Well....it's been quite a bit since last I posted. Unfortunately I have been having wild bipolar swings, mostly a nasty dysphoric mania which means I am sad, hostile, angry and can't sleep, want to have all kinds of twisted sex and spend money I don't have. Sounds like fun, right?
Today I was at confession again. I have been feeling a tad more stable so I thought I would clean the slate and try to get a grip and get my sex addiction under control once again. I was thinking about the chicken and the egg when it comes to my sex addiction and mental illness. What comes first, the mood shifts or the sexual acting out? Obviously when I begin to have mood swings, especially severe mood swings, it becomes difficult to stay sexually sober. But I am finally beginning to see that my acting out, which is rather shocking and intense is destabilizing me and throwing me into severe episodes.
I have been unwilling to admit that my addiction was or could be the primary problem and that it is fueling my mental illness, rather than the other way around. I have also been unwilling to admit that when my mental illness is out of whack that more than a medication adjustment was necessary. My response to my mental illness was always to up one med or lower another med and I always operated under the delusion that my life was pretty stable and in order aside from my sex addiction.
The truth is that there are a lot of things fueling my recent bout of mania. My out of control sexual acting out, my violently turbulent relationship with my sister Florence, having to care for my father and being held prisoner in this home, and yes, my medications are not adjusted properly.
Back to the egg. If my acting out behavior is destabilizing my mental state than it becomes much more important to get my sex addiction under control than it was before. Medications are ceasing to be the panacea they always were...now I have to do some work.
Saturday, December 2, 2006
Friday, November 17, 2006
But if the eye be evil thy whole body shall be darksome.
Tonight I was watching the local news and there was a story about a Catholic priest who was caught with thousands of images of child pornography on his computer. A a sex addict I feel the need to share my thoughts and feelings on this subject which seems to be on every news channel all across America ceaselessly.
Let me begin with being very clear where I stand when it comes to my own sex addiction. My behavior started out with very vanilla phone sex....nothing exotic. But that can only last so long. After a while this particular drug (your fantasy) isn't strong enough to produce the desired effect. So you need to use a stronger drug, which would be a more "intense" fantasy or more intense real life behavior or perhaps acting out your fantasies for the first time with others. Perhaps something you wouldn't act out in real life, something you wouldn't want to tell other people. And this fantasy or fetish or paraphilia also ceases to work. So you develop more fetishes or fetishes that are more shocking, taboo and "dark". This is where I have been and am right now. I have developed a rich fantasy life which includes a plethora of exotic fetishes, including the one I will be speaking of rather often on this blog, a blasphemy fetish.
Now I have used phone lines, online chat rooms, instant messengers and pornography of all sorts to act out. My behavior is so solitary in fact that there is a real sexual anorexia thing going on in my life underneath the addiction. So anyway, time to make a point!! Could MY addiction progress to the point that I would end up looking at images of child pornography on my computer while ignoring the inevitable consequences of that behavior?
I must say that as bad as my addiction is I have rules. If I keep acting out will I break these rules? Will I cross these boundaries I have established for myself? All I can say is that I am desperate for this illness to not progress and I am actively working to arrest it and transform my life. Am I trying as hard as I should be? Am I doing the right things? Could I be doing better? I don't now. I feel like I am just keeping my head above water at this point but I think I can keep from going to "the next level" if I don't abandon myself to the addiction and keep fighting.
So, anyway. My rules. I am not aroused, nor have I ever been by causing others pain or hurting people in any way. So the idea of emotionally, physically, spiritually and psychologically scarring a child is just not an acceptable option for me. The natural extension of this thought is that by using child pornography you are actively contributing to the destruction of the lives of who knows how many children. That being said...I have to wonder if that priest I was speaking of at the beginning of this post had said the same thing to himself at some point in time. What did he start out with? Some mild behavior like compulsive masturbation? Or perhaps he has always had an orientation of being attracted to children, a true paraphilia that he has struggled with his whole life.
I simply can't judge this man as my behavior is so unhealthy, so morally repugnant, so outside cultural norms. I know the readers of this blog would scream at me about casting the first stone if I lambasted this or any other priest involved in any number of inappropriate sexual behaviors. But all this leads me to ask, did he seek help? Did he go to Sex Addicts Anonymous website to look for meetings? What did he bishop do to help him?
Another thought come to mind here as well. How much does the suppression of normal healthy adult sexual desires, be they heterosexual or homosexual (I'll discuss my view on homosexuality at a later time but for the sake of this post let's view it as morally neutral) lead to the eruption of aberrant sexual desires? Perhaps the Church gave this man the impression that sexuality is evil? Perhaps he became a priest in the hopes that God would free him from his homosexual (if he happens to be gay, I don't know) inclinations? Perhaps he hates himself, hates his sexuality, believes God hates him and in an attempt to just bury it all away instead it burst forth as sexual deviancy. Maybe this man just needed to find an adult that he could love without guilt or shame to make him whole and all of this could have been avoided. Of course this is all wild speculation but it's only a blog no one is going to read anyway so I'll say what I want.
So what about my aberrant behavior? I in fact have attended Courage meetings ( http://couragerc.net ) the Catholic apostolate to gay men and women (as the call it, people who suffer from SSA, same sex attraction) who are never allowed to have sex with anyone ever again unless they somehow become heterosexual, which apparently requires wearing flannel and playing football and chopping wood or for the women watching Martha Stewart every morning until you can macramé a tea cozy. Oh, I am so sorry, was that sarcastic??
I also was involved in reorientation therapy with a counselor from NARTH ( http://www.narth.com ) where they practice what is basically Freudian psychoanalysis where you blame your homosexuality and everything else in your entire life on your evil parents, or more specifically your smothering mother and distant father. For those who don't know psychoanalysis has been replaced with a more effective approach to mental illness...it's called DRUGS!!!!!
So I am left wondering....did I do this to myself? In an effort to please God (or appease society or make my mother happy) did I repress a normal healthy sexuality and replace it with this addiction? Could be!! By they way Courage and reorientation therapy never made me heterosexual. Next week I will be entering a group home to become Asian! We'll see how that works out.
Finally I would like to make one final statement about the Church and sexuality. When the Church points to people and says things like "Look at those naughty gays, having parades and sodomizing each other in their own homes like consenting adults, they are all going to hell!" the gay community and everyone else in the world at this point points their finger at the Church and say "Well, at least we aren't molesting children!!" So for me at least, I just can't take the church's teaching on the morality of homosexuality and homogenital acts seriously anymore. They have lost all credibility in my eyes. The need t cast the beam out of their own eye before they tell me where to put my penis, or anyone else's for that matter.
OOOPS!! I was ranting about homosexuality. So what about this priest, who I should mentioned tried to kill himself when he was caught, what should he have done? Someone should have told him God loved him regardless of what he had done and that there was indeed help. He should have used his computer to find out about sex addiction recovery and used his computer to connect with others suffering in a similar way and struggling to get well together. I wish I would have met him on an email loop for sexual addiction recovery...I would have tried to help him. I am not sure I can even help myself,but hey....I think I will put some recovery links on my blog right now!
Peace
Let me begin with being very clear where I stand when it comes to my own sex addiction. My behavior started out with very vanilla phone sex....nothing exotic. But that can only last so long. After a while this particular drug (your fantasy) isn't strong enough to produce the desired effect. So you need to use a stronger drug, which would be a more "intense" fantasy or more intense real life behavior or perhaps acting out your fantasies for the first time with others. Perhaps something you wouldn't act out in real life, something you wouldn't want to tell other people. And this fantasy or fetish or paraphilia also ceases to work. So you develop more fetishes or fetishes that are more shocking, taboo and "dark". This is where I have been and am right now. I have developed a rich fantasy life which includes a plethora of exotic fetishes, including the one I will be speaking of rather often on this blog, a blasphemy fetish.
Now I have used phone lines, online chat rooms, instant messengers and pornography of all sorts to act out. My behavior is so solitary in fact that there is a real sexual anorexia thing going on in my life underneath the addiction. So anyway, time to make a point!! Could MY addiction progress to the point that I would end up looking at images of child pornography on my computer while ignoring the inevitable consequences of that behavior?
I must say that as bad as my addiction is I have rules. If I keep acting out will I break these rules? Will I cross these boundaries I have established for myself? All I can say is that I am desperate for this illness to not progress and I am actively working to arrest it and transform my life. Am I trying as hard as I should be? Am I doing the right things? Could I be doing better? I don't now. I feel like I am just keeping my head above water at this point but I think I can keep from going to "the next level" if I don't abandon myself to the addiction and keep fighting.
So, anyway. My rules. I am not aroused, nor have I ever been by causing others pain or hurting people in any way. So the idea of emotionally, physically, spiritually and psychologically scarring a child is just not an acceptable option for me. The natural extension of this thought is that by using child pornography you are actively contributing to the destruction of the lives of who knows how many children. That being said...I have to wonder if that priest I was speaking of at the beginning of this post had said the same thing to himself at some point in time. What did he start out with? Some mild behavior like compulsive masturbation? Or perhaps he has always had an orientation of being attracted to children, a true paraphilia that he has struggled with his whole life.
I simply can't judge this man as my behavior is so unhealthy, so morally repugnant, so outside cultural norms. I know the readers of this blog would scream at me about casting the first stone if I lambasted this or any other priest involved in any number of inappropriate sexual behaviors. But all this leads me to ask, did he seek help? Did he go to Sex Addicts Anonymous website to look for meetings? What did he bishop do to help him?
Another thought come to mind here as well. How much does the suppression of normal healthy adult sexual desires, be they heterosexual or homosexual (I'll discuss my view on homosexuality at a later time but for the sake of this post let's view it as morally neutral) lead to the eruption of aberrant sexual desires? Perhaps the Church gave this man the impression that sexuality is evil? Perhaps he became a priest in the hopes that God would free him from his homosexual (if he happens to be gay, I don't know) inclinations? Perhaps he hates himself, hates his sexuality, believes God hates him and in an attempt to just bury it all away instead it burst forth as sexual deviancy. Maybe this man just needed to find an adult that he could love without guilt or shame to make him whole and all of this could have been avoided. Of course this is all wild speculation but it's only a blog no one is going to read anyway so I'll say what I want.
So what about my aberrant behavior? I in fact have attended Courage meetings ( http://couragerc.net ) the Catholic apostolate to gay men and women (as the call it, people who suffer from SSA, same sex attraction) who are never allowed to have sex with anyone ever again unless they somehow become heterosexual, which apparently requires wearing flannel and playing football and chopping wood or for the women watching Martha Stewart every morning until you can macramé a tea cozy. Oh, I am so sorry, was that sarcastic??
I also was involved in reorientation therapy with a counselor from NARTH ( http://www.narth.com ) where they practice what is basically Freudian psychoanalysis where you blame your homosexuality and everything else in your entire life on your evil parents, or more specifically your smothering mother and distant father. For those who don't know psychoanalysis has been replaced with a more effective approach to mental illness...it's called DRUGS!!!!!
So I am left wondering....did I do this to myself? In an effort to please God (or appease society or make my mother happy) did I repress a normal healthy sexuality and replace it with this addiction? Could be!! By they way Courage and reorientation therapy never made me heterosexual. Next week I will be entering a group home to become Asian! We'll see how that works out.
Finally I would like to make one final statement about the Church and sexuality. When the Church points to people and says things like "Look at those naughty gays, having parades and sodomizing each other in their own homes like consenting adults, they are all going to hell!" the gay community and everyone else in the world at this point points their finger at the Church and say "Well, at least we aren't molesting children!!" So for me at least, I just can't take the church's teaching on the morality of homosexuality and homogenital acts seriously anymore. They have lost all credibility in my eyes. The need t cast the beam out of their own eye before they tell me where to put my penis, or anyone else's for that matter.
OOOPS!! I was ranting about homosexuality. So what about this priest, who I should mentioned tried to kill himself when he was caught, what should he have done? Someone should have told him God loved him regardless of what he had done and that there was indeed help. He should have used his computer to find out about sex addiction recovery and used his computer to connect with others suffering in a similar way and struggling to get well together. I wish I would have met him on an email loop for sexual addiction recovery...I would have tried to help him. I am not sure I can even help myself,but hey....I think I will put some recovery links on my blog right now!
Peace
UPS Just Delivered 36 Packages to My House, You Say?? or How I Cured My Sex Addiction
The internet is the most dangerous place in the world for some people. I found the cure for sex addiction on the internet!! I read an article by one Dr. Kafka about the use of Celexa in the treatment of people suffering from paraphilias. Celexa is an SSRI antidepressant and as we know antidepressants can trigger mania in people with bipolar disorder. BUT I had been on Prozac before and was so stable on other drugs that I could handle it. What I didn't realize this time was that I was not so stable. I was not very stable at all but for some reason my finely attuned sense of self-awareness had ceased to work. I had no idea what bad shape I was in. I just wanted to stop acting out sexually. I wanted to never have sex again and this seemed like a good idea. Cure addiction with a pill. Sounds awesome, right?
So....I convinced the doctor to give me Lexapro, a newer form of Celexa. What the doctor did though was put me on a much higher dose than was needed....20 mg. I should have only been on 10 or even 5 considering my mental health history but hey, welcome to the wonderful world of county run mental health clinics. So I swallowed the first pill and the second pill.
I was cured of my sex addiction. I didn't have sex including sex with self, any form of sex whatsoever, for the period of one year.
Shortly afterward the packages starting arriving. They arrived everyday for that whole year. Mostly books. Books I would never read....hundreds of them. Other items as well that I have no memory of. I maxed out all the credit cards. Then I used the savings to pay off the credit cards and swore to God I would just keep them in a drawer and not use them. Then packages starting arriving again.....sometimes more than 10 packages from UPS in one day and maybe more in the mail.
The credit cards got maxed out again and I had to draw on my insurance policies to pay them off. I swore to God I would put them in a drawer and keep them just for emergencies but the packages kept arriving. Amazon.com either loved me or thought I was a complete maniac. I never bought expensive items, just hundreds of smaller items. And I shopped every day for that year...not a day went by without a purchase and I simply couldn't see that I was manic. I couldn't see how sick the Lexapro was making me. I was so thrilled that I wasn't acting out sexually and I was excited that I only slept a few hours a night and could function. I was just so damn happy all the time.
The packages kept coming and I had to take loans out on the insurance policies to pay off all the credit card bills. I didn't cancel the cards but thought I would just put them away somewhere in case we had a family emergency. Finally the cards were maxed and there was no more money. There was no money at all anywhere. Neither will there be much money here ever again. I am stone cold broke. The UPS guy is really bored now. He is the hottest guy I have ever seen and I don't get to flirt with him anymore....so sad.
I couldn't see how sick I was. I was angry also. I was viciously, violently angry all the time. I abused my oldest sister Florence mercilessly. She is a nasty, abusive, miserable rotten person to begin with and with me in a wildly manic state for the period of a year we went at it almost every day. I ruined all the holidays that year and I don't think Florence dared come near my house for that whole time. At the end of the year, near Christmas we had such a vicious fight over the phone she was afraid if that she came near me I might actually kill her. Somehow at this point I woke up just enough to stop the Lexapro before I in fact did kill someone, or my self, or end up in jail.
I spent about $40,000 dollars in that period and probably damaged my family relationships beyond repair. I would like to say however that my sisters both knew something was wrong. Neither of those self absorbed idiots ever thought to sit down with me and say "Seamus, I think 36 packages arriving at the house everyday via UPS might be a problem we should talk about" or how about "Seamus, when you threw the cat at me while I was coming thru the door it made me think your mental health might be a tad off. Perhaps you need a medication adjustment?"
I'm angry. I am angry at me because I could see how sick I was. Perhaps I ignored it on purpose because for a whole year I didn't act out sexually. I was so happy that I wasn't displeasing God anymore with my aberrant behavior. I was so happy to be free of that burden.
I am also angry at my sisters. There is simply no one in my life to take care of me when I am non-functioning. Oh, I take care of them and I care for my dad and I cared for my mother everyday of her cancer. I cared for Florence during her cancer and I babysit my other sisters children..But I can't understand how I could have been so obviously sick and no one noticed. I was a raving maniac and no one cared enough to sit down with me and try to talk some sense into me.
I did stop the Lexapro and returned to a relatively normal state. My bipolar disorder at this time is destabilized. I am not the same person anymore. I have small cycles of mania and depression every week or so. I become suicidal often and have periods of angry mania occasionally as well. I am always swinging. The damage the Lexapro did seems to be having a lasting effect. I have been off Lexapro for one year. I don't spend money anymore. I do however act out sexually worse than ever before.
Before the end of my year of mania I wen on a diet. I joined OA in an internet/online sort of way and got an email sponsor named Liz....and did the Greysheet....
So....I convinced the doctor to give me Lexapro, a newer form of Celexa. What the doctor did though was put me on a much higher dose than was needed....20 mg. I should have only been on 10 or even 5 considering my mental health history but hey, welcome to the wonderful world of county run mental health clinics. So I swallowed the first pill and the second pill.
I was cured of my sex addiction. I didn't have sex including sex with self, any form of sex whatsoever, for the period of one year.
Shortly afterward the packages starting arriving. They arrived everyday for that whole year. Mostly books. Books I would never read....hundreds of them. Other items as well that I have no memory of. I maxed out all the credit cards. Then I used the savings to pay off the credit cards and swore to God I would just keep them in a drawer and not use them. Then packages starting arriving again.....sometimes more than 10 packages from UPS in one day and maybe more in the mail.
The credit cards got maxed out again and I had to draw on my insurance policies to pay them off. I swore to God I would put them in a drawer and keep them just for emergencies but the packages kept arriving. Amazon.com either loved me or thought I was a complete maniac. I never bought expensive items, just hundreds of smaller items. And I shopped every day for that year...not a day went by without a purchase and I simply couldn't see that I was manic. I couldn't see how sick the Lexapro was making me. I was so thrilled that I wasn't acting out sexually and I was excited that I only slept a few hours a night and could function. I was just so damn happy all the time.
The packages kept coming and I had to take loans out on the insurance policies to pay off all the credit card bills. I didn't cancel the cards but thought I would just put them away somewhere in case we had a family emergency. Finally the cards were maxed and there was no more money. There was no money at all anywhere. Neither will there be much money here ever again. I am stone cold broke. The UPS guy is really bored now. He is the hottest guy I have ever seen and I don't get to flirt with him anymore....so sad.
I couldn't see how sick I was. I was angry also. I was viciously, violently angry all the time. I abused my oldest sister Florence mercilessly. She is a nasty, abusive, miserable rotten person to begin with and with me in a wildly manic state for the period of a year we went at it almost every day. I ruined all the holidays that year and I don't think Florence dared come near my house for that whole time. At the end of the year, near Christmas we had such a vicious fight over the phone she was afraid if that she came near me I might actually kill her. Somehow at this point I woke up just enough to stop the Lexapro before I in fact did kill someone, or my self, or end up in jail.
I spent about $40,000 dollars in that period and probably damaged my family relationships beyond repair. I would like to say however that my sisters both knew something was wrong. Neither of those self absorbed idiots ever thought to sit down with me and say "Seamus, I think 36 packages arriving at the house everyday via UPS might be a problem we should talk about" or how about "Seamus, when you threw the cat at me while I was coming thru the door it made me think your mental health might be a tad off. Perhaps you need a medication adjustment?"
I'm angry. I am angry at me because I could see how sick I was. Perhaps I ignored it on purpose because for a whole year I didn't act out sexually. I was so happy that I wasn't displeasing God anymore with my aberrant behavior. I was so happy to be free of that burden.
I am also angry at my sisters. There is simply no one in my life to take care of me when I am non-functioning. Oh, I take care of them and I care for my dad and I cared for my mother everyday of her cancer. I cared for Florence during her cancer and I babysit my other sisters children..But I can't understand how I could have been so obviously sick and no one noticed. I was a raving maniac and no one cared enough to sit down with me and try to talk some sense into me.
I did stop the Lexapro and returned to a relatively normal state. My bipolar disorder at this time is destabilized. I am not the same person anymore. I have small cycles of mania and depression every week or so. I become suicidal often and have periods of angry mania occasionally as well. I am always swinging. The damage the Lexapro did seems to be having a lasting effect. I have been off Lexapro for one year. I don't spend money anymore. I do however act out sexually worse than ever before.
Before the end of my year of mania I wen on a diet. I joined OA in an internet/online sort of way and got an email sponsor named Liz....and did the Greysheet....
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Sometimes I'm a Satanist Part II
One day I went looking for God. My family was Catholic, culturally Catholic only, but I was baptized. I never saw the inside of a church until I felt the pull toward religion in my middle twenties. Anyway...why not be a Catholic, what the hell is there to lose.
I purchased the then recently published Catechism of the Catholic Church and read it cover to cover. The section on the Ten Commandments hit my like a ton of bricks. I realized then that I had broken every single commandment in almost every possible way. I experienced an absolute horror of my sins and spent weeks on the floor of my bedroom weeping and wailing for hours at a time. I desperately wanted to change and believed that God would be the catalyst.
There was no RCIA in my small town and I found a priest, Father Bob, who would give me religious instructions on a one on one basis. We met one hour a week for two years except for his two one month vacations over this period. I became obsessed with all things Catholic. I devoured books on the subject. After two years of religious instruction I made my first confession. It was done in three sessions, each taking about one hour. I received Holy Communion at a Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. Upon reception of the Eucharist I was so aware of my unworthiness that I thought God might strike me dead in the church for daring to receive Him in Holy Communion. It truly was an experience of communion with God. I thought that was to be the turning point in my life, that I would turn my back on my past and be separated from my sinful behaviors for ever.
Catholicism, God, Jesus, Mary, Prayer, Sacraments, Sacramentals, Holy water and Rosary beads do not.....I want to make this extremely clear, so pay close attention....those aforementioned things DO NOT CURE SEX ADDICTION.
My sex addiction continued to rage on with ever darker and more shocking fantasy material being employed to maintain the needed level of arousal and excitement. Now we add whole new dimensions to my addiction. Guilt and shame. The awareness of the evil and horror of sin and the consequences of these sins but not being able to stop. Going to confession every single week with the honest intention to stop sinning, with a firm purpose of amendment, but not being able to stop. Having the belief that the grace of sacramental communion, the grace of confession would be enough to overcome my sex addiction but continuing to act out anyway. Praying everyday for God to free me from this behavior, weeping true tears of remorse but seemingly receiving no assistance from God.
What happened as time went on, this battle going on inside me, this battle between Seamus the sex addict and Seamus the devout Catholic, what happened was that I grew numb. My heart grew hard and cold as stone. I was completely jaded from my ceaseless acting out. I was at the edge of the abyss...I fought, I really, really fought...but one day I gave up. I jumped into the abyss and got swallowed up.
So...after years of a fantasy life filled with fetishes and paraphilias and dark fantasies I was about to meet my last fetish. Either my sex addiction will end or I will pursue it to oblivion. Now is the time to make the decision....a decision for or against God Himself.
I am a blasphemy fetishist. Google it right now....go ahead, I dare you. There is one page on the whole web about this fetish and it is written by a satanist. You are thinking there must be only four of us in the whole world, aren't you?
I know of a chat room I can go to right now filled with Blasphemy Fetishists as well as satanic dabblers and hard core satanist...all gay and looking for sex. I must point out this is not a gay phenomenon but my experience is limited to the gay subculture.
OK....let's start at the beginning...you need a definition of a blasphemy fetishist. He is a person who is sexually aroused by blasphemous behavior and satanism in a sexual context. A blasphemy fetishist is interested in satanism only as a tool to become aroused. The rest of the time he is a normal person, perhaps a devout Christian. I hope at this point you can see the insane dilemna you end up in. You have a war going on inside you between your satanic sexual fantasy life that you want to escape and your Christian identity which you cannot continue to maintain if you persist in your fetish.
How did I get to this point? This is a result of the sin of lust. One of the daughters of lust in the hatred of God. Anyone who persists in this sin will eventually ended up alienated from God and despairing of an afterlife in heaven. Fifteen years of sexual addiction was turning me against God.
At this point I would like to say, I can see why some of the guys I chat with, gay men all, would embrace satanism. The three major Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam make their feelings about homosexuality very clear in their scriptures. Oh, yes, we have liberals engaged in bible exegesis who have entire careers rooted in twisting Hebrew and Greek to prove the bible is gay friendly but quite frankly, the Abrahamic faiths are gay-hating.
So what do you do when it seems God himself hates you because you are gay? What do you do when you spend a lifetime praying to God to take the homosexual feelings and desires away from you? What do you do when society rejects and labels you an aberration? Well.....for a small handful of men that I have encountered, you can become a blasphemy fetishist. You can act out your anger toward God and mix in sex and when it is all over you can take a shower and return to a life of relative normalcy. Go to a chat room, a phone line, a BDSM club and have a scene....then go to work in the morning and take you dog for a walk in the park when you get home.
Now at this point I can only speak for myself. Some people, when they are done having their fantasies can return to normal life. I can't do this any more. I need my sex addiction to stop, stop forever and stop for good. I need God to win and Satan to lose in my life. I need to be forever free of my blasphemy fetish. I am not sure how this is going to end or what tools will be needed but something monumental has to occur in my life. Something that will alter me at the very core of my being.
I am not sure how this is going to end. It might be really great, or really bad.
I purchased the then recently published Catechism of the Catholic Church and read it cover to cover. The section on the Ten Commandments hit my like a ton of bricks. I realized then that I had broken every single commandment in almost every possible way. I experienced an absolute horror of my sins and spent weeks on the floor of my bedroom weeping and wailing for hours at a time. I desperately wanted to change and believed that God would be the catalyst.
There was no RCIA in my small town and I found a priest, Father Bob, who would give me religious instructions on a one on one basis. We met one hour a week for two years except for his two one month vacations over this period. I became obsessed with all things Catholic. I devoured books on the subject. After two years of religious instruction I made my first confession. It was done in three sessions, each taking about one hour. I received Holy Communion at a Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. Upon reception of the Eucharist I was so aware of my unworthiness that I thought God might strike me dead in the church for daring to receive Him in Holy Communion. It truly was an experience of communion with God. I thought that was to be the turning point in my life, that I would turn my back on my past and be separated from my sinful behaviors for ever.
Catholicism, God, Jesus, Mary, Prayer, Sacraments, Sacramentals, Holy water and Rosary beads do not.....I want to make this extremely clear, so pay close attention....those aforementioned things DO NOT CURE SEX ADDICTION.
My sex addiction continued to rage on with ever darker and more shocking fantasy material being employed to maintain the needed level of arousal and excitement. Now we add whole new dimensions to my addiction. Guilt and shame. The awareness of the evil and horror of sin and the consequences of these sins but not being able to stop. Going to confession every single week with the honest intention to stop sinning, with a firm purpose of amendment, but not being able to stop. Having the belief that the grace of sacramental communion, the grace of confession would be enough to overcome my sex addiction but continuing to act out anyway. Praying everyday for God to free me from this behavior, weeping true tears of remorse but seemingly receiving no assistance from God.
What happened as time went on, this battle going on inside me, this battle between Seamus the sex addict and Seamus the devout Catholic, what happened was that I grew numb. My heart grew hard and cold as stone. I was completely jaded from my ceaseless acting out. I was at the edge of the abyss...I fought, I really, really fought...but one day I gave up. I jumped into the abyss and got swallowed up.
So...after years of a fantasy life filled with fetishes and paraphilias and dark fantasies I was about to meet my last fetish. Either my sex addiction will end or I will pursue it to oblivion. Now is the time to make the decision....a decision for or against God Himself.
I am a blasphemy fetishist. Google it right now....go ahead, I dare you. There is one page on the whole web about this fetish and it is written by a satanist. You are thinking there must be only four of us in the whole world, aren't you?
I know of a chat room I can go to right now filled with Blasphemy Fetishists as well as satanic dabblers and hard core satanist...all gay and looking for sex. I must point out this is not a gay phenomenon but my experience is limited to the gay subculture.
OK....let's start at the beginning...you need a definition of a blasphemy fetishist. He is a person who is sexually aroused by blasphemous behavior and satanism in a sexual context. A blasphemy fetishist is interested in satanism only as a tool to become aroused. The rest of the time he is a normal person, perhaps a devout Christian. I hope at this point you can see the insane dilemna you end up in. You have a war going on inside you between your satanic sexual fantasy life that you want to escape and your Christian identity which you cannot continue to maintain if you persist in your fetish.
How did I get to this point? This is a result of the sin of lust. One of the daughters of lust in the hatred of God. Anyone who persists in this sin will eventually ended up alienated from God and despairing of an afterlife in heaven. Fifteen years of sexual addiction was turning me against God.
At this point I would like to say, I can see why some of the guys I chat with, gay men all, would embrace satanism. The three major Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam make their feelings about homosexuality very clear in their scriptures. Oh, yes, we have liberals engaged in bible exegesis who have entire careers rooted in twisting Hebrew and Greek to prove the bible is gay friendly but quite frankly, the Abrahamic faiths are gay-hating.
So what do you do when it seems God himself hates you because you are gay? What do you do when you spend a lifetime praying to God to take the homosexual feelings and desires away from you? What do you do when society rejects and labels you an aberration? Well.....for a small handful of men that I have encountered, you can become a blasphemy fetishist. You can act out your anger toward God and mix in sex and when it is all over you can take a shower and return to a life of relative normalcy. Go to a chat room, a phone line, a BDSM club and have a scene....then go to work in the morning and take you dog for a walk in the park when you get home.
Now at this point I can only speak for myself. Some people, when they are done having their fantasies can return to normal life. I can't do this any more. I need my sex addiction to stop, stop forever and stop for good. I need God to win and Satan to lose in my life. I need to be forever free of my blasphemy fetish. I am not sure how this is going to end or what tools will be needed but something monumental has to occur in my life. Something that will alter me at the very core of my being.
I am not sure how this is going to end. It might be really great, or really bad.
Sometimes I'm a Satanist. Usually on Thursdays. But only at Night.
SANCTE Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio, contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium. Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur: tuque, Princeps militiae caelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtute, in infernum detrude. Amen.
Here is my story....a current piece of it. It might be the end of my story.
Many years ago after a failed attempt at college due to what I now know was my first depressive episode, I got tired of being a waiter and decided to return to school and become the great musician I was destined to be. I arrived at this pseudo-ivy league college with a world famous music school to study saxophone hopped up on antidepressants to assuage my depression and anxiety. Those antidepressants were about to set ablaze a wildfire of destruction that would transform the rest of my life.
You see....I'm bipolar. We didn't know. Bipolar disorder+antidepressants=mania. My grades at the end of that semester were all failing. I had been launched into a manic psychosis, and one of the consequences of this is an insatiable sex drive. The opportunities to act this desire out with another person were not available to me for a number of reasons, and one day I picked up a copy of The Village Voice and on the back pages were listings for gay adult phone lines.
I called. I was addicted instantly. I was a sex addict. Eventually, after flunking out of school I returned home and was treated for my bipolar disorder and it abated quickly. I was treated with a drug called Tegretol and became stable. I worked as a waiter for a time, I gave up drinking, I returned to school to study culinary arts and restaurant management and I was happy. All the time my sex addiction raged on.
At the beginning my behavior, consisting entirely of phone sex and solitary behaviors, was very "vanilla". That only works for so long. Tolerance. Time to increase the dose. So my fantasy life became more and more colorful...exotic....taboo....shocking. There was an escalation of the darkness of my fantasies over a period of about fifteen years.
While I was in culinary school, being extremely successful I might add, and very happy for what would be the last period of happiness in my life thus far, I was avoiding intimacy with real live people. Small town, small college, lots of homophobia, fear for my safety....you get the picture. So I continued to engage in my phone sex behaviors.
I spent thousands of dollars on my phone sex addiction. I stole credit cards from my parents and rang them up to satisfy my addiction. They never took legal action against me, they just let me continue and paid the bills while screaming at me to stop. I begged them to help me pay for a psychologist. That, they refused to pay for. I pointed out that if the behavior could be arrested thru therapy the whole family would benefit. They disdained psychiatrists and psychologists. They were afraid, and I quote, that I would go to therapy and "talk about them". So I never got the help I needed.
I was about to finish my culinary degree when I was hit with my next manic episode. This was particularly bad and I also suffered from psychosis during the course of this episode. This time hospitalization would be required. I went to a community hospital psych ward with woefully under qualified doctors as I could afford nothing better. I had no insurance and was put on drugs based on cost rather than effectiveness. I returned home sick, a failure, despondent. It was at that point in my life that I made the decision to cease living. I gave up.
I was home with my parents with no job, my education failed and done, suicidally depressed. My sex addiction took on new dimensions at this point. It was all I had in life. It became my life. The only time I felt good or felt at all or felt anything other than suicidal was when I was acting out my addiction. I continued to use mom and dad's money without asking (some people call that stealing) and I could have cared less if I went to jail. I could have cared less if I died. I don't know what stopped me from killing myself that year after my hospitalization as I woke up every morning and my first thought was always, without exception, "I want to be dead".
One year later....hospitalization number two. My psychiatrist, in front of me, told my mom and dad that people as sick and I were the people you see eating out of garbage pails on the street. He was a real gem. The only up side of the second hospitalization was that I was able to get Medicaid, SSI and SSD. Now I could afford the more cutting edge medications. I was placed on Risperdal, Tegretol and Prozac. I was normal in a matter of days. The moment that I would return to work I would lose Medicaid and not be able to afford the drugs. I was still stuck. I would never get unstuck.
I went to a community mental health clinic. When I told the doctors about my sex addiction they told me I knew more than them about the subject. I had therapy session with counselors who's only concern was that I had food to eat and a place to sleep. No therapy available. No one wanted to listen and no one cared. There were hundreds of poor patients who needed help and I was functional enough that they couldn't concern themselves with me. My addiction raged on.
This is the point in the story where you imagine what life is like for a mentally ill, sex addicted person who gets essentially no treatment whatsoever. No imagine this going on for years.
continued in the next post....finding God.
Here is my story....a current piece of it. It might be the end of my story.
Many years ago after a failed attempt at college due to what I now know was my first depressive episode, I got tired of being a waiter and decided to return to school and become the great musician I was destined to be. I arrived at this pseudo-ivy league college with a world famous music school to study saxophone hopped up on antidepressants to assuage my depression and anxiety. Those antidepressants were about to set ablaze a wildfire of destruction that would transform the rest of my life.
You see....I'm bipolar. We didn't know. Bipolar disorder+antidepressants=mania. My grades at the end of that semester were all failing. I had been launched into a manic psychosis, and one of the consequences of this is an insatiable sex drive. The opportunities to act this desire out with another person were not available to me for a number of reasons, and one day I picked up a copy of The Village Voice and on the back pages were listings for gay adult phone lines.
I called. I was addicted instantly. I was a sex addict. Eventually, after flunking out of school I returned home and was treated for my bipolar disorder and it abated quickly. I was treated with a drug called Tegretol and became stable. I worked as a waiter for a time, I gave up drinking, I returned to school to study culinary arts and restaurant management and I was happy. All the time my sex addiction raged on.
At the beginning my behavior, consisting entirely of phone sex and solitary behaviors, was very "vanilla". That only works for so long. Tolerance. Time to increase the dose. So my fantasy life became more and more colorful...exotic....taboo....shocking. There was an escalation of the darkness of my fantasies over a period of about fifteen years.
While I was in culinary school, being extremely successful I might add, and very happy for what would be the last period of happiness in my life thus far, I was avoiding intimacy with real live people. Small town, small college, lots of homophobia, fear for my safety....you get the picture. So I continued to engage in my phone sex behaviors.
I spent thousands of dollars on my phone sex addiction. I stole credit cards from my parents and rang them up to satisfy my addiction. They never took legal action against me, they just let me continue and paid the bills while screaming at me to stop. I begged them to help me pay for a psychologist. That, they refused to pay for. I pointed out that if the behavior could be arrested thru therapy the whole family would benefit. They disdained psychiatrists and psychologists. They were afraid, and I quote, that I would go to therapy and "talk about them". So I never got the help I needed.
I was about to finish my culinary degree when I was hit with my next manic episode. This was particularly bad and I also suffered from psychosis during the course of this episode. This time hospitalization would be required. I went to a community hospital psych ward with woefully under qualified doctors as I could afford nothing better. I had no insurance and was put on drugs based on cost rather than effectiveness. I returned home sick, a failure, despondent. It was at that point in my life that I made the decision to cease living. I gave up.
I was home with my parents with no job, my education failed and done, suicidally depressed. My sex addiction took on new dimensions at this point. It was all I had in life. It became my life. The only time I felt good or felt at all or felt anything other than suicidal was when I was acting out my addiction. I continued to use mom and dad's money without asking (some people call that stealing) and I could have cared less if I went to jail. I could have cared less if I died. I don't know what stopped me from killing myself that year after my hospitalization as I woke up every morning and my first thought was always, without exception, "I want to be dead".
One year later....hospitalization number two. My psychiatrist, in front of me, told my mom and dad that people as sick and I were the people you see eating out of garbage pails on the street. He was a real gem. The only up side of the second hospitalization was that I was able to get Medicaid, SSI and SSD. Now I could afford the more cutting edge medications. I was placed on Risperdal, Tegretol and Prozac. I was normal in a matter of days. The moment that I would return to work I would lose Medicaid and not be able to afford the drugs. I was still stuck. I would never get unstuck.
I went to a community mental health clinic. When I told the doctors about my sex addiction they told me I knew more than them about the subject. I had therapy session with counselors who's only concern was that I had food to eat and a place to sleep. No therapy available. No one wanted to listen and no one cared. There were hundreds of poor patients who needed help and I was functional enough that they couldn't concern themselves with me. My addiction raged on.
This is the point in the story where you imagine what life is like for a mentally ill, sex addicted person who gets essentially no treatment whatsoever. No imagine this going on for years.
continued in the next post....finding God.
Day After Confession
Well....here is my first post. I am a lot of things... gay, a sex addict with multiple fetishes and paraphilias, a person who wishes he could be faithful to his church and lives in an insane psycho/spiritual crossfire that will either end in death or institutionalization, a person suffering from bipolar disorder and borderline disorder, the full-time caretaker of my beloved elderly father, the bane of my two evil older sisters, disabled, disenfranchised, an outcast, a best friend, a good son and just generally a maniac. This blog, believe it or not, is part of my penance from my last confession.
I went to confession last night...my sex addiction has grown over a fifteen year period to gargantuan proportions and I am in constant spiritual agony. I used to go to confession as if it were a forgiveness machine. I could keep acting out every week, keep confessing every week, keep receiving communion every week and somehow operate under the delusion that I was really, basically, at the core of my being, a good person. It is only recently that I have truly come to recognize that in fact I have never, in the fifteen years that I have been under the yoke of this addiction, really wanted to change by putting forth some effort. I wasn't willing to do any work and I really wasn't a good person. I really came to see my glaring flaws and came to understand that I couldn't just wait for Jesus to wipe all my problems away. (Actually I was hoping the B.V.M was going to wipe them away as I can deal with the whole Mother/son relationship thing better that I can deal with a male/male relationship thing, even when dealing with the divine.)
Where was I? OK...so I go to confession and unload my sins. I am not so much looking for forgiveness. I know that if I am truly contrite, that if out of love for God I regret my behavior and if I really try to change that I am forgiven. Without these things confession is just an empty act. What I want from the experience is insight, healing, real advice and counseling from this very wise Hungarian priest cum spiritual director who fought communists is his native land. This is a man who has heard confession for many hours in a row, many days in a row and has amassed great wisdom in the process. He is like my own personal Padre Pio or John Vianney.
My sins are scarlet and numerous. They are the daughters of lust. I am in a state of real despair from which there seems to be no escape. I am plagued by a lukewarmness...a spiritual acedia...I am empty inside. So Pater listens, gives me absolution and assigns a penance. First I have to read the work of a mystic. We discussed St. John of the Cross but I simply do not have a keen enough intellect to handle the Carmelite mystics and I don't think I can focus to get thru his works. Next we discuss Augustine. Seems unsurmountable for me at the moment. Finally I realized what I need...Julian of Nowich, her Revelations of Divine Love.
Dear sweet Lord I need to hear about God's love. I need to hear about how all will be well....not may be well but will be well. I am having such trouble believing God loves me (yes, I haven't been really too loving toward Him lately) and cannot see how anything in my life will turn out well.
OK....Part two of my penance. I am to write. I am to write at least one paragraph every day. Originally I considered carrying on a correspondence with another soul for input but as you will see the inside of my head is such an exotic place they would flee before I could start. My dearest friend of a lifetime told me once, she said "Seamus. Out of every person I have known in my entire life (she knows some really bizarre people I might add) you have said the strangest things I have ever heard."
So....I think I have hit my one paragraph quota for the day...and you still know nothing about me. Sometimes I wonder if I know anything about me.
well..Pax et Bonum
Seamus
I went to confession last night...my sex addiction has grown over a fifteen year period to gargantuan proportions and I am in constant spiritual agony. I used to go to confession as if it were a forgiveness machine. I could keep acting out every week, keep confessing every week, keep receiving communion every week and somehow operate under the delusion that I was really, basically, at the core of my being, a good person. It is only recently that I have truly come to recognize that in fact I have never, in the fifteen years that I have been under the yoke of this addiction, really wanted to change by putting forth some effort. I wasn't willing to do any work and I really wasn't a good person. I really came to see my glaring flaws and came to understand that I couldn't just wait for Jesus to wipe all my problems away. (Actually I was hoping the B.V.M was going to wipe them away as I can deal with the whole Mother/son relationship thing better that I can deal with a male/male relationship thing, even when dealing with the divine.)
Where was I? OK...so I go to confession and unload my sins. I am not so much looking for forgiveness. I know that if I am truly contrite, that if out of love for God I regret my behavior and if I really try to change that I am forgiven. Without these things confession is just an empty act. What I want from the experience is insight, healing, real advice and counseling from this very wise Hungarian priest cum spiritual director who fought communists is his native land. This is a man who has heard confession for many hours in a row, many days in a row and has amassed great wisdom in the process. He is like my own personal Padre Pio or John Vianney.
My sins are scarlet and numerous. They are the daughters of lust. I am in a state of real despair from which there seems to be no escape. I am plagued by a lukewarmness...a spiritual acedia...I am empty inside. So Pater listens, gives me absolution and assigns a penance. First I have to read the work of a mystic. We discussed St. John of the Cross but I simply do not have a keen enough intellect to handle the Carmelite mystics and I don't think I can focus to get thru his works. Next we discuss Augustine. Seems unsurmountable for me at the moment. Finally I realized what I need...Julian of Nowich, her Revelations of Divine Love.
Dear sweet Lord I need to hear about God's love. I need to hear about how all will be well....not may be well but will be well. I am having such trouble believing God loves me (yes, I haven't been really too loving toward Him lately) and cannot see how anything in my life will turn out well.
OK....Part two of my penance. I am to write. I am to write at least one paragraph every day. Originally I considered carrying on a correspondence with another soul for input but as you will see the inside of my head is such an exotic place they would flee before I could start. My dearest friend of a lifetime told me once, she said "Seamus. Out of every person I have known in my entire life (she knows some really bizarre people I might add) you have said the strangest things I have ever heard."
So....I think I have hit my one paragraph quota for the day...and you still know nothing about me. Sometimes I wonder if I know anything about me.
well..Pax et Bonum
Seamus
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