How to stay sober one day at a time

Now that I’m past 90 days no O and therefore ‘cured’ (not), it’s time to start focusing on helping others some more.

First, as promised, here is the Daily Sobriety Renewal format/questionnaire I use by myself as part of my quiet time, after praying, each day. This has been a game changer for me.

I got this from the Sexaholics Anonymous book ‘Step Into Action’ which in turn took it from an SA book called ‘Recovery Tools’. I have adjusted the language of the main questions slightly to suit me better.

Doing this each day takes less than five minutes, and by now I have the bits in bold well memorised, so I can do it in my head even if I don’t have the written text with me:

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DAILY SOBRIETY RENEWAL SCRIPT

1. Are you willing to admit today that by yourself you are powerless over lust?

(including the compulsion to masturbate, with or without porn or fantasy, porn, fantasy / acting in, the compulsion to have an O, and the compulsion to review the status of your commitment not to lust)

2. Do you will to choose to depend on God for sobriety* for the next 24 hours?

(*freedom from all of the above, from all lust and sex with self or others other than your spouse, from the obsessions, thoughts, compulsions and actions of lust and infidelity, freedom from fear, resentment, shame, self-pity, etc.)

3. Are you willing to do whatever is necessary to protect this choice for the next 24 hours?

(e.g. setting boundaries, prayer, reading, physical care of your body, reaching out to and calling or texting others, meeting with others where possible, journaling, step work)

4. Are you planning to do anything you would be ashamed of today?

5. Do you understand that at the end of this 24 hours you are free to choose sobriety for another day or go another way?

6. Just for today, are you willing to hand over your will and your life to the care and goodness of the One who kept you sober yesterday and protected you from the full consequences of your lust in the past?

7. What are you grateful for today? (gratitude is an antidote to lust)

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When things are particularly difficult / there is a chance of me initiating and being turned down by my wife that day, I add the following liturgy of my own creation:

EXTRA LITURGY FOR MARRIAGE

-I lay down the ‘right’ to have sex today.

-I lay down the ‘right’ to have a sexual release or orgasm today or masturbate today.

-I lay down the idea that sex is a ‘need’ today.

-I lay down the ‘right’ to be treated with affection today.

-I lay down the ‘right’ to be grumpy and resentful if I do not have sex today.

-I lay down the ‘right’ to have sex a certain amount in my life.

-I lay down the ‘right’ to have sex in certain positions or ways.

-I lay down the ‘right’ to have sex for a certain length of time.

-I lay down the ‘right’ to ever have sex again.

-I lay down the ‘need’ to have a wet dream.

None of these things are truly ‘rights’ or ‘needs’.

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And lastly, when I have been particularly struggling with whether I want to choose to depend on God to stay sober ‘even’ from no-fantasy MO or not, I have reminded myself of the following:

CONDENSED REASONS TO COMMIT TO NO MO

-I pledge not to masturbate. If I cannot keep that pledge, I am addicted / enslaved to masturbation.

-Plain readings of Matt 5, 1 Cor 7 and Leviticus all suggest masturbation is not God’s good standard for me.

-Survey evidence shows that masturbators are less happy in their lives.

-33-40% of guys do not masturbate. Not everyone is doing it.

-All masturbation massively triggers porn cravings for me.

-I am a recovering lust addict. I am allergic to all thoughts and actions of lust. Masturbation is an action of lust. Therefore I must be completely abstinent from masturbation.

-Masturbating, for me, leads to shame and obsession with whether or not to do it. Surrendering the urge to do it and not doing it kills the obsession and leads to freedom from the obsession.

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Hope some / all of this is helpful to someone!

 

Great questions! I think about them too.

Here's my experience, which is all I can share from really.

1. Actually, weirdly I find that admitting my powerlessness over lust is the key to granting me victory over it. Because then I stop fighting it, toying with it, thinking I can beat it. If you put a video of a beautiful topless woman in front of me, left to my own devices I am powerless not to lust after it and do M. It is too powerful over me, for whatever reason.

However, this does not mean I am powerless over everything or helpless. That would be true victim mentality. I do have power over some things. What power do I have? The power to reach out to God and others for help, to orient myself towards God. If I do this, which I do have the power to do, I get the power and help from God not to lust.

In the intro to the SA group meeting 'liturgy' as I like to call it (they call it 'The Solution'--I strongly encourage you to look it up) it actually says 'the crucial change of attitude [for finding freedom] came when we admitted we were powerless'.

All the same, the original daily sobriety renewal script the OP is adapted from just says 'powerless', but this distinction is why I like to add 'powerless by myself' to the script. And I add 'depend on God for sobriety' to the second question too, for the same reasons. I like to introduce myself at SA meetings by saying '[name], recovering lustaholic, powerless by myself over lust, P, M; sober with the power of God for x days'.

I once regularly attended a remote meeting where a guy would regularly say that he was 'powerless to reach out for help when I need to'. God bless him and may he find sobriety, but he never did get sober, at least while I was in the meeting. Maybe he has now. If I am powerless to reach out for help when I need to, then as far as I can tell I am totally screwed. But this is where you could get into the free will / predestination or Arminianism / Calvinism debate. I like what my friend said, that we should live like Arminians and pray like Calvinists!

2. The funny thing is that, at the time of writing, using the script every day (except the occasional day when I forget and don't even do it in my head), I have been sober from P and M, with progressive victory over lust, for the length of time it says in my sig for every day. May that continue for the rest of my life, please God! But one day at a time. I don't think it is magic but it seems to help me. I have heard of other lustaholics with very long-term sobriety who every single day still get on their knees and make a two-way contract with God to serve and obey him in exchange for the power to stay sober, just for the next 24 hours.

Hypothetically, if one day I was to do this script and succumb to temptation, which I pray never happens but is a perfectly possible thing to happen, I guess it would probably be because of not doing one or more of the things listed in the parentheses after question 3 i.e. not following through on my commitment to do whatever it takes that day to stay sober by God's power alone.

Additional edit: Famous saying in SA and in 12-step: 'Without God, I can't. Without me, God won't.' I think that says it all really.

 

1 Corinthians 7 doesn't use the word 'right'. A better translation is that the husband should do their duty and the wife their duty. Your duty is to be faithful to your wife. Looking at porn is not this. I don't know what your Catholic Christian doctor is playing it. The whole framework of 1 Corinthians 7 is about avoiding sexual immortality i.e. porn (the word is literally 'porn' in the Greek.) Jesus commands us not to lust for women who are not our wives. This is binding for all times. Do you want to be the sort of person who wanks off to porn, whether or not you are married? I can speak from experience here because my wife had lymph cancer this year which got into her bones. She has weak bones still. Intercourse is much less frequent than it once was. Porn is still out of the question. It will corrode and pollute anyone who uses it, whatever the circusmtances, single or married, with an active or inactive sex life. Masturbation without porn, now maybe that's a bit more understandable, but personally I have concluded still a no go for me. It's the action of lust, even if I don't look at porn or fantasise with it. I slipped up with that about a week ago for the first time in 14 months, but I am trying with God's help to get back to my/his standard. May God bring healing to your wife. May this trauma be an opportunity for you to draw near to God and find more freedom, holiness and joy in him to sustain you than ever before. Get real and get into a recovery group. If you are in the UK send me a PM and I am happy to text or speak on the phone any time to support you.

 

In addition to my reply above, I recommend the episodes on 'abstinence' and 'masturbation' of the 'Pure Victory' podcast. Pretty much the whole podcast, tbh. I also recommend the books 'The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex' and 'The Great Sex Rescue' by Sheila Way Gregoire. In my view, in spiritual terms you are entering a period of abstinence by necessity. It may be difficult for about 0-30 days but then it will get easier, with periods of difficulty. It may even be easier from day 15 or day 22 or so. We have no right to look at porn. We don't even have a right to sex. It's not a need. It's a want. My take.

 

Also @Believe85 , I want to say sorry for being harsh in my first reply. Foremostly, I am so sorry to hear about your wife and I pray for her to get well. I will keep praying for her if I remember. May she recover. I was probably harsh with you because I am harsh with myself about this too. I need more self-compassion and other-compassion. But porn. Come on. Even most of the secular writers will tell you now that porn is not healthy for a marriage. If you wife does recover, do you want to have tuned yourself to orgasming to reproduced images of other women? It will wreck your marriage and your future sex life.