Story of a Relapse
Reliving the nightmare that put an end to my six months of abstinence from porn.
You don’t know how fast you can run until you have to run away from zombies.
Not the dopey ones, no, the good ones. The 28 days later kind of zombie. The ones that chase you like a rabid dog that’s been starving for a month. There’s not much you can do about those, other than run faster than you ever have until you find somewhere to hide.
I know there are at least three after me. That’s how many I saw when they found me, but it sounds like a few more have joined them since. It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t turn my head back to check even if I could afford to. What matters is finding a way out of this while I still have energy, because I know those fuckers won’t get tired before I do.
The problem is, coming up with a nice strategy is not something you can really do while sprinting in panic mode through the obstacle-ridden streets of post-apocalyptic New York. So when my feet decide to turn a corner into a back alley, they do so out of pure instinct and not as part of a flawless escape plan.
By the time I realize what I’ve done, it’s already too late. A hopelessly tall brick wall stands just a few steps away from me — a literal dead end. I run those steps, confident they’ll be the last I ever take, and when I turn around, the fastest of them — a lanky teenager wearing a bloody t-shirt and a pair of Jordans — is already a few inches away and pouncing on me to tackle me down.
Next thing I know we’re both on the ground fighting. He’s on top of me clawing like a maniac, and I can barely defend myself but somehow I manage to get hold of both of his wrists and that stops him for a second. But it’s all pointless. I can already hear the others approaching, and this guy is determined to get the feast started in any way he can. With his arms pinned, he jerks his head back, and I immediately know what he’s about to do. He throws himself at me with all his frantic strength. I close my eyes, ready to have half my face bitten off by a motherfucking zombie, but instead I feel his face pressing gently against mine, and the warmth of his breath inside my ear as I hear him whisper…
“I love you.”
I half-wake up in bed, confused. My girlfriend plants a kiss on my forehead and walks away.
I remain there, not fully conscious but not asleep either, still fired up from the dream I’ve just been rescued from. Not that I should complain, though. Being eaten alive by zombies is never a pleasant experience, but it’s a nice break from all those wet dreams I used to have about porn.
It’s been six months now since I last watched it, and it seems that my efforts to overcome this addiction are finally paying off. Porn doesn’t dominate my thoughts like it used to, and those nightmares where I would relapse time and time again are becoming less and less frequent.
Exhaustion soon gets the best of me, and before my girlfriend closes the apartment door behind her I’ve already fallen back to sleep. I find myself trapped in the alley again, but this time I know what to do. I turn around and, just when that teenage zombie is about to jump on me, I round-kick him right in that ugly drooling face of his, then while he’s down on one knee, I step on his back to reach the bottom of the fire escape ladder above us, Jackie Chan style.
I swiftly climb up the ladder and onto the stairs, far from the stretching arms of the zombies, and escape unscathed.
When the alarm on my phone wakes me up for good one hour later, I feel as tired as if I never went to sleep.
The stress of these past few days is really starting to get to me. I force myself to go to the bathroom and splash cold water on my face, but it’s like trying to give CPR to an Egyptian mummy. I grab my phone from the nightstand and drag my feet to the couch — at this point, anything other than going back to bed feels like an accomplishment.
The glow from the screen keeps me awake as I scroll mindlessly through news headlines and basketball scores without tapping on a single thing. By the time that stream dries up I still feel pretty damn tired, so I move on to Instagram — and the occasional bikini posts in there do more to bring me back to life than freezing water could ever do.
After goofing off for a while longer, I catch a glimpse of the time and realize I’ve got to get my ass moving. I enter my “office” ready to start the day and clock in a few minutes late, but nobody gives a crap now that we’re all working from home.
Waiting for me are a bunch of emails, Slack messages, and a daunting to-do list that fills the page. Without giving it much thought, I decide there’s nothing in there urgent enough that it can’t wait for a little longer, so I set my personal laptop down right next to my company’s and turn it on, ready to procrastinate.
I begin crafting a long email response to my manager while my laptop boots up, but once it’s done I stop mid-sentence. I turn my full attention to that other screen and open Chrome in incognito mode. Then I type the name of one of my favorite porn sites and hit Enter. Before the page even loads, I press CTRL+T and type the name of a second website. Then I hit Enter again, CTRL+T, and type in a third site. Then I do that a few more times…and each time my heart rate accelerates a bit more in anticipation.
By the time I realize what I’ve done, it’s already too late. The sites have finished loading and before me there’s a festival of tits and asses that my recovering mind just can’t resist. I start hovering over previews, opening new tabs, browsing categories, clicking on related videos, sinking deeper and deeper, with the eagerness of a relapsing junkie with thirsty eyes and six months of content to catch up on.
I’m opening my twenty-third tab when the clock hits 10:59 and my eyes look away from porn for the first time in two hours. I unplug my headphones from my personal laptop and plug them into my company’s. With a boner still raging between my legs, I proceed to tell my colleagues a couple of lies about what I’ve done so far that morning and what I’m planning to do for the rest of the day.
Once we all say goodbye and the meeting ends, an uncomfortable silence falls over me. Before I have a chance to hear my thoughts, I unmute my personal laptop and a symphony of moans and slaps fills the room.
Then I plug my headphones back in and all that noise disappears into my head.
At about the same time but a few miles away, a troop of toddlers runs around playing in a chaotic choreography that makes sense only to them.
My girlfriend has been assigned recess duty this morning. On a different day it might have been a superhuman task, but today the kids are behaving surprisingly well, so she can afford to get lost in her thoughts. Unpleasant thoughts, mostly. Like the ones that question her being there in the first place, after almost three years, when teaching was only supposed to be a temporary gig. Not that she should complain, though. Existential doubts about her career are never fun, but they’re a nice break from all the concerns she used to have about her boyfriend’s addiction to porn.
It’s been six months now since the last time he watched it, and it seems like things are finally starting to get better. His energy has been so much more positive these past few days, he seems happier and more present, and all the progress he’s made to overcome his erectile dysfunction has already turned their sex life around for the better. More importantly, she feels like she can trust him again. After all the strain that his addiction put on both her and the relationship, she can finally let herself relax.
When the clock hits 11:30, the school bell marks the end of recess, and its loud ringing brings her back to reality.
Two hours after my meeting, I find myself in the bathroom cleaning up tiny pieces of tissue stuck to my dick, besieged by racing thoughts.
“Ok, alright. If I take a shower now she’s going to wonder why, because I always shower at night. But if I don’t, will she notice anything if she happens to initiate sex today? She could, she easily could…Damn, wait! What time is it? Could she be back any second now? It’s just barely past three, but doesn’t she come back early sometimes? And did I even close the browser before coming here to clean up the mess?”
“Sigh…What am I even thinking? Am I really going to try to hide this? Would I be able to, even if I wanted? My libido is now gone for like a week. I’m going to be all apathetic and in a terrible mood. She’s going to notice, like she has before, and then what? Am I going to lie straight to her face when she asks?”
“Fuck me. What’s the point of all of this if I don’t face the consequences? I’ve got to tell her now, don’t I? There’s no other way. I have to tell her how after six months clean and all this great progress I’ve made, I just decided to masturbate to porn for five hours while she was gone.”
“How stupid am I? How FUCKING stupid? I mean, what the hell was I even thinking? Haven’t I suffered enough? Didn’t I struggle to finally build this long streak? And for what? To let it all go to shit on a random morning, and for no fucking reason?”
Sitting on that toilet, with my pants around my ankles and my hands over my face, the guilt and regret are impossible to bear, and I feel like I would give an arm and a leg just to travel a few hours back in time and make it all go away.
Then I start to dread what’s coming with agonizing fear.
When she gets back home I welcome her with the bad news right away, and my words wipe all the cheer from her face in a way that crushes my heart.
I tell her that I relapsed, and that I relapsed hard. She wants to know the details, so I tell her that I binge-watched porn for a full five hours. She asks about it, so I tell her how I finished in the bathroom not long before she arrived. Her questions only get more and more piercing from there. How could I do something like this? Why wasn’t I able to stop myself earlier? And did I, at any point in the beginning, middle or end of it all, stop to think of her?
I struggle to find answers. At this vulnerable moment, when I’m hoping for empathy, these questions sound and feel to me like direct, personal attacks. So instead of comforting her, I get defensive. I try to play the relapse down. I accuse her of overreacting, just to shift the blame away from myself.
The sad reality is, what I’ve done has profoundly hurt us both. It’s broken us apart and left us in desperate need of love and compassion…yet neither of us seems capable of giving it first. This power struggle keeps us in gridlock and pushes us deeper and deeper into our own negative spirals. I retreat more and more into myself, unable to process my feelings and keep up the dialogue. She grows more and more upset, not knowing how to cope when talking things through isn’t an option.
Mean things are yelled. Doors get slammed. Tears are shed.
When the fight ends, I find myself curled up on the couch, a pillow held to my face.
It takes me a long time to come to myself.
Utterly exhausted and emotionally numb, I finally go to bed and sleep a dreamless night.
What’s in your math folder?
What do your relapses look like?
How do you process them emotionally?
Whether we like it or not, relapses are part of our recovery, and it’s important that we deal with them in a healthy way.
Try to minimize the damage that they cause, learn from the mistakes, and forgive yourself so that you can move on. If you have a partner, cultivate this same mindset with them, and figure out ways to support each other through this painful experience.
Share your insights in the comments below, on social media, or in your favorite porn addiction community, and if you know others that are struggling with porn, help them by sharing a link to this story.
Let’s start a conversation!
Hi, this is James! Thank you for reading!
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