The phrase Over the Hump Day is mostly an American phrase. The reason Wednesday is called Hump Day is that if you see your workweek as Monday – Friday then Wednesday is the middle of the week and you begin to look forward to the weekend which you may have off if your job requires you to work 5 days a week.
Many people work 5-day weeks like schoolteachers. Many others work six-day weeks and some seven days a week. But if your employment is Monday – Friday then for you Wednesday is hump day.
There is a commercial produced by Geico, a car insurance company came out with a commercial where a camel is walking through a room filled with people sitting in their work stalls. We hear the camel saying; “Guess what day it is…Guess what day it IS!!!” He continues to say that until finally one of the employee’s answers with little to no enthusiasm;
“It’s hump day.”
The idea that getting over hump day means you can start thinking about the weekend an what you are going to do on your 2 days off.
I believe there is also a “Hump Day” in recovery. However, there is a much bigger hill to climb when one decides they want to stop going back into the darkness of sexual sin. Because looking at porn, having sex or masturbating is such an addictive behavior it is difficult to stop. Some experts say it is harder to stop than alcohol or drugs.
So, when someone decides they really need to stop looking at porn because they know it is sinful based on what God says in the Bible. They find themselves with a powerful battle on their hands…more powerful than they could have imagined.
Here is a simple test to find out if you are addicted or not. Try and stop for 30 days. That means no looking at porn or having any form of sex for a month. Your body will tell you if you are addicted or not. If you have no powerful urges to using it again then there might not be an addiction. But if you find yourself growing more and more restless, angry, anxious, depressed, or any number of negative feelings you may very well be addicted.
So, when is the Hump Day in addiction recovery? Generally speaking, most say it is about 90 days. Depending on how often you have been looking at porn and are you doing it for hours instead of minutes then you may have a stronger addiction than others. It is not like pregnancy where one is either pregnant or not pregnant. There are depths into which you have fallen both in frequency and variety.
Someone who has just been looking at porn a few times a week for short periods of time to pleasure themselves and then move on may have a mild addiction. Others who are acting out daily and even multiple times a day for hours and are compulsively masturbating they probably have a strong and powerful addiction.
However, whether your recovery process takes 60, or 90, or 180 days it is going to be a very difficult journey. One cannot just decide one day they are going to stop and then walk away from this addictive behavior without a struggle. And you will never know the difficulty of getting over the Hump in Recovery.
I have learned from my own recovery a number of things that I think will help you.
First – You will not be able to do it on your own. Addiction recovery of all kinds will require you to find yourself a group of others working on the same thing. Whether is it a 12 step group like SA, a Christian 12 Step like Celebrate Recovery, or one of our 180 Online Support Teams you are going to need the help of others to be able to handle the temptations that are going to be coming your way.
Second – The pressure to go back to porn will grow stronger and stronger for the first and second months. You will reach a stage where you would do almost anything to have another porn plunge. You will feel like you are starving to death and need to feed your sinful nature.
This becomes a point where many justify going ahead and having another fall and restart again sometime after. They choose to fall and are filled with self-condemnation, guilt, and shame. This can become a pattern of going a month and falling and doing it all over again. It is like you are still in the cycle of addiction, but the cycle is longer and slower than it was before. And if that continues to play out over and over again many will just give up and believe that freedom from their addiction is impossible.
Part of that problem is that one can choose to believe that a fall takes you all the way back to day # 1. It can for sure…if you fall back into sexual sin and then wallow in it. Not just having one fall but multiple falls, destroying the progress you were making.
However, I have learned something extremely important to me. A fall is not the end of the world…it is an opportunity to learn something significant. I have had 8 falls in 15 years, and I got over the hump by learning from every fall I had. I confessed it, analyzed it, talked it through with my wife and my leaders. Then I set new boundaries and new consequences, got up, and kept moving forward.
Having a fall is not like building a sandcastle on the beach which will only be washed away by the sea overnight. You go a week or a month and you learn things. Your brain begins to change bad habits into good habits. You have made progress so if you fall jump up, confess it to God, confess it to your wife and support team, set a new boundary, and a stronger consequence.
Tomorrow I will follow up some more on getting over the Hump Day or Recovery.