The following is a personal story from one of our members.
I can relate to the impact of the advent of the internet on my sexual acting out. Yes,
it wasn't easy for me to get any form of porn when I was a teenager.
Not impossible, but really hard and always with a risk involved. Most of
my lusting was creating the fantasy in my mind based on real people I
saw or other "non-pornographic" images. But when the internet came on
the scene and all of those blatantly pornographic images and video
became easily available "in the privacy of my own home", the amount of
time I began to spend and the range of my visual experimentation went
right out the roof! It simply became easy to feed my addiction, and feed
it I did!
As others have mentioned, I am also required to make use of the
internet in my work life. And it is an important tool for me to use in
many positive ways in my life. I would not have been able to work the SA
steps with a sponsor without the use of at least Skype and email, since
at that time I had no local way to connect to another SA member with sobriety
that could sponsor me. I haven't used filter software in years, since I
am knowledgeable and devious enough to have worked around this kind of software in the
past.
Instead, today I surrender the Internet in the same way that I have
and do continue to surrender my will and life to God. If I am online for
the right reasons (i.e. if I can honestly answer to God for my being
online), I have the freedom to use the Internet as a proper tool in my
life for good purposes. When I'm online, it is with a purpose, and I
continue to be aware of why I am where I am doing what I am doing there.
I always think about what I am about to click on, including links sent
to me by others in email and the like. The vast majority of what is
going on in the rest of the world is of no importance to me today and
doesn't need my attention or to be allowed to rent space in my head.
Simply put, most of the time I don't need to know, so I just don't
click. And I spend a lot less time on the Internet today than I did in
my past acting out.
Surrender is what works for me, God running my life instead of me trying (failing) to run it on my own.
