In which I celebrate the ability to choose!

When I first started reading blogs written by other sex addicts, one of the things that really bugged me was when they just quit writing. I hated that! I mean what the heck happened? Did they decide they didn’t want recovery after all? Were they acting out again and miserable? Did they die? Did they get better? So I was determined that if I started a blog, the one thing I’d never do was just drop off the blogosphere without a word. And then of course, I do that very thing I promised myself I wouldn’t do.

For all of you who have wondered – I’ve been doing really well. I’m still sexually sober. I still haven’t made up my mind about whether or not I should drink, so I’ve remained abstinent from alcohol. I still don’t smoke. My husband and I are getting along great. We are happy.

Figuring out what to do with the time I used to spend navel gazing and porn surfing has been a big part of my recovery. I imagine that’s true for any one struggling with any kind of addiction. And over time, I’ve become more and more involved with life and less and less interested in thinking about sex addiction.

I used to be really afraid that I’d feel the way I do now. I thought that to stay in recovery meant that I’d have to stay vigilant because drifting away from recovery is . . . dangerous. I might quit going to meetings. I might lose my focus. I might slip. After all, it’s an incurable disease and I’m always going to be an addict. But the truth is, I don’t feel afraid. And I don’t think it’s because I’m getting cavalier or taking my recovery for granted, I think it’s because living in recovery from addictive sexual behavior is NOT living in fear. It’s living with choices.

Yesterday I was faced with just such a choice but you’ll need a bit of background to understand what happened.

Part 1. There’s a blog I visit where the owner is anxiously awaiting the TruBlood series. It’s a pain because she puts in music and little video clips but I ignore them and scroll down to the posts I’m interested in. It wasn’t triggering and I didn’t really give it much thought beyond my mild annoyance.

Part 2. I’ve been trying to exercise for longer periods of time. If I’m going 30 minutes, an audio book or some tunes work fine but I’m trying to stay on the treadmill for a whole hour. Hulu has been helping me. I pick a tv show and watch it. During the commercial bits, I rest. So far it’s been working like a charm! I’m distracted enough to exercise for the entire length of the average TV show. I’ve been alternating between Lie to Me (which I love) and Castle (which is dumb – but one of the actors was great in Firefly, which I loved).

Part 3. Sometimes the buffering isn’t great and the show stops and starts, which annoys me because I remember how tired I am and how much I want to get off the darn treadmill.

This brings us to yesterday when I found myself trying to decide which past episode of TruBlood to watch after Castle went on the fritz. Now TruBlood isn’t a bad series. I don’t mean that at all. I saw a few episodes last year and I’ve read a few of the books and there’s nothing wrong with them. They’re entertaining. But I had a therapist who was into dark, demonic sex and a childhood that left me with a deep streak of self-hatred and a coping mechanism of compulsive sexual behavior.

As I was reading through the episode descriptions and trying to decide which show I wanted to see, I got one of those lightening bolts of clarity. I could rationalize watching that show till the cows come home, but no matter how I spin it, this is not a series that I should be watching.

And that’s where recovery is: in that moment of clarity I got to choose to watch something else. And while I’m sad that I can’t watch whatever I want, realistically, there are a lot of other things to watch just like there are a lot of other things besides alcohol to drink. And that makes me feel like smiling because I’ve come a long way!

If anyone reading this is struggling with addiction – I sincerely hope you don’t give up on yourself. It really can get better!

You cannot do recovery alone.

A few days ago, Rae pointed out to me that I’m giving away my power in the post where I complained about not fitting in because I’m an atheist. When I read that I thought she just didn’t understand what it was like. I phrased it a little differently to myself in my own head. Bad words were involved.

But that comment has been nagging at me. She said the only person who isn’t at peace with me is me. Of all the nerve!

I really was feeling left out and all alone. And angry too. But now I’m wondering,  is it possible that I’ve been suffering from terminal uniqueness? That loneliness that happens when you sit by yourself with your head down contemplating how much different you are from every person who passes by?

Thinking about how vast the universe is renders the whole atheist in recovery thing moot because in that moment, it just doesn’t matter. The awe I feel fills up all the cracks and there’s no room for feeling shut out. There’s no room for anything but awe and gratitude.

Thinking about myself is absolutely a necessary part of recovery. I need to understand what triggers me, how to stay sober, how to take care of myself. All of that requires a degree of introspection and it helps me stay sober. But like everything in life, introspection can be overdone. When it devolves into navel gazing I get the opposite of numinous, which is isolation.

It’s imperative to have others in your recovery. You cannot do it alone. 

Let me repeat that. You cannot do it alone. 

Because no matter how smart you are or how many books you read, you cannot see some of the mistakes you’re going to make. 

It’s like the TV show, What Not to Wear. It’s always a shock to the people when Stacy and Clinton go through their wardrobe. And so far I haven’t once seen someone react to that with pleasure. They know it’s for their own good. They’ve seen the secret footage where they look horrible. And they still argue to keep the clothes that don’t look nice on them. They’re often snide and downright mean to Stacy and Clinton. Those two remind me of good sponsors. They don’t back down and they don’t sugarcoat anything. But they genuinely care. That’s obvious.

Almost everyone cries before the hairdo and makeup day. Letting go is painful. But afterward, people clearly look and feel beautiful and they thank everyone for caring enough to help.

In recovery we say that our friends care enough to tell us our slip is showing.

Most of the leaps I’ve made while trudging this happy road of destiny have come on the heels of cursing some jerk who had the temerity to point out that my slip was showing.

Rough days do pass.

Photo by Jackie (Sister72)

Thanks; especially to the women I called a few years ago.

First of all, thank you to everyone who responded with kind words about my last post. It feels good to know that there are other people out there who wish me well. It means a lot.

I got a phone call a few weeks ago from another woman in recovery, a stranger to me. Like many others, I’m on a phone list that’s distributed by a central office. I don’t get many calls from that list, but I do get a few. And I have a lot of empathy for the women who call because I’ve “been there, done that.”

So let me take an opportunity to thank the women who took calls from me a few years ago. I was hurt, confused, and absolutely miserable, and you helped me.

One of you let me know that your acting out behaviors had also gotten worse when you first started trying to get sober. But you stuck with the program and by the time I talked to you, you’d been sober for 2 years and your life was much better.

When I was driving myself crazy wondering if I’d lost my sobriety or not, one of you gave me some really insightful words of wisdom. You said that I didn’t sound sober, but that since I hadn’t physically acted out you could understand my confusion. You told me that it didn’t really matter one way or another because if I wasn’t mentally sober, it was only a matter of time before I’d lose my physical sobriety. You sounded gruff and kind of mean to me. After I hung up the phone I burst into tears and called you a bitch. I hated this program! There’s no way to win when you have to be careful of what you think. But two days later, I’d lost my sobriety for sure and my group sponsor pointed out that I was spending a lot of time and energy fighting rather than just accepting reality.

I’ve tried to pass this wisdom on to others. Some people like the image of the addict fighting back, like the first woman did. I prefer to say that change is difficult, and changing life long compulsive behaviors is very difficult. And worrying about your sobriety is just not a productive thing to do. Your job (my job) in recovery is to do the next right thing. That’s all. Staying sober is not my job. Right living and right thinking is.

Like a farmer, right? Planting and harvesting is a farmer’s job. Growing is not.

Last week though, I got several calls from women who left me feeling used. They dumped, preached, and then when they’d gotten what they needed, they left. Of course, that’s what sick people do — but I need to develop a better coping strategy.

There’s a point where a remembered hurt can develop into a resentment — or it can morph into a springboard for learning and change. I definitely want to change how I manage myself on the phone with other women in recovery. I’m grateful that nobody else has called for awhile, because I would hate to be guarded with the next person because I’m still smarting from feeling used by the woman before her.

And the whole dilemma about whether to stay connected with my 12-step program? “That’s not something I need to decide today.” A direct quote from my first sponsor.

Happy Holidays!

Whether you’re trudging the road of happy destiny or just stopping by to visit, I wish you a very happy holiday season!

Just Ask

It seems like the blog’s been on the back burner since the Christmas season has kicked in – sorry about that folks. But finally the lights are up, most of the gifts are wrapped, we’re getting the tree this weekend and dinner is planned. We don’t do all the church and Jesus stuff, but there’s is a nativity scene that’ll go over the fireplace on the mantle. I bought it years ago when I was a devout believer and the kids still like it, most especially they like teasing me about it.

So yes, my husband and I are atheists and yes, we celebrate Christmas. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about today. I was catching up on reading the blogs I subscribe to and one of them had a post about sex rehab. The post was interesting, but what really caught my attention was one of the commenters. This person was so far off base in his or her imagination of what residential therapy for sex addiction is really like, it was almost funny. I say almost, because I was pretty ticked off.

There was the typical “there’s no such thing as sex addiction” argument. That’s boring and it’s been done all over the Internet. When I see it, I automatically skip over it. But I just had to refute the postulation that treatment facilities actually enable sex addiction. The commenter suggested that by making sex “bad,” treatment actually makes it that much more alluring, becoming the forbidden fruit, so to speak.

As I was climbing up onto my soapbox in high dudgeon, it occurred to me that I was taking this comment rather personally. Kind of the same way I took the hoopla over the atheist group’s sign in the mall. It’s hard for me not to take anti-atheism personally. See how recovered I am? <smile> After all, how can someone who hasn’t been to rehab know what it’s like? So instead of just complaining about someone’s ignorance, I decided that I’d invite questions here, on my blog.

Are you curious about what treatment for sex addiction is like? Put your question in a comment here and in a future post, I’ll answer them.

I Don’t Know What to Say

The comment I got from Patrick is pretty bizarre. I thought I’d write something about it, but so far all I’ve been able to come up with is that I’m glad I’m not a Jesus Freak any more.

Being an atheist is #1 on my list of things to be grateful for today.

Six Word Memoir

What a week. That last line on in the pic just cracks me up. “We are hanging here….” It’s probably too small to read without clicking, but trust me. Mac’s crash so politely. The hard drive on the iMac is completely dead. That stinks because the old iMacs had the best screen, everyone in the family could get just the right height and angle. This happened yesterday, after I’d finally given up trying to recover all the photos I took while we were on vacation at the beach. I rented a sweet telephoto lens, one of those big mothers that a photographer from National Geographic would use to take pictures of tigers. These were, without a doubt, the best photos I’ve ever taken. Normally my vacation photos are little wee dots in a 5×7 sea of blue-grey. These were big, bright, and beautiful. There was one where the kids were laughing as the wave broke on their backs. You could see the individual droplets of spray and these big beautiful grins. I’m looking at my living room wall where I’d planned to hang the poster-sized print of that one.

Alas. Sometimes I just fiddle too much. There’s really no need for me to go around backing up and then immediately deleting redundant files. I have an external hard drive that’s huge. Why not back up everything? Nope. Not me. I don’t waste cheap storage space. So I backed up the wrong folder. Then got pissed because my image editing program was soooo sloooow and decided to reinstall the OS. Back when I used WindowsME, that was smart. Now, it’s dumb. Then I proceeded to use my computer enough so that I couldn’t recovery anything that had been on my desktop. It took 2 days to run the recovery program and it found every picture file except the ones from the beach.

I had a complete meltdown – one of those where you’re sitting down in the shower crying so hard you choke on your own snot. You’d have thought it was the end of the world. Well, either that or bad reality TV.

I’m still sad that all those photos are gone but I’m grateful it was a s.u.e (stupid user error) and not a fire, tornado, or hurricane. I’m grateful we’re can afford to go to the beach. Next time, I’m getting that same telephoto lens from rentglass, it was definitely worth it. Last time we went to the beach, I took three pictures. Of a tree. This year, I took close to 500 pictures of the people I love. Obviously my mental health has improved!

I backed up iTunes correctly. And the iMac croaking doesn’t seem all that bad after losing all my vacation photos.

Greybeard tagged me. A six word memoir:

Very well read. Not too smart.

Me, Me, Me

I just love this song!

The About Me page of this blog gets the most traffic, so I’ve added a little blurb about why I’m blogging. It got me thinking about the tension of between honesty and anonymity in my personal recovery that I thought I’d expand on here.

Like most sex addicts, the worst of my acting out was through the Internet where I acted anonymously and secretly. The sound of a dial up modem connecting is still an incredibly erotic trigger for me! To maintain my sobriety I had to give up the right to use the a computer at all for over six months. Even after that it was a long time before I felt solid enough in my sobriety to check email when I was alone.

Today, instead of acting out online I try to practice my recovery without being secretive. But it’s not an easy balance to strike. Be a little too open and some nutter might endanger me or my family. A little too closed and why bother reading? I like the approach taken by one blogger I admire. Someday I’ll probably ask to borrow her idea of addressing the people who think they know me, it’s just that good, but I want to find my own balance, be comfortable with my own boundaries first.

So I have fear about speaking out about my experiences with recovery from sex addiction, just like this addict:

It sounds simple but there were obstacles and doubts to overcome. I well remember a session with myself soon after I returned [home]. It ran something like this: If I go around shouting from the rooftops about my alcoholism, it might very possibly prevent me from getting a good job. But supposing that just one man died because I had, for selfish reasons, kept my mouth shut? No. I was supposed to be doing God’s will, not mine. His road lay clear before me, and I’d better quit rationalizing myself into any detours. I could not expect to keep what I had gained unless I gave it away.

I highlighted this in my Big Book (p. 253) over three years ago.

At that time, discovering and then following God’s will for me was my primary focus. I believed the dead went to heaven and lived happily ever after with God. So although it would be sad if just one man died because I’d been afraid to jeopardize my anonymity, ultimately it wasn’t all that sad. The bigger issue was following God’s will. I don’t believe in the existence of a deity or an afterlife any more so that one man’s death has become almost unbearably tragic for me. If there’s any way I can help, I should. The meetings, support, therapists, and treatment facilities were there for me when I needed it and I want to do whatever I can to pay it forward.

Good Therapy Helps

I think addicts have broken eyes. We can’t see ourselves accurately and we mistrust others when they tell us we’re worthy. Just like the song says, my current therapist is sometimes a mirror for me.

I’ve been wanting to act out. I’m bitchy, cranky, irritable, angry and tired, tired, tired of not being able to do what I want to do. I walked into my therapist’s office yesterday feeling scared that I was going to relapse and angry that I can’t do what I want. I was a evil person with disgusting desires.

He pointed out that it makes sense that I’d have all those addictive hungers swirling around. We moved. One of my children graduated from college, I spent time with my mother, I had a big wedding anniversary, it’s difficult to get to meetings, and so forth. His words took the energy out of my self hatred. The shame that comes from wanting something I don’t want to want – that’s what fuels the addictive process and without that fuel, I can think better.

I really like my therapist. Probably I love him. He knows my entire story and sees me as a good person. He knows all the gory details of what I’ve done, knows exactly how sick my fantasies are and still sees me as a good person. My struggles make sense to him. I don’t seem to disgust him at all, which is confounding. And he helps. Today I feel good, not sex starved. I’m thinking about the stuff I need to get done around the house, putting together some storage shelves and getting all the Christmas stuff organized. That’s radically different than the shit that was going through my head yesterday.

I’m trying to trust that his vision of me is right. It doesn’t feel right, but it definitely works better.