My comment

I read one of Andrew's newest blogs on http://rowboatandmarbles.org/blog   and I was reading this post: http://rowboatandmarbles.org/getting-real-about-masturbation.html

especially the comments at the bottom. I think all addicts should leave a comment for Andrew. Here's mine. 

I am LDS and I don’t live in Utah. I was raised Mormon but inactive. I’m addicted to lust/porn/masturbation/sex. I went through varying degrees of activity in the church. Especially once I was caught in my lies about pornography consumption and my addiction came to light. I started going to church all the time. And  I began to feel guilty about “church stuff”. For instance, I would forget to pray at night, and then while lying in bed I’d realize I forgot to pray and feel guilty that I forgot to pray and told myself that if I didn’t pray I wasn’t doing the right thing and then most likely my day would suck tomorrow. So I’d pray, but I’d pray in bed, and then I’d feel guilty that I was praying in bed and not on my knees. Did that mean I didn’t really care? Was I offending God? Was he disappointed that I wasn’t showing him the proper sign of respect? That must mean that tomorrow my day would most likely suck and it would be my fault. So I got out of bed and got on my knees and prayed. And then, afterwards, I’d feel “guilty” I guess I should change all the times I’ve said “guilty” in this post to shameful.  I’d feel shameful because I hadn’t addressed God in “thee” and “thou”. Wasn’t I supposed to do that? Dang. That must mean that my prayer wasn’t that important and that God wasn’t going to help me, and it was all my fault. These shame cycles happened most when I went to church and read scriptures and all that on a regular basis.
     Recently, like just last year, I realized something profound. God didn’t want me to feel shameful about doing “churchy” stuff. In fact, in my opinion, God would rather me NOT do those things, then to do them because I didn’t want to feel shame for doing them. So I stopped. I stopped doing a lot of “churchy” things and kept working on sobriety and step work and addiction material. I even stopped going to church.
      Guess what, I started to feel like going to church. I started to feel like reading my scriptures. I started to feel like praying. Do I do these things 100% all the time? No, but I can say that for myself, I’ve come so much closer to God.
      Why am I talking about all of this? Because I agree with Andrew. Masturbation is bad for me. That’s a fact that I live by. I don’t have an “addiction” because the church told me I did. In fact most church members and even some higher officials would say that I DON’T have an addiction. I haven’t gone to massage parlors, I haven’t gone to strip clubs, I haven’t even bought pornographic material. I’ve viewed LOTS of it and acted out to LOTS of it. But not as much as I’ve masturbated to my IMAGINATION.
    This is what it does to me. Viewing sexual things on a computer screen, tv, book, or primarily my brain, with or without actually masturbating, (its all still masturbating to me, because like Andrew said, if I’m stimulating a sex organ, with anyone other than my wife, I’m breaking the law of Chastity.) It makes me desire that type of fantasy more than reality. I WANT it to be my reality. And then I begin to live my life as if that FANTASY should be REALITY. And the impossible truth is that it will never be that way because fantasy isn’t reality.
    I begin to feel depressed, rejected, not of worth or importance, and carry HUGE resentments because reality isn’t what I think it should be, which is my reality. This causes me to assume that my wife must not love me because she doesn’t act how I think she should. My kids don’t act how I think they should; my boss doesn’t act how I think he should. And I in turn become passive aggressive and disconnect from those around me. This also makes me WANT to seek that type of life. I daydream more often; I seek out opportunities to engage with women. (nothing sexual, just eye contact, smiles, friendly conversations, etc)
    This will kill me. I might end up contracting a disease, I might go to the wrong part of town and get killed, I might get so distraught and depressed that I’ll kill myself. NOT BECAUSE OF THE MASTURBATION, but because of the perceived injustice of my reality. But most likely, I will live out the rest of my days alone in an apartment or small house with no friends or family, but a house FULL of pornography. This is going to happen. This isn’t a friendly “healthy” past time.
     In fact, I don’t think anyone that is satisfied and content and truly happy with their life goes home and says, “YOU KNO WHAT? I think I’m going to look at porn and jack off because it will make my day THAT MUCH MORE SPECIAL!” That seems like an impossibility to me. Maybe that’s because I can’t perceive what a normal person thinks.
      I’m addicted. And it’s like a cancer. If I don’t take my “pills” and go in for “treatments” and have “check-ups” with my “doctor”, it will not stay in remission, it will kill me. People that have leprosy have an exercise that they have to do ALL the time. It’s called VSE; meaning Visual Surveillance of Extremities. They do this because they lose feeling in their limbs and sometimes don’t realize that they’ve hurt themselves until the wound has festered and rotted. It is the most important thing to maintaining good health for a leprosy patient. You have to live it, think it, do it, all the time. I think of maintaining sobriety as the same thing. It’s got to be kept in the forefront of my mind, why? Because like the leprosy patient whose nerve endings are dead so he can’t feel pain, I’ve got to look at the actions I take, the thoughts I think, and where my eyes go. ALL THE TIME. And not even that, I’ve got to rely on someone else whose been where I’m at and whose a lot longer in sobriety than me to be able to see the things I am doing/not doing because I’m so blinded by my false reality, my desire for fantasy.
     Why? Because I’m addicted.  I could care less what someone says about masturbation being healthy and that “studies show…” because its (the masturbation/acting on lust) is killing me. I’ve witnessed it. Like the leper that sees their body parts and skin falling off, this is happening to me.
   This website is for those suffering from an addiction to lust or who want to know about it from the people that  are addicted. And its been a great help to me.