Reappearance and disappearance

I got another e-mail yesterday from R. I was grateful to have little to no desire to communicate with him and saw him for the pathetic damaged soul that he is. I know that it was his damage that attracted me to him to begin with and ensnared me in my disease for one long, miserable year. The fact that I have recommitted myself to recovery, have been working my program and continue to grow one day at a time makes it possible for me to look at that pain through new eyes and say ... I'm worth more than that.

I feel unfamiliar with these feelings of strength and truthful awareness. And while I don't fool myself that they could disappear at anytime, (The disease of addiction is cunning, baffling and powerful.) I am doing my best to connect to them. I am recognizing that one little slip last week has me in a stage of withdrawal where these seemingly "psychic" connections can happen. That doesn't mean I have to succumb to them, and not being in a relationship ridden by fear, anxiety, confusion and absolute loss of myself, like the one I was in with R. reminds me of the value of staying sober. And, R's communication, in which he shared he's drinking and smoking and having affairs all over the place on his new wife, reminds me that nothing about the fantasy I created that relationship to be was true, and causes me to give great thanks to the power that guides my intuition to get the hell out while I could.

I am forever grateful to my Higher Power for keeping me in a safe place, putting people in my life who can support me and opening my heart to be supported by others.

Thanks for being here and being witness to each stage of this truly incredible journey.

An answer to my letter

I was lying in bed yesterday afternoon next to my husband who is sick with the flu, thankfully present and feeling the comfort of being next to him. My SLAA text was next to the bed and I opened it up to start reading. No surprise, it opened to the chapter on withdrawal, which I have been reading like a fiend lately. And, in answer to my letter to my HP yesterday morning, my eyes fell onto these words:

And now you are there, and withdrawal is upon you. What are some of the dangers involved in going through it? What is the experience likely to bring you? How can you survive the inevitable temptations to slide back into old patterns?

The dangers can be described as being of two types. The first type involves the dangers inherent in the inner process itself. The second involves dangers stemming from outside yourself which can make it seem impossible for you to go through withdrawal, and can influence you to abort it.

Perhaps the greatest inner danger comes from finding yourself face-to-face with the unknown. It is one thing to make a decision to withdraw when the painful stimulus of a recent addictive episode is still fresh. It is quite another thing to be open to withdrawal, not as a reaction to a specific addictive situation, but as a response to a recognizable life-pattern of addiction. Yet this larger perspective on the withdrawal experience is crucial if it is to be endured. What we have found is that once we have recognized certain bottom-line behavior which we know is addictive for us, and refrain from acting out in these "bottom- line" ways on a daily basis, we then discover numerous habits and traits of behavior and personality that have been addiction-related.

The chapter goes on to talk about how in withdrawal we discovered many behaviors that surrounded and promoted our addictions, but had been covered by the intensity of acting out. It also talks about the ways we dealt with this new life -- doing the simple things like paying the bills and taking a shower, going to work. Then it says:

The purpose of all this was not to clutter our day with activity. Most of us needed rest and solitude just as much as we needed other tasks, personal contacts and responsibilities. We were, within ourselves, expending as much energy as most people do who hold full-time jobs and maintain active family lives. In fact, most of us were "working" far harder than we ever had before. After all, we were working at standing still, at freeing ourselves from the tentacled clasp of a frightful addiction which had driven us to such a pitch of self-destroying activity. Simply not doing it took tremendous effort. We were suspending, for the moment, our very real fears concerning the outcome of all this by attending to those tasks immediately at hand. We were living in the immediate present, and discovering that we could indeed make it through an hour, or a morning (mourning!), or a day. And we were discovering that there was a joy to be had in successfully negotiating our way through each twenty-four hour period.

We found that the most healing antidote to the gnawing pain of our struggles and doubts was to turn over any questions concerning the outcome of our withdrawal to God, or to whatever Power we felt was helping us to abstain from our old patterns.

Through all of this we became, one day at a time, available to ourselves. By the simple act of "standing still," we inaugurated a relationship with ourselves based on growing self-honesty, trust, and intimacy. Now we knew that our goal in withdrawal was to lay the foundation for personal wholeness. How this would translate into personal relationships or careers, we did not know. But what we did know was that the externals would eventually develop around this inner foundation of wholeness, and come to reflect our inner state. We were able to embrace this feeling of our growing capacity for wholeness, and leave specific outcomes to God. This shift in our attitude eased the sense of existential crisis.

As I have mentioned in recent writings -- in my early days of recovery, throughout my countless relapses, I have read these words in the Withdrawal Chapter again and again. But now, at this phase of my recovery, they sing to me like a song and I can hear them. I can hear them, because I am not drunk, because I am not absent. I am right here ... open to the process of true withdrawal from this disease, willing to endure every uncomfortable feeling and thought that arises, willing to sit in the quietness of this vast hole and trust.

Thanks for being here to listen as I have walked through every stage of this process one day at a time for four years to get to this point today. It’s by no means the end, only finally, a beginning.

It was easy in the beginning to wonder why it was important to read literature and go to meetings and make phone calls. These days the answer seems so simple. These are the ways that my HP speaks to me.

Really? This was part of a plan?

I had the opportunity this morning to read the chapter on withdrawal as part of the work I am doing with a sponsee this morning, and it felt like it was something I had never read before. Sure, a couple of the phrases were familiar -- but it seems like today I was reading it for the first time with an open and sane mind.

It was very helpful for me to read that withdrawal comes to different people in different ways. I have struggled and exposed myself to a lot of self-hatred because it seems that it took me so long to "get it" in this program. Other people set their bottom lines and stuck to them, while I set them and broke them again and again. Even though I "kept coming back" to the program ... I also kept going back to my addiction. At times I thought "What's the use?"

The chapter on withdrawal says that some people come to withdrawal by exposing their addict behaviors to their friends and family (or being exposed), while others quit cold turkey. Still others -- including myself -- come to withdrawal -- in a gradual process. As the book describes it ... " Some of us approached withdrawal gradually, chipping away at obvious problem areas. Even marginal success in doing so increased our awareness of other aspects of the addictive pattern that we really hadn't known were there. This process of increasing awareness led inevitably to a final surrender of the whole addictive pattern, and thus we were launched into withdrawal, and sexual emotional sobriety ...

"... by the time we let the concept of withdrawal into our thinking, the addiction was not reliably delivering the oblivion or pleasure we sought so ardently. More and more energy had to be poured into the emotional and sexual activities just to break even, let alone "go to the moon." It was as though an inner voice was saying, as we embarked on each new sexual or romantic episode, "Wherever I'm 'going' with this new face, or body, or mind, I've already 'been there' a thousand times before!"

What? I could never have accepted this in early recovery -- that even though I wasn't completely sober right away ... I was still working toward recovery. Instead, I just kept beating myself up, searching for more ways to cause myself pain so that I could soothe that pain by acting out ... and the cycle goes.

But, the SLAA text says, "Of course, to speak of "ways" of entering withdrawal from active sex and love addiction is a bit misleading, because we are not really the conscious architects of how we get there."

Oh? You mean I was powerless over how this whole thing progressed? I'm aghast!

Again, it's not as if I haven't read these words dozens of times -- every time I would relapse and go back into my disease (a path I would never advocate if I WERE the architect of this plan) I read them again, praying for the pain and hurt and obession to just PLEASE go away. But I think I was so "drunk" during those times that I couldn't find that stillness I needed to really hear what was being said. My life is progressing exactly as it needs to.

I think the words that stood out most to me in the reading were these: "You have been hiding or postponing this pain for a long time now, yet you have never been able to lastingly outrun it. You need to go through withdrawal in order to become a whole person. You need to meet yourself."


Well, I'll be darned, if that isn't exactly what I've been trying to do ... become a whole person ... to relate to myself from a state of wholeness.


Thanks be to God for all these spiritual awakenings I've been having lately.

Here I go

I'm still having trouble today focusing on things, getting things done. Every little project is such an extreme effort. But, I am doing some things anyway. It feels like I'm forcing them through, but I'm getting them done.

I did outreach yesterday to some women in the nearby SLAA fellowships, but as it is for so many people in recovery, it's very hard to pick up the phone. I've done some e-mail outreach, so I suppose that's progress.

The weather is turning cold and I don't want to go outside at all. I hate being cold and now I've waited so late to go out that it's dark outside, I hate that just as bad. But I have some things on my list that I have to do outside ... so here I go.

The other side of the pillow

This morning I wrote of crawling into the bed yesterday afternoon feeling giddy. This afternoon I can barely pry myself from the bed and feel as if I'll throw up and freeze to death all at once.

No, I haven't caught some mysterious illness, I am going through the very agonizing physical symptoms of withdrawal from addiction.

My mind is going wild with very specific thoughts of the things I'll never feel again and my body is grieving. I'm shivering and every nerve is on end.

I went to the bookstore this afternoon in hopes that some time away from home would maybe alleviate my suffering. But once I got there I felt as if my head were spinning out of control. Even trying to concentrate on a few words on the flap of a book, and especially scanning my eyes across a row of books, made me feel as if I would pass out. I quickly bought the book for my book club meeting next week and left, then wild to get back home and to crawl into bed and escape. But in this phase of withdrawal there is no escape. Even the dreams are haunting. I am angry at everything and I feel like I'll crawl out of my skin.

I write all this down as a reminder. I hope it is enough of a reminder.

I pick up my husband in another couple of hours at the airport. Having him here will help. It's hard that he doesn't know what is going on ... but just feeling him close may help.

I made it through three and a half

Thank God, I sent three letters cutting off ties with men who have fed my sexual addiction. I didn't have to tell them anything, but I felt that cutting them off automatically, rather than enduring phone calls and such for weeks to come would be easier. I also was able to write a fourth letter with someone who has fed both my sex and love addiction -- I told him I would be out of touch for awhile. It's all I could do today. But it's enough.

Thank you, Lord, for the strength and the courage to do this much.

One day at a time, by God's grace, I have been physically sober since Nov. 14.

I start with a new therapist in the morning. I also managed to apply for three jobs today and write to R. to ask him to begin paying me back (as he promised he would) the money I used to help him buy a car before I moved here.

Back to here

My husband and I arrived back home from our trip to South Carolina around noon today. We arrived back to the gloomy flatness of the Midwest, after having spent time driving through the beautiful Smoky Mountains through Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina. It was 29 degrees and snowing here, after we had enjoyed 75 degree weather in S.C. It was a bit depressing.

On the long drive, I spent some time listening to Joe and Charlie talk about the AA Big Book and developed some renewed committment to getting life back on track. I have about five men in my life that I need to cut complete ties with. I have prayed the prayers of surrender and pray that I have the strength to do it one day at a time. I can feel when I am "away" from the temptation, it's easy to want to give it up. When I return to the temptations -- the computer, the time alone, however, the thoughts of "Well, I can just keep them as friends," come to mind. But so far today, every time a thought like that has come to mind, I've said a prayer and said, "God let me surrender these thoughts to you." Believe it or not, that prayer was answered.

My husband goes out of town again this week, just for one day, but it happens to be the birthday of one of those men who I need to cut ties with, who also happens to have the day off. In the past, when I've decided to cut ties, I've been able to do it. However, I often go back and reconnect them. But I'm going to continue to pray.

As of now, 6 p.m., I still haven't contacted any of these guys. I don't have the desire to. Seems like prayer is working pretty well.