Sobriety

I've been struggling with a bunch of thoughts and ideas over the past few days. We are visitng my parents for New Years. They are finishing up a divorce and separation that I just found out about a few weeks ago. This has been strangely therapeutic for me because it reinforces some thoughts about their marriage and my behaviors that I have been considering recently. That stuff is too thick to get through right now. I'll blog on that another time.

Today I want to discuss sobriety. What does it mean for me? I spent a few days going over the possibilities in my head. Mostly I was trying to come up with scenarios that involved masturbation being OK. However, I really don't think porn is OK for me, and I have virtually always masturbated with porn. It would potentially be nice if I were able to masturbate in the shower or in my own bed. I'm really not sure if that would lead me down the slippery slope to porn, internet porn, phone sex, video sex, sex with hookers and random internet people though. What would I fantasize about while masturbating? Sex with hookers? The sobriety must be complete. My sobriety will mean no masturbation and sex only with my wife. December 28, 2007 will be the anniversary. That's when I last masturbated. I last had a hand job from a hooker some time in late November. I last had sex with a hooker in mid-May, and with a random internet aquaintance in mid-March.

I really believe masturbation is a normal healthy thing...for most people. For me it has practically been the focus of my life for 16 years. It is a shame to cut it off, but I believe it is the right thing to do. If I'm still sober in 6 months, I'll revisit this.

To Do:
1. clear porn off of computer
2. cancel online memberships to forums
3. cancel my adult bittorrent tracker account (more free porn than you could imagine)
4. cancel my unlimited monthly newsgroup downloads (more free porn than I could imagine)
5. cancel my membership to a pay as you go amateur phone sex site.
6. tell my last remaining internet conquest (whom I would have hooked up with a month ago if she hadn't had a schedule conflict) to buzz off.
7. Throw out the sim card to the "'ho phone". For those not quite as messed up as me, this is a pay-as-you-go cell phone. You can give the number out to anybody...hookers, strippers, internet people. Then you don't have to worry about drug addicts and losers calling your personal cell at inopportune times. The sim card is where I have stored the numbers of strippers, crack whores, and escorts. How slimy is that?
8. I also need financial accountability. I have a credit card with out-standing sex industry and other impulse-buy related expenditures on it. It carries a balance that will probably take me the better part of a year to pay off. I need to turn over access account info to my wife. Not because I feel like I need a police officer, but because I think knowing that she could look is important. It also further elminates duplicity. This is the hardest. It involves my wife at least being aware that I have a problem, at least on some degree, with sex. I suspect that she already knows a little bit. I'm not ready for full disclosure, now, if ever.

This means certain other things are off limits too. I can't go driving around some of the worst neighborhoods in our city at all hours of the day and night cruising for prostitutes. I can't go to strip clubs.

There are a lot of benefits here. Money I would have spent on sex related stuff can be spent paying down the balance on that credit card. I'll save money on gas. I'll save probably an hour plus daily that I would have spent looking for porn on the internet or reading up on escorts and cruising sites. I can use that time for so many more productive things: reconnecting with my wife, exercising, HEALTHY hobbies. I have a lot of self-loathing, but I am excited about the person I could be.