First 30 Day Stretch in over 25 Years (long post)

31 Days ago I would have said it was impossible. Today I'm 30 days clean for the first time since I've been a teenager over 25 years ago. (My story is in the Relationship Section of the forum). I'm still alive even though my mind kept telling me I'd die if I didn't go back to my addiction.

Today I feel like a carton of eggs... fragile but unbroken. The first couple of weeks felt like hell as I did battle with my addiction. I view it as my detox period. The next couple of weeks was like playing a high-stakes mind game with myself... fighting the little voices in my head trying to get me to go back to my old life. As the days went by, the more desperate those thoughts seemed to become. But at the end of 30 days I still feel like a toddler just barely learning to stand much less walk. I still feel like I'm one impulse away from autopilot mode and going back to the beginning.

So far I have not allowed myself to linger on any inappropriate thoughts. It's a tiring process but it keeps me from reminiscing on 'better times' that really weren't good for me at all. My body still misses it... like someone who has been dieting on salad for 30 days but still craves dessert. My mind reminds me why I'm on the diet and that all the hard work can evaporate in a moment of weakness. I don't know if I will ever hate it, but i do hate what it made me do and how I felt. I don't want to go back to the days where I was in the porn coma. That is the OLD me, and I don't want to be that person anymore.

I've been healing but I've been flatlining for weeks. The parts are working but desire for the real thing is slow in coming back. I'm off the medicines I've been on to deal with all the dysfunction and my body is acting closer to normal.

My relationships is where I've seen the most improvement. Maybe I can't take all the credit because my wife is the one who is forgiving me and working with me every single day. She is healing along with me, so we're also healing together. What has helped is that we talk every day about my feelings, her feelings, and then just a little bit of something that happened in the past. I'd think about it overnight and then apologize then next day when the reality of what I did settles on me. We agree never to put too much on my plate than I'm able to handle. Progress is slow, that's what needs to happen as you take ownership of all the damage you've caused over the years. Some of the conversations have been extremely uncomfortable and deeply personal and humiliating. But if that is the coin I need to pay for increased trust and intimacy, then I'm willing to pay it.

Having a second person helping me has also given me some perspective on my progress. When you don't see progress then they can tell you how much you've changed since Day 1. For example, there was a day I was just depressed and we talked about how I reacted 15 year ago when my wife miscarried, and she noticed that that was one of the first personal conversations in a LONG time that didn't devolve into an argument.

As someone who has been addicted their entire adult life I'm starting to ask some questions of myself. Who is the real me? How much have I missed by living a scared, frightened life? This addiction suppresses so much of your personality that I'm wondering what is going to come out. I'm deeply scared of being like the main character in the novel/short story Flowers for Algernon where he 'wakes up' for a short period of time before regressing back into his old life, never to return.

Right now I feel the pendulum has swung from my angry, frustrated self to neutral. Can it ever swing to happiness? When do I go from 'recovering' to 'recovered'? I know the journey is long and maybe I'll have more answers as I go through this next phase of healing. But at least for today I can proudly say: I'm 30 days clean!