By Eric Tooley
Today, February 28, 2018, is my four-year anniversary of sobriety from pornography!
I will celebrate tonight in our Celebrate Recovery program and pick up this coin. I thank God for this freedom.
As I reflect on the longest sobriety I have achieved in 43 years, Luke 11:34 comes to mind:
Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your body also is full of darkness.
Jesus tells us that to become light we need our eyes to be healthy. In my battle with pornography, here are nine ways I make my eyes healthy:
- I look away from sexual images.
- I avoid movies with sexual content. This has eliminated R-rated and many PG-13 movies.
- I opted-out of the Sports Illustrated swim suit issue. ESPN: The Magazine does not make that offer for its body issue so I cancelled that subscription.
- I avoid television shows with sexual content. I pretty much only watch baseball, football, and some older comedy shows.
- I avoid watching the news. There is usually at least one story that is sexual in nature. This was a huge trigger for me to go to the internet to research a story and then end up looking at porn.
- When staying in a hotel, I rarely turn on the TV.
- Even though we do not have children at home, we set the TV parental controls to TV-PG.
- We have programmed our TV channel listings not to display any adult listings.
- I “unfollow” friends on Facebook that post anything of a sexual nature.
My addiction ritual was to be triggered and then go to the internet for pornography. Once I eliminated my triggers, pornography is not an issue for me. We are all different and have our own triggers. In my Images or Glory? program, I talk about bouncing your eyes to avoid pornography.
Be full of light. Keep your eyes healthy. Bounce your eyes.
