Addictions

This post may be a little more serious than some of the previous posts, but I feel I should talk about one of my addictions. Although, when I decided to write this, I didn't expect it'd be written while listening to the Esmerelda soundtrack.....or with a cat sitting on my lap. It's hard to be serious in these circumstances. So let's try to get this out of my system.

Have you....ever....wondered
What it would be like to fly a kite?
In the night?
With the stars as your guide, you can dance beneath the light of the moon.

OR

Please excuse me, I have a question.
Have you seen a man, a man named Tom?

I started thinking about this last night while taking a little walk. When I got to the intersection of Indianola and Indianola (check Google maps if you don't believe me), I started thinking about the reasons that I used to go straight there, and the main one was to indulge in one addiction (although I later remembered that I didn't even go that way). I am talking about my pornography addiction. I know that I am still addicted, and for two reasons. First is that I've quit caffeine 3 or 4 times, and yet I now need to drink a 24-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew every day to keep the withdrawal symptoms away, so I know addictions are permanent. Second is that I still get the urge to type in one of those familiar URLs and spend the day just looking at as much as I can. Right now, many of those URLs are running through my head, just begging to be typed in.

I used to walk a mile and a half (each way) in the August sun (when I can barely stand being outside in the late May sun) just to indulge. My computer at school was used about half the time to look at porn (the other half was internet gaming, but that's an addiction for another time). At the peak, I had between 50 and 75 magazines, 3 DVDs (I didn't like DVDs very much, if you can't tell), and my computer had around 2 days of video and 100-200 pictures. All of that is gone now, except in my memory. These images surface in my mind from time to time, and I immediately feel shame and guilt about my past. The only image of those I want to remember at all is the two seperate trips (I had stashes at college and at home), each with a full garbage bag, down to the trash.

You may wonder where I got all of this, and I've already admitted this much, so here goes. I stole most of the magazines from my father (I bought 3 or 4 myself). The videos and pictures on my computer were mostly from pay sites (my bank account dropped to negative values multiple times), and a few from free sites. I was subscribing to so many different pay sites that I lost track of which ones I was actually paying, and which ones I had unsubscribed. This was my way of saving money--since I had dial-up at home, I couldn't use the subscriptions to their fullest, so I'd cancel my subscriptions before summer, and start them up again in the fall. I had so lost track of where the money was going that I paid $39.28 every month (yes, I remember the amount exactly) to a site that I wasn't visiting because I couldn't find it to cancel--for about a year and a half after I had stopped visiting.

Well, I'm hoping that by finally admitting how far down I was, the temptation will lessen. Just in case that doesn't work directly, please be praying for a little help for me.