CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

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Castimonia Saturday Morning Meeting Topic – 4/14/2012

This morning’s topic is a “Musical Topic” where I hand out the lyrics to a “recovery-related” song and we all share.  This also relates to our work in Step 4.  Below are the lyrics and my discussion on the subject:

Fixxxer
Metallica

Dolls of voodoo all stuck with pins,
One for each of us and our sins,
So you lay us in a line Push your pins, they make us humble.
Only you can tell in time
If we’ll fall or merely stumble

(Chorus):
But tell me
Can you heal what father’s done?
Or fix this hole in a mother’s son?
Can you heal the broken worlds within?
Can you strip away so we may start again?
Tell me, can you heal what father’s done?
Or cut this rope and let us run? Just when all seems fine and I’m pain free
You jab another pin
Jab another pin in me

Mirror, mirror upon thy wall
Break the spell or become the doll
See you sharpening the pins
So the holes will remind us We’re just the toys in the hands of another
And in time the needles turn from shine to rust

(chorus)
Jab it

Blood for face
Sweat for dirt
Three x’s for the stone
To break this curse
A ritual due
I believe I’m not alone
Shell of shotgun
Pint of gin
Numb us up to shield the pins
Renew our faith which way we can
To fall in love with life again
To fall in love with life again
To fall in love with life again
To fall in love
To fall in love
To fall in love with life again

(Chorus)
Oh yeah

No more pins in me, yeah
No more, no more pins in me
No more, no more pins in me
No more, no more, no more
No, no, no

Topic:

Typically secular music is not played at Castimonia unless it has a direct relation to our issues of sexual purity, addictions, or recovery.  When I first heard this song in 1997 I didn’t think much about it.  In 1997 I was still on the downward spiral of my own sexual addiction and really didn’t think much of the song except that is sounded “good” and pumped me up when I would work out.  I might of even thought it was about some sort of torture ritual.  It’s no wonder secular music stations that play this music and think it is “cool” and fitting to their sinful ways!  Most heavy metal fanatics bang their heads to this music, not realizing that there is a deeper meaning to the music.

I hope that you guys won’t throw a fit and say to yourself (or me), “Heavy Metal music is for devil worshipers, how dare you play that in a Christian setting!”  Then again, whatever you think about me is none of my business.  So bear with me.

Recently, I listed to this song and it has an entirely different meaning.  Looking at life through my “recovery goggles” or in this case “recovery headphones” I see and hear things differently, they take on different meanings. I learn to understand the world in a different light.  In order to understand these lyrics, a short history lesson of James Hetfield from Metallica is in order.  James Hetfield is now a recovering alcoholic.  He spent decades of his life in the addiction and the music he and other band members wrote reflect the out of control lifestyle they lived while in their addiction as a form of acting out from a less than stellar childhood.  It’s no wonder their music has these types of “screaming out” for healing!  It’s also no wonder why I was so quickly attracted to their music.  At a subconscious level, I too could relate to broken people like James Hetfield, his lyrics spoke to me, I just never realized why until I entered recovery.

In dissecting the song Fixxer, we see James screaming for healing for his Absent Father Wound, something he attributes to his “acting out” later in life.  You see, James’ father left early in his life and he was raised by his mother.  Furthermore, because of the strict religious upbringing (Christian Scientists) they did not believe in administering medication, even when James’ mother was dying from cancer.  This is why we read the lyrics, “Can you heal what father’s done? Or fix this hole in a mother’s son? Can you heal the broken worlds within? Can you strip away so we may start again? Tell me, can you heal what father’s done?”

When I listen to this song, I think of various times in my recovery when I asked or thought these same questions.  First, it was God, can God really heal me and what happened to me in childhood.  The answer I received was “YES” but I’m going to have to work for it!  Secondly, I thought of my sponsor and working the 12 steps, could they really help me heal these wounds from the past and move forward?  Again, the answer I received was “YES” but I’m going to have to incorporate them into my daily life, working them over and over, every day of my life.  Finally, I thought of my therapist, can he help God heal my childhood wounds?  I’m still on the fence about this one, but I’ve felt the pain and suffering of going through childhood sexual abuse, having an absent father, and all the other junk from my childhood that formed me into the person I am today.  God heals what I feel!  I believe that God can heal me, but I have to be able to go through the tough stuff first.

A part of this song as it relates to Step 4 and recovery:  It seems that a new pin is introduced every so often.  We can call these our character defects that were made known to me in Steps 4 and 5 and how more and more keep coming up as we mature in our recovery.  Even after working through those steps, other, different character defects may come forward, ones that we did not see before.  Also, for some of us, the pain from digging deeper into our childhood reaching to what possibly could be the core of our acting out seems like another pin being stuck in us.  This can come in the form of an absent father, an overbearing mother, childhood sexual abuse, introduction to pornography at a young age, etc…  Sometimes, in my own recovery, I have often stated “no more pins in me!”

One final thought on this song.  An interesting line in this song is the mention of the “pint of gin, numb us up to shield the pin.”  James wrote this before entering recovery for his Alcohol addiction.  However, as all addicts know, our addiction and the acting out tends to numb us from our emotions, from seeing our character defects, and from wounds inflicted upon us as children or later in life.  It is important to see the addiction for what it is, just a very false shield to try to protect us from the pain we have experienced in life.  Many of us have chosen to act out rather than go through the pain, it is common.  However, in recovery, we learn to fall in love with ourselves and learn to fall in love with life again.

Take what you like, and leave the rest….

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My Ultimate Battle: Pornography

I found this post and thought it would helpful for those that are wanting to come into the light about their problem with sexual purity.

by unsettledandunrested

If the title doesn’t give you the notion as to whether you should read this post, then I suppose I commend you to read on. This is just an honest account of my life. Whether or not this helps you, makes you feel bad for me, or motivates you for a course of action with a friend or for yourself with similar problems, then I suppose the post will have been beneficial.

It wasn’t until middle school, eighth grade to be exact, that I started looking at porn. The sad thing is that I cannot even remember how it started. The next thing I should add is that porn and masturbation usually coincide, at least for me. In fact, I believe that I started masturbating even before porn came into view. Not to put the blame on others than myself, but it was a stark change from elementary to middle school and I learned things I shouldn’t have in that time of life. My fellow middle school classmates and friends corrupted me, drastically. Before porn, I was masturbating even before I knew what I was doing. It was more of an experimental concept for me. I had heard friends and other classmates on the bus talk about things and I can only guess that I took things into my own hands, literally, and the rest is history.

Fast forward from being 13 years old to being 22 years old and I am eyes deep into porn, still. It’s funny how New Years resolutions for me fall into unspoken “I am going to stop looking at porn this year.” And then I fail and convince myself that I’ll quit later on in the year when my birthday comes around. My birthday passes right through and I make it a day or two, maybe three.

I am at this point in life right now where I consider myself rock bottom with porn. I am sick of it. I don’t know why I look and that feeling of “what the hell did I just do that for” comes immediately after masturbation. The before and after are always, “I probably shouldn’t do this.” and the middle is often times, “Why am I doing this? I should just stop and do something else. Go play sports or something.” Needless to say, it’s been awhile since I’ve done anything and it’s a good feeling. I am sure you’re wondering how this sin ties in with being a Christian.

Perhaps this is a completely different blog post that needs to come into fruition, but I’ll summarize. Being a Christian doesn’t mean I am perfect. If anything, there is a such a standard placed on Christians that we are destined to fail. Not only through the eyes of society, but even God. We are born into sin. Only by God’s grace and sending Jesus to die for us are we even considered. Outside of Jesus, we are dead. I am human just like the next person and I make mistakes just as much as someone that has no ties to religion or someone that believes in something different. Give me a chance and know that I will not claim to have all the answers and say that I am perfect. I do strive to do what I can to do what is right.

I believe the most beneficial thing that someone that looks at porn can do that wants to stop is to surround yourself with solid friends that care about you and tell them your situation and demand accountability. It’s also tough because often times accountability lasts a week, if that, and then disappears. Let people know about your situation and your mind on it and your intentions to stop and ask them to ask about it. Hell, there is a church specifically for addiction to porn. Click here to go to XXXCHURCH.com

I hope that the time comes sooner than later, hopefully this year, that I can say that I have been free for a month, and then two months, and then three. A year from then I’ll be celebrating a year and know that it isn’t something that is a one time breakaway but a constant battle for and with myself. The battle, it doesn’t end, so they say.

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Online Porn Is Huge. Like Really, Really Huge. Who Knew?

For the sake of our Castimonia members, I have deleted links and actual site names from this BusinessWeek article.  I do not want to trigger them.  These stats reinforce a statement in my Men’s Sexual Purity Recovery, Is it for you? 80/20 Principle – Part 2 post on 30% of all internet traffic is porn-related.

By  Ashlee Vanceon April 05, 2012

The good folks at ExtremeTech took it upon themselves this week to get at one of the Internet’s crucial questions—just how big are porn sites these days? The answer? ***** big. To study porn sites, ExtremeTech turned to the DoubleClick Ad Planner tool from Google (GOOG). It’s a useful website where you can peek at information gathered by ad-serving cookies about how much traffic a website gets, the age and income of visitors, and the amount of time people spend on a site.

According to this tool, the online porn kingpin X****** feeds up 4.4 billion page views per month. That’s about 10 times as many as the New York Times and three times as many as CNN.com. Y******—another site packed full of stimulating content—notches 2.1 billion page views per month. And while people spend a few minutes per day on news sites, they tend to spend 15 minutes or more on porn sites, which would seem to say something rather definitive about, er, male stamina.

“But it’s not just men on the sites,” you shout. True, although the top porn sites count men as about 75 percent of their visitors. Breaking the stats down further, about half of the visitors make between $25,000 and $50,000 per year, while only 2 percent earn more than $150,000 per year. According to Google, the other interests of X****** visitors include Latin American music and gangs and organized crime, while Y****** visitors like networking equipment and family films, so it’s an eclectic bunch.

While anyone can dig through these numbers, ExtremeTech did a nice job of adding some context to the incredible amount of data served up by porn sites. According to the Google estimates, X****** would record “29 petabytes of data transferred every month, or 50 gigabytes per second. That’s about 25,000 times more than your home Internet connection is probably capable of, which is a couple of megabytes per second.” Sliced another way, X****** will “serve up 50 gigabytes per second, or 400Gbps,” ExtremeTech writes. “Bear in mind this is an average data rate, too: At peak time, X****** might burst to 1,000Gbps (1Tbps) or more. To put this into perspective, there’s only about 15Tbps of connectivity between London and New York.”

Someone at Y****** chatted with ExtremeTech and said the Google estimates are way below actual totals. Y****** stores more than 100TB of porn and feeds up about 28 petabytes per month.

These types of figures put the top porn sites in a class that only Microsoft (MSFT), Google, and Facebook really surpass. My takeaway from this is that companies such as Dell (DELL) and Cisco Systems (CSCO) make a ton of money selling gear to the top porn sites and that these companies must have some very savvy engineers.

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Porn, Sex Trafficking, and Jacob’s Story

Do not believe the lie that using pornography is harmless….

Porn, Sex Trafficking, and Jacob’s Story.

At the heart of our pureJUSTICE message are the connections between the injustices of porn and trafficking, and the connections between the virtues of purity and justice. This mini-documentary by Unearthed Pictures powerfully connects all of those dots through an interview with “Jacob,” a former trafficker in South Africa who is now rescuing girls from the sex trade, after being rescued himself.

“I love God. I love what He’s doing for us. I love what He took me out of.” Jacob

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Men’s Sexual Purity Recovery, Is it for you? 80/20 Principle – Part 2

In Men’s Sexual Purity, Is it for you? 80/20 Principle – Part 1 I frankly discussed the sexual purity issues of excessive lustful thoughts and self-gratification (masturbation).  Two “minor” struggles almost every man has with maintaining sexual purity.  I state “minor” only because if these two are left unchecked, they may develop into a compulsion which becomes a lot more difficult to treat.

In Part 2, I discuss the issue of pornography.  “Pornography is the devil!” I once heard used to describe the subject matter.  I don’t believe this is Biblically correct, but I do know that pornography and sexual immorality is a tool the devil uses against Christians to try to separate us from God (not separate God from us).  The sad reality is, a lot of men view and use pornography for their sexual gratification.  One of the pastors at The Fellowship circulated an anonymous survey at one of our general men’s group two years ago.  The results were not surprising.  Among attendees of this men’s group (not sexual addiction related), 100% viewed and used pornography for sexual gratification!  (Admitting to sexual impurity is a lot easier when done on anonymous surveys, and this is one reason our group attempts to maintain anonymity and confidentiality.)

So 100% of men in the men’s group admitted to having viewed and used pornography for sexual gratification.  These are dedicated men who attended this particular class to better themselves and their walk with Christ!  What does this tell you about the truth of pornography and how it has infiltrated the church?  The enemy is great at using one of the greatest weaknesses men have – sexual temptation!  The viewing of pornography has become the “norm” in American society.  I read some other blogs recently referencing a CNN article that stated that over 30% of all Internet traffic is pornography related.  WOW!

So how does pornography become so addicting?  Well there are plenty of resources for in-depth description on how this occurs.  I will try to give you a simple an explanation as possible.  In short, the human brain has the same reaction to getting high off crack cocaine as it does to viewing pornography.  Patrick Carnes has every reason to state that Internet Pornography is the crack cocaine of sex addiction.  Pornography affects the brain in very negative ways.

So how is the brain affected by pornography?  Neurochemicals!  Adrenaline and pleasure hormones become linked to and released by the experience of a male viewing pornography.  Watching pornography is like drinking out of a fire hose.  What is meant to give us a need in terms of water, will soon drown us and kill us because of the amount of water coming out.  So is the concept with viewing pornography.  What God meant to be a meaningful expression of true intimacy, pornography twists and distorts it to the point that we end up drowning, yet want more and more!  Men seek to be intimate with their partners, pornography hijacks this intimacy with over-stimulation of the male brain.  Now, here is where things get tricky.  The brain pumps out the chemicals triggered by the viewing of pornography at a very high level.  This initial amount is enough to get us aroused and to sexually act out.  However, escalation ensues and the original high level of chemicals produced by the brain is no longer enough!  Now, more of the chemical is needed to get the same arousal and sexual satisfaction.  And this means that we need to view more pornography, perhaps more “hardcore” pornography to get back to that level of arousal at which we have set in our brains.  Perhaps we need longer periods of viewing pornography, searching, viewing, finding, objectifying, fantasizing, etc…

This brings me to my next point.  Getting high off viewing pornography does not require self gratification (masturbation).  The high is already there once the user views the pornography.  The brain is already active in pumping out the chemicals necessary to bring the user to a state of sexual arousal.  One can sit in front of their computer or TV and watch pornography without gratifying themselves and still get the “high”!  Self gratification only adds to the experience but is not required to achieve the high that comes from just viewing pornography.  The longer one watches, the more that will be needed the next time to get to the same level of high.  This can quickly turn into a downward spiral where the Christian who only watched “a little” pornography is now addicted, spending hours in front of their screen viewing pornography.  Slowly, they begin with 10 minutes, then 1 hour, then 4 hours, then 8 hours, etc…  More of the chemical is needed to maintain the high, they can’t get enough.  The will NEVER get enough!  The sad reality in all of this is that I have heard of men in their 20’s needing Erectile Dysfunction medication to achieve an erection with their spouse because of the amount of Internet pornography they had been viewing before and even during the marriage.  Their arousal template has been completely distorted, but there is hope in recovery and abstinence from viewing pornography!

Now why is Internet pornography so dangerous?  I’ll discuss this in-depth in another post on why to use Internet filters.  But in short, the Accessibility, the Anonymity, and the Affordability (Al Cooper)!  All a user has to do is get online and they can quickly view whatever pornographic content they desire to view.  Internet pornography is easily accessible!  The user can do this in the confines of their own home.  No need to go to a public place to view pornography.  No need to worry about being seen leaving a “video store” or Sex Shop.  Furthermore, postings on the Internet allow for users not to use their real identity.  One can post sexually graphic messages without anyone knowing who they really are.  Internet pornography allows for anonymity!  Finally, a user can quickly find “free” content online.  There is rarely a need to pay for content that is easily given away for free from these crack dealers!  Have you noticed how some of these pornographic websites give free “previews” of the sexual content, just enough to draw a user in so that they will purchase more of the product?  Hmmm, sounds a lot like a crack dealer, they draw you in with a free “high” then you have to pay to get more!  Regardless, there is almost no cost to access pornographic content on today’s Internet.  Internet pornography is affordable!

I could go on for pages on why pornography is so destructive to the human brain, however, in my next post, I will discuss another level of sexual impurity, crossing the flesh line….