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victoryoversin
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| Joined: | Wed Apr 23rd, 2008 |
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Posted: Wed Dec 9th, 2009 06:00 am |
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| I've told my story many times. Introduced to porn at about age 14. Came to Christ at age 20 or so. Now 27, cannot get over addiction to porn, cannot forgive myself, cannot accept God's forgiveness for sins repeatedly committed. Doubting salvation. Help.
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TM2
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| Joined: | Thu Jan 8th, 2009 |
| Location: | Rural Midwest, USA |
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Posted: Wed Dec 9th, 2009 10:34 am |
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Welcome!
I'm interested that you've told your story many times. Most of us hid our stories during our active addiction, living in isolation and shame. For me, it was a major start to my healing when I first became able to tell my story to people who might help me - professional counselors and my fellow addicts in SAA and SLAA - and to people near me who needed to know - primarily close family members. Discovering that these people could accept and still love me and that they could forgive me helped me accept and forgive myself.
To whom have you told your story? How have they received it? I'm interested that honesty hasn't helped. Perhaps you haven't shared with quite the right people, people who both care for you and know something about addiction and recovery?
Also, what are you doing in order to get better? Addiction is a moral issue, but it's also a psychological one. My life began to change radically at the point I accepted this and started looking for help by getting counseling and by starting to attend 12-step meetings and to take the program seriously, getting a sponsor and working the steps. I found that there was hope, that addicts could recover. I found that recovery required a whole new relationship of trust and openness with other people, with God, and, maybe most frightening, with myself. To get sober, I had to mend all those broken relationships; but ordinary people like me were mending those relations a day at a time and were finding new lives. It was the greatest hope one person could offer another.
Following the example of my fellow addicts, I found that I could trust and surrender to God, and that God loved me and was close to me in ways I had previously been unable to imagine.
My recovery hasn't been without its problems. Learning to live without addiction is the hardest and scariest thing most of us will ever do. While in the past 4 1/2 years, I've had periods of continuous sobriety as long as 2 years, I've also slipped more than once. But for me, really plunging into the 12-step program as if my life depended upon it (which it does) and daring to face myself in counseling and to reveal myself to the people closest to me have shown me a new way of life and have brought me the greatest gifts imaginable. There is absolutely hope and love and peace waiting out there, even for us.
So what are you doing now, and what's the next step?
Tim M.
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