In the past I heard that 'the guy' I most identified with had met a woman that had understood about his addiction and some how was ok with it. I determined that I needed the woman in my life to understand my addiction and be ok with it. That would let me totally off the hook as it were to pursue my addiction as I pleased and her to be ok with it. That didn't work no mater how hard I tried to force the situation.

I have always said that I think sex addiction is situational I still believe that… If two sex addicts find each other and fall in love and live together the sex addiction is not likely to be a huge issue… just my thinking.

But so I didn't fall in love with a sex addict… probably fortunately for me. I saw this time in the show 'my guy' say that the sex addiction was the hardest addiction he had ever had to deal with. He had quit smoking a variety of drugs including cocaine and heroin both renown for their difficulty to quit. Having had a cocaine habit of my own and quit that I can agree completely that sex addiction is a MUCH harder thing indeed to quit. Elsewhere in the show there was some discussion about some of the theories of how some one becomes predisposed to sex addiction aside from the fact that the American society is Soaked with sex at ever turn there was some discussion about the idea that children that don't receive sufficient (who is to define sufficient though) loving and touching in their child hood and live in an environment where they feel safe there is a high likely hood that they could become addicted to sex. I feel that is my story. I am not going on Opra and blaming my Mom and Dad for any of this, I am responsible for what I do.

Since that last posting I seem to have gotten over the worst of my addiction. Sort of like the heroin addict that "sweats it out" for weeks then one morning the pain is gone. Or at least that is how it shows on TV.

I will say this about my two run ins with addictions I firmly believe that I alone was not able to do this. I had help. God spoke to me the day I quit cocaine and God sent me a wonderful woman that was his instrument in helping me overcome my sex addiction. My addiction to cocaine is long gone but I suspect that I will not soon have a proper relationship with sex for a long time… but I have hope now.

happiness

God, I want to be happy. Help me be happy. Why cant I be happy? Why cant I be normal?

Today is a bad day... why? I am not happy and I am not normal and I hate my self!

I read somewhere that thanks to the internet , sex is now boring.

Holy Smokes I read this article today that hit the nail on the head with near completely perfect accuracy!
Please read it! It is MOST illuminating. This is the caution to pornography argument that I have been making for years. There is no real data that suggest that unregulated porn access causes an increase in sex crimes which is the usual BS argument. In fact there is lots of data that points the opposite way. But the thing that I found after living in a sex soaked stupor for years was exactly what this article talks about Reality sex VS Porn Fantasy sex. It sort of boils down to a thing called expectation management. Unless you are involved with a partner who is as into porn as you are... then porn is likely to become a problem in your relationship. Maybe not now, maybe not soon but eventually. If however you find your self in a relationship with some one like minded in the porn area... consider it very carefully before you rock that boat. That equality may be very difficult to find again! I am a big fan of porn... but I am subject to its addictive qualities. *** I *** Ruined my marriage with it. After years of self analysis I take full responsibility for that debacle.

I would only add this to the article. Sex Addiction is a like Alcohol addiction this way; not everyone is predisposed to be an alcoholic. Some can drink one drink at dinner on occasion and have liquor in the house with no compulsion to consume all of it at once, once they start. Some people cannot. Some people drink till they pass out… regularly. They ruin their health. They spend more on booze than their budget honestly allows. They lose their jobs drinking on the job. Similarly with porn, online or otherwise, there are men, and women it seems, that will spend loads of money on online porn site memberships, more than they have to spend. They will lose their jobs because they trolled porn online at work.

There are some guys and gals that are likely to become addicted and some that are not. Also I think with “sex addiction” the triggers are more prevalent. There are more women walking around to look at, to rate their ‘doability’ index, to objectify, and fantasize about their breasts…butts… than there are liquor ads or stores so the incidence of dealing with sexual triggers is higher with sex addiction. And advertising uses sex like they use the letter E. This leads to a situation of habit building through repetition.

The metaphor of having to hunt for your food and cooking it over an open fire seeming to make it taste better comes to mind. The ability to get Fat and sugar into your diet used to be DARN tough. You had to run down the fat bearing animal and kill it. Using a stick and a rock made that a long labor intensive process. In general it cost almost as many calories to kill and eat an animal as was in the animal. Now you can just drop into any of thousands of fast food places and get Lots of fat and sugar... fast, easy and cheap. (Fast, easy, cheap... remind you of any one???) Fat and sugar taste good for a reason . You need them in your diet but only a little and because it used to be darn difficult to get into your diet it was sort of self regulating.

Now with Porn shops in every teeny tiny town you can get lots of fast, easy, cheap "sex" into your life... and just like eating too much fat and sugar... it may not be good for you. That's not to say that once in a while fast, easy cheap sex isn't great, a steady diet of it... not so much.

Bottom line porn can be hurtful in an unbalanced relationship. It’s a long and slippery slope. (Long and slippery... never mind me...) Nothing about it is easy.