[dave42]

Thanks, HalfPint! No offense taken at all. And I really do appreciate all the support I'm getting here. You have been especially inspirational in your postings. I'm really sorry if my posting made it sound otherwise.

I think this is what I'm trying to say (but not doing it very well!): On the one hand, I think sometimes when I unlink problems in my life, I can analyze them better.

For example, If I'm angry at my boss (who is a great person, by the way), it's REALLY useful for me to try to unlink something that she said yesterday that angered me from something that she said a year ago that I'm still upset about.

However, the opposite is also true: sometimes it's really useful to connect things and look for patterns. For example: if I connect what my boss say yesterday and what she said a year ago do I see anything in common? Is there a pattern that I can see that might help me understand our problem?

So, you are right Halfpint: I did mention to someone that he might want to unlink issues about gay stuff from issues about being addicted to p. I thought that that might help him analyze things better.

And at the same time, in this thread I'm kind of hoping to get a conversation going about just the opposite: connecting gay issues with PA because we might see a pattern that would be useful.

For example, I'm interested in discussing gay men, PA, and self-loathing. So, a lot of gay folks are interested in understanding how messages that they might have gotten about homosexuality in high school, TV, movies, etc. might make them hate themselves. This might be related to addictions. This is a special gay problem. It's not that straight men don't deal with self-loathing. They do, of course! And it's not that straight men haven't received PLENTY of negative messages throughout high school, on TV, movies, etc. They have! Their comments are helping me a lot.

Having said that, gay men have had to deal with self-loathing and negative messages in a particular way. I'm not saying worse or easier, just different. Like, you know, the word "gay" is often used in high schools to mean "stupid" "bad" or substandard, as in, "Did you see that movie last night?" "Yeah, it was really gay." When a straight boy hears that, it has one effect. When a gay boy hears it, it has a different effect. This is one example, but there are other issues that come to my mind like it where I'd like to hear from the experience of other gay men (in addition to other straight men, bi, older men, younger men, all different types of women, etc.) I imagine that that would be true of lots of sub-groups of people addicted to p. Imagine a woman addicted to p. She might gain help and insight from me (I hope!), but I think she'd also want to discuss particular problems for women addicted to p.

So, I'm sorry for such a long answer to a great question, HalfPint. I really appreciate your words of support for me and for all of the guys here. Hey, can you tell me about the tickerfactory.com thing? It's really great. I'd like to get one myself!

All the best,

Dave