Worse Than Ever

A few months ago I was 2 weeks into a reboot before having a disturbing sexual dream which brought up unpleasant memories. That night, the stress triggered me to relapse twice. The anxiety I suffered immediately after awakening almost triggered a mental breakdown. It would have been my third since I became addicted to porn almost six years ago to the letter. Over the last month and a half, I've suffered. Obsessing over uncomfortable memories and becoming depressed and unfocused. I escaped a total breakdown but the grace of God, but I've suffered immensely. I've become withdrawn and try to distract myself with whatever I can to simply deal with life. I've stopped going to the gym, something that helps me with addiction and anxiety. I feel more lethargic and do not desire to do things I once did. It's been miserable. Worse still, I have continued to relapse, each one even riskier than the last since I know it's only a matter of time before another breakdown. And when that day comes, I don't know if I'll ever be able to recover.

Porn has pushed me to the very edge of my sanity. I can't (and don't want to) imagine how much worse it can get. But I've learned over 6 years that there is ALWAYS a step lower you can go. I have had latent thoughts of suicide. Not desires or urges, but thoughts. I've never attempted anything and I don't want to. But occasionally I'll think, "If I never feel better again or have another breakdown, it'll be too much and I'll have to end it." Like I said, I don't want to end it. I don't want to end anything. I just want my life back. I want to be better. I desperately want help, either interpersonal or professional. But that requires people in my life to know. I've thought over and over again about telling my family or my best friend about my addiction and begging them for help, but I can't bear the thought of how they'd look at me. As a sexually deviant freak. They'd never see me the same way again. I couldn't do that to my parents. They always tell me how proud of me they are and that I'm a good man. I know differently. The truth would break their hearts and alienate me from them. And since I'm still on their insurance, seeing an addiction therapist means that they would have to know. My best friend is the best chance I have and I even worry about him judging me. And I don't know how much help he could be.

I need accountability with someone who is capable of holding me to sobriety and helping me overcome addiction. I've failed to be accountable to myself. I'm standing at the edge of the abyss and looking down into the void. This burden has never felt so heavy. And I want to get out. I don't know what to do.

Your value and worth as a person is not based on whether or not you watch porn.  You are getting a little carried away and not keeping proportionality in perspective. You are trapped into some kind of muddled, faulty binary thinking. Life is far broader than how you portray it.

I strongly recommend you tell your friend. Good friends are not overly abundant in the average male's life, and if you have a good friend, you are way ahead of the game.  You don't have to go into detail.  When I told my friend, I did something like this:  "hey Bill, i have been looking at some bad pictures and stuff lately, and I'm tired of it, and don't want to do it anymore.  How about if i shoot you an email or text once a week with my progress" or something like that.  He was happy to help (and probably a little glad that I respected him in this matter) and didn't need to ask a ton of deeply probing questions-it is kind of obvious what the request means.  If you want to "bury" it a bit, tell him you are also going to add a weekly update on working out and a professional aspect (job hunting, study, resume brush up, things going on at work, etc).  Think about it-what would you do if your friend asked you to do this for him? Would you say no?  Would you think he was a low-life?  Of course not, and neither will he.  Like I said, you don't have to go into detail, but at least get started. 

You have a friend and a good relationship with your parents.  Count your blessings my friend, count your blessings.  You have bases of strength and foundations to help you.  Don't overly analyze it-just get going, but seek assistance.  Your friend may need your help for something in the future as well. 

I'm sorry to hear it has been rough.

The emotional/trauma stuff is always the "final boss", isn't it?  One way to look at it is that it means you're close to the end. 

My "accountability partner" was going to regular confession as a Catholic.  The priest would change from time to time.  Most were very good and totally understood what I was going through (they likely have been hearing many stories like mine for a long time).  Some were clueless, but that's bound to happen.  A game changer was when I regularly went to the same priest who would remember my prior confessions and help me with something of a progress report on the matter.  Priests are sworn to secrecy and he can never say anything to me about it outside the confessional, but on the inside, he really helped me along.  I went often... weekly, sometimes more than once a week.  That is hard to do and it means lots of driving and finding people at odd hours.  But, it worked.

I agree that good friends are hard to find, to this day I'm not sure who in my life I could talk to about it, even though I can talk about it now as a relic of my past.  Social media makes people more and more isolated by feeding them an illusion of real human contact; they get burned out by the fake stuff and have no time or patience for real interaction.  It is a problem across whole generations right now.  I do see a bit of a problem in your thinking, because I think you're letting it defeat you a bit.  For me, an acute sense of loneliness was a major emotional trigger.  Seeing other people happy and in their own worlds that didn't involve me depressed me deeply.  Now, I'm not really any more socially engaged, but I can pass by these people, say hello to the children, admire a baby or pet a dog, and feel better, instead of worse.  But then, it was a particularly effective voice telling me how worthless I was, and the only thing that could fill the giant void in me was porn, because it was a huge gap that no one was going to even go near.  Part of me believed then "if I only had a girlfriend/wife/whatever" I'd have a tool to get out, but I think the addiction would have made it so I couldn't have made use of such people, and it would have made it worse.  At some point my thinking changed from "I would recover better if I had ____" to "I would be a better custodian of _____ when I recover" and what was defeating me became a motivation.  It is a very subtle difference, but a very helpful one.

We're here and praying for you.  No one here is going to say it is easy.