All about DRTFN

[KenP]

Sorry buddy, but it's all about you.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,357323,00.html

Here are some major red flags that you may have a problem with pornography:

1. You?ve become anti-social.

You are spending more time with pornography than you are with the outside world. If you are single (and even if you are putting yourself out there) your preoccupation with porn may be hindering your ability to establish long-term, monogamous relationships. If you are involved with someone, you may find yourself bowing out of couple and familial obligations to steal moments with your laptop or DVD player. Bottom line: You only have eyes for porn stars and no one else.
2. You?re lying to your partner.

Your once honest relationship is now plagued by secrecy and dishonesty as you try to hide your porn habit. About 70 percent of people keep their porn use a secret. And many will go to all sorts of extremes in making sure that they are not found out. Even when busted, many will do or say anything to hide the truth.

3. Your partner is no longer attractive.

Unbeknownst to your partner, s/he has competition ? and it?s your favorite porn star. Obsessed with fantasy characters, you find it hard to get turned on to the real thing, including yourself. That?s right; you?re not even letting yourself off the hook. Casting yourself against fiction, you?re sizing yourself up as unattractive. Either way, you are likely avoiding or completely uninterested in sex with your lover.

4. Your sex life with your partner is suffering.

Both your sexual desire and functioning, including arousal, have taken a nose dive. You and your lover are feeling robbed of romance, passion and emotional closeness. This is because you are not truly present with your partner. Emotionally distant, you are too busy having sex with porn. Ultimately, you are dissatisfied with your actual sex life, and this is affecting your relationship.

5. Your concept of ?real intimacy? has become warped.

When you re-emerge from the fantasy world, you?re finding that your expectations about sex, sexual partners and intimacy have become unrealistic. You?re only interested in those who look and act like porn stars (which severely limit your dating pool if single). Sadly, you start to think there must be something ?wrong? your lover for not putting out like a porn star. Furthermore, you?re objectifying others, wondering what he or she would look like unclothed or how they would act during sex.

6. The habit is causing you distress.

Torn between desire and shame, your use of porn is causing you physiological and emotional distress. You may feel like a ?sex pervert,? or suffer from isolation, shame, anger, unrest, depression and irritability. You may be distressed over the fact that using porn conflicts with your value system. Overall, your porn kink is starting to cause family, work, legal and/or spiritual problems.

7. You are engaging in risky behaviors.

You might be OK with ideas that usually make you think twice, for instance, having unprotected sex, but now you are engaging in behavior that is out of control. Soliciting a prostitute, looking at child pornography or anything involving animals or violence warrants a need for help.
If your porn habit is causing you to neglect important life matters, you should seek professional help, especially if it is causing you and your partner distress. A sex counselor or therapist may be able to help.

[timgco]

[DRTYFN]

[Bully13]

Hi DRTYFN, I'll try to make this brief...

You have an addiction. It isn't a public addiction, like alcoholism. With alcoholism, the last person to know he is an alcoholic is the alcoholic. Support groups exist for alcoholics. If you go to Alcoholics Anonymous, people support you because they know you are seeking help.
But you are addicted to pornography, and pornography addiction is a secret thing. You may be the only one who knows you are addicted. If you went to a support group for pornography addicts, and your friends found out, or if your spouse found out, they might be very disappointed in you. You might hurt feelings, break hearts. Friends and family probably don't know you're addicted to pornography. They probably think you're a fine, upstanding, loving man. You know what? They're probably right.
You see, pornography addicts come from all walks of life. They're blue collar laborers and white collar executives; they're handsome and they're homely; they're Christian, Jewish, and atheist; they're all races and creeds. They're single, they're married and they're fathers. They can be lazy couch potatoes, and they can be diligent community volunteers.
Some want to control their addiction and some do not.
Chances are, you are probably extremely hard on yourself. Your addiction can be discouraging, and can seriously damage your self-esteem. You may go for a few weeks or months without a problem, and then -- Whammo! -- you fall in the hole again. And when you're in a hole, it's easy to feel very worthless.
All I can say is, don't beat yourself up! You aren't perfect. God knows what you are trying to accomplish here. You are trying to overcome an addiction, an addiction that didn't develop overnight. Don't expect to gain control over your addiction overnight. I didn't develop my plan in one day; I developed my plan after years of trying, failing and learning. Give yourself a break.
Think of it this way. You are taking steps to change your life for the better. You are going to feel closer to God during this process of change than you have in a long time. As you prayerfully seek his assistance in changing your life, you might also ask him to help you keep your progress in perspective. Are you seeking out pornography every day? Then going two days without seeking it out is a major accomplishment! Recognize that, because God certainly does.
He wants you to succeed, and he'll help you get to the point where you have control of your life again. But right now, he knows your weaknesses. He loves you more than you can understand, despite your mistakes.
Being clean three days does not excuse sinning on the fourth, but you need to understand that you have actually accomplished something positive. And you can do much better next time.
My personal plan helps me focus on the goal, much more than on the problem. That's why it works for me, and I hope it works for you. I think it will. When you focus on a goal, and reward your own successes, you are going to experience an increased sense of self worth. Determine at the outset that when you occasionally stumble (because you will -- at first), you will pick yourself up and not give up. Your own plan might need some adjustments, but DON'T GIVE UP! If you've been addicted ten years, it's going to take a long time to change patterns. Start again, one day at a time.
Each day that you succeed will increase your self worth, and give you added strength to succeed tomorrow. So don't worry about succeeding tomorrow. Just worry about succeeding today, and rewarding yourself tonight.
Controlling Your Thoughts
Pornography addiction begins in your mind. Some people think about it and some people don't. For many people, pornography doesn't interest them, just like auto mechanics or gardening might not interest you. But for the pornography addict, pornography is extremely interesting.
You might not be someone who spends a lot of time thinking lustful thoughts. Lustful thoughts can certainly increase your desire to find pornography. But that might not be your particular spark.
Maybe you associate feelings of insecurity or loneliness with sex. Some people, when they're feeling lonely, turn to masturbation or pornography. Such simulated sex makes them feel un-lonely, at least for a little while. If that's your situation, you need to realize that loneliness is part of life. Even the most happily married man in the world feels lonely once in a while.
Create an action plan for the times you are alone. Learn to enjoy being alone. Do housework, or study, or exercise. Get out of the house and get your heart pumping. Don't worry about whether you'll be tempted again when you get back. You're not exercising to keep from seeking out pornography -- you're exercising because you enjoy it, you are alone and now is the perfect opportunity.
Find things you love to do, that you can do when you're alone.
Controlling your thoughts is like driving down the freeway. Have you ever driven at a high speed and suddenly heard your tires thumping over the reflectors on the lane's dividing line? You hadn't noticed yourself swerving out of your lane, but now you hear the warning of the bumps under your tires. So what do you do? Probably, without even thinking, you correct your steering and pull away from the line.
That's what you are trying to do with your thoughts. Whenever you get in a situation that might tempt you to indulge in pornography, you need to make adjustments in your thinking and actions to get you away from danger. At first that will take a great deal of effort, but as your instincts improve, you'll find yourself steering clear of hazards with hardly any thought at all.
You are an addict. You have a disease. You have to take efforts every day to avoid pornography. Maybe you have to cancel your Internet account.
There are things that you aren't strong enough to resist. You'll get stronger and wiser, but right now you may have to deny yourself some things. Listen to your thoughts. Are you rationalizing? Pay attention to the things you rationalize -- they're probably the very areas where you are weakest.
Fill your mind with something uplifting when you catch an unpleasant thought creeping onto the stage of your mind. Maybe you can sing a favorite song to yourself, or recite an inspiring poem, scripture or quote.
Just remember, every day for the rest of your life, you need to actively resist pornography. So, here is my plan.
One Day at a Time
Start today. My plan works best if you start today and don't put it off. Make sure you have gotten rid of any pornography in your home. Throw it out. If it's around, you will fail. Remember, right now you are weak. You have to resist each day.
When you've finished reading this paper and understand the plan, take time to pray. You need to appeal to a higher power if you hope to succeed. Prayer draws you closer to God and will give you extra strength. In fact, at times God will come to your aid and intervene to protect you if he knows you are sincerely trying and depending on him.
In your own words, explain to God that you're addicted to pornography, and that you will do everything you can to control your addiction, but that you need his help to make up the difference.
Now, determine how much you can afford to pay yourself each day. Fifty cents? A dollar? Two dollars? It depends on your personal budget, but what you are doing is saving for a big reward. Pay yourself each day that you avoid pornography.
Your goal is to give yourself something great after your first 100 days. And it needs to be something totally extravagant that you would never spend money on otherwise. Maybe its in-line skates or a day of skiing.
Your goal will increase. Your first goal is to go 100 days. After you've made it, your next goal will be to reward yourself after 250 days. And then reward yourself once a year. So each year you will have $365 to spend on something purely fun.
Every night, after I say my prayers, I take a one dollar bill out of an envelope I keep in my sock drawer, and put it in my bank. It's a great feeling. Every once in a while I take the money out of the bank and count it. That's how many days I've gone without seeking pornography. And I keep a tally of when I spend it so I know when I've gone more than a year in a row successfully.
But what happens when you fail? Well, you have to give the money away. Pick a charity. Maybe it's your church, maybe it's your political party, maybe it's a local arts group or a service organization. But pick a charity. When you fail, you're going to send them all the money in your bank.
AND THEN YOU ARE GOING TO START AGAIN!
That's all there is to it. That's my plan.
• Eliminate all the pornography in your home
• Pray for help
• Determine how much you can afford to save each day
• Pick a reward for yourself after the first 100 days
• Make or buy a bank to save your money in
• Pay yourself each day that you successfully avoid pornography
• If you stumble, give all the money in your bank to your favorite charity
• After 100 days of success, reward yourself
• After the next 250 days, reward yourself
• Reward yourself each subsequent year for the rest of your life
Don't beat yourself up when you stumble. Remember that what you are trying to accomplish is a major undertaking. You can do it. And as you progress, God will bless your life with incredible joy. You will become more self-disciplined, and you will be happier than you have ever been. God bless us all with success.

Hope this helps...

[KenP]

Bully, his problems run much, much deeper.

The first step to getting better is to reduce masturbation and ejaculation frequency and try to overcome this bad habit.

Of course its self explanatory that you must cease masturbating so frequently! But after you do that, (keeping it down to at least 2-3 times a week) you need to balance your hormone levels and replenish your body of the nutrients you have lost. Notable herbs include saw palmetto which will shrink your enlarged prostate due to the excessive DHT you have created for yourself through over-masturbation. This will not only re-energize you, it will also improve your concentration and motor functioning. Ginseng and ginko biloba helps to achieve this, also.

Keep in mind that it takes a couple of months (usually between 2-4) to really reach a state of recovery. Just because you are recovered, it doesn?t mean you can just go back to masturbating excessively or engaging in excessive sexual activity. You will still need to pace yourself.

Some dietary changes that are particularly effective in combating symptoms of over-masturbation and to maintain good sexual functioning are eating more soybean products and eliminating excessive caffeine from your diet. Focus on nutty foods like sunflower seeds, and peanuts and eat more sea foods, seaweed, vegetables, and try to minimize red meat and dairy product intake. Instead of PROPEL, try drinking orange juice or cranberry juice and, of course, drink plenty of water.

[Bully13]

If what you are saying is true, KenP, then I believe DRTYFN needs to be treated for sexual addiction, along with other therapy.
The initial therapeutic intervention for sexual addiction needs to include an assessment for other addictions. It is impossible to expect treatment for one addiction to be beneficial when other addictions co-exist.
The behavior of sex addicts has profound effects on partners, children, parents and siblings. The addict is usually partially or totally unaware that their behavior has affected their loved ones. Families develop unhealthy coping skills as they strive to adapt to the addict's shifting moods and behavior. Curiously some addicts may act out in solo isolating behaviors leading to feelings of family abandonment. For these reasons, friends and families will often need to be involved in the recovery process.
Those who do not attend 12-step meetings have a much more difficult time recovering, if they do at all. In many ways recovery from significant sexual addiction can be more difficult than recovering from some of the other addictions. The heavy prevalence of sexual abuse in the backgrounds of sex addicts is one reason. In addition, sexual addiction fundamentally involves a problem with intimacy, something important for successful recovery.
Self-help groups such as Sex Addicts Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous, and Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous are popular with proponents of the sexual addiction concept. These are large groups based on the 12-step system of Alcoholics Anonymous. There are various online support forums as well as real-life help through an out- or in-patient program or private counsellor. Some intensive programs work with both the addict and the addict's partner.

Therapists also use cognitive-behavioral therapy, and medications may be of value particularly in overcoming conditions or disorders that lead to increased acting out.
It is important to distinguish between sexual addiction and sexual anorexia not related to sexual addiction, as both can present similar behaviors, but effective treatment may be quite different. Aside from depression, it also must be established whether or not the presenting behaviors are due to obsessive-compulsive disorders, bipolar disorders, etc.
It is highly imperative the addict finds an experienced, trained counsellor to help with their addiction. Addicts suffering from other disorders in addition to sexual addiction (Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, etc.) rarely reach and maintain a sober recovery without highly trained assistance.
Supposedly, the longer a sex addict has been acting out and the higher the level an addict they are, the lower the chances of a successful, sober recovery being maintained. Unless a sexual addict hits bottom (much like a drug addict) they will rarely seek recovery on their own. Other related, untreated psychological conditions or disorders can also reduce the chances of the addict maintaining a sober recovery.
It is also important that the partner of a sexual addict seek their own, individual counselling to help them learn how to deal with their partner's addiction. There are also online support groups in addition to real-life help.

[wpage]

Dr Ruth Westheimer has experience with issues like this. Not certain that this is the proper venue for DRTFN problem outside of his truck abuse side bar. Lets not go there. Others like even family have tried to help wash the mud off his rails to no avail.
The Kenedys are planning to introduce legislation to make vehicle abuse
a felony. Until Obama gets behind this folks like DRTFN need our prayers. We can only hope some miracle may occur in the mean while...
\
Vote McCain the only hope for DRTFN!

[KenP]

I wholeheartedly agree. Therapy is necessary for him, however, with the limited info we have, I'm hesitant to recommend a course of action based on internet activity and rumors.

He may be conflicted within the conformity-deviant dichotomy so prevalant in today's single male population.

In our fast-changing world the moral, legal, and medical standards for sexual behavior may not always remain in agreement and may even become mutually exclusive. That is to say, our very conformity to one standard may come to imply our deviation from another. For example, a modern nonorgasmic man may be asked by his therapist to masturbate frequently in order to become "fully functional". However, the same man may be told by his clergyman that masturbation is a sin which will be punished by God. In short, he is given the choice between being either healthy and immoral or moral and sick. No matter how he decides, he ends up violating a sexual norm. By the same token, his therapist who recommends masturbation may thereby break a criminal law. (At least one state in the U.S. makes it a crime to encourage someone to masturbate.) Still, his professional ethics may demand that he give that encouragement. In short, his choice is between being either law-abiding and immoral or moral and criminal. Thus, he, too, is confronted with a dilemma. We could, of course, explore this conflict of norms even further by considering the therapist's possible religious beliefs or the medical views of the clergyman, but the main point of the argument should already be clear: Deviance as well as conformity are relative terms, and their concrete meaning varies with the social context.

[Bully13]

Perhaps I was a bit premature in my diagnosis. There are definite benefits to masturbation. The physical benefits of masturbation and having an orgasm or ejaculating creates heightened arousal while epinephrine courses through the body, producing the flushed face, shallow breath and post-climactic euphoria. It is held in many mental health circles that masturbation can relieve depression, stress and lead to a higher sense of self-worth (Hurlbert & Whittaker, 1991). Masturbation can also be particularly useful in relationships where one partner wants more sex than the other – in which case masturbation provides a balancing effect and thus a more harmonious relationship.
In 2003, an Australian research team led by Graham Giles of The Cancer Council Australia concluded that frequent masturbation by males appears to help prevent the development of prostate cancer. The study also indicated that this would be more helpful than ejaculation through sexual intercourse because intercourse can transmit diseases that may increase the risk of cancer instead. Also, frequent ejaculation is more easily obtained and sustained over time with the aid of masturbation.
A study published in 1997 found an inverse association between death from coronary heart disease and frequency of orgasm even given the risk that myocardial ischaemia and myocardial infarction can be triggered by sexual activity. Excerpt, “The association between frequency or orgasm and all cause mortality was also examined using the midpoint of each response category recoded as number of orgasms per year. The age adjusted odds ratio for an increase of 100 orgasms per year was 0.64 (0.44 to 0.95).” That is, a difference between any two subjects appeared when one subject ejaculated at around two or more more times per week than the other. Assuming a broad range average of between 3 to 5 ejaculations per week for healthy males, this would mean 5 to 7 ejaculations per week. This is consistent with a 2003 Australia article on the benefits against prostate cancer.
Masturbation is also seen as a sexual technique that protects individuals from the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. Support for such a view, and for making it part of the American sex education curriculum, led to the dismissal of US Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders during the Clinton administration.
Sexual climax, from masturbation or otherwise, leaves one in a relaxed and contented state. This is frequently followed closely by drowsiness and sleep – particularly when one masturbates in bed.
Some people actually consider masturbation as a cardiovascular workout. And while doctors have no proof of this actually being true, those suffering from cardiovascular disorders (particularly those recovering from myocardial infarction, or heart attacks) should resume physical activity (including sexual intercourse and masturbation) gradually and with the frequency and rigor which their physical status will allow. This limitation can serve as encouragement to follow through with physical therapy sessions to help improve endurance.
Both sex and masturbation lower blood pressure. A small study has shown that in one test group, recent full intercourse resulted in the lowest average blood pressure in stressful situations. Masturbation then led to lower blood pressure than did no recent sexual activity.